Tom Conley (philologist)

Tom Clark Conley
Born	(1943-01-01) January 1, 1943 New Haven, Connecticut, USA
Alma mater	Lawrence University, Columbia University, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Occupation(s)	Philologist, Professor, Translator
Employer	Harvard University
Known for	Studies in early modern French literature, cartography, and cinema
Notable work	Film Hieroglyphs, The Self-Made Map, An Errant Eye
Spouse	Verena Conley
Awards	Guggenheim Fellowship (2003), Honorary Doctorate from Université Blaise-Pascal (2011)
Website	Radcliffe Institute Profile

Tom Conley (born 1943) is an American scholar of literature, cartography, and film.  Currently the Abbott Lawrence Lowell Research Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, Conley was formerly affiliated with the Departments of Visual and Environmental Studies and of Romance Languages and Literatures. Conley is noted for his interdisciplinary work exploring relations between space and writing in early modern France, the history of cartography, and cinema.

Biography

Conley was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and grew up in a non-academic family. He studied at Lawrence University and Columbia University before completing his Ph.D. in French literature at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he also pursued art history and film studies. He later studied at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Career

Before locating at Harvard University Conley was Professor of French and Italian at the University of Minnesota (1971–95). He has held visiting appointments at the University of California-Berkeley (1978–79), The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (1985–87), Miami University (1992), UCLA (1995), L’École des Nationale des Chartes (2005), L’Ecole en Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (2010 and 2011), and other institutions. In the spring and summer of 1998, respectively, he led a Folger Library Seminar and, at Harvard University, an NEH Summer Seminar on cartography and early modern French literature. In the summers of 2001 and 2004 he taught at the Institut d’études françaises d’Avignon. In 2003 he was a seminar leader at Cornell University's School for Critical Theory.

He has been a fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin (1991), the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography (1992), Cornell University's Society for the Humanities (1998), the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2011–12), the Garden and Landscape Division of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Center (2015-16), a residential fellow at the American Academy of Berlin (2020), and a Visiting Scholar in residence at Dumbarton Oaks Research (2022).

Past awards include a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship (1965), a Fulbright Fellowship (1968); an American Council for Learned Societies Study Fellowship (1976), summer stipends from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1972, 1988, 1992), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2003). He has been recipient of the Palmes Académiques for pedagogy (2002) and a Medal of Honor of the City of Tours. In 2011 the Université Blaise-Pascal (Clermont-Ferrand) awarded him an honorary doctorate. He was awarded a Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin (2020).

He is a member of the Modern Language Association, The International Association for the History of Cartography, the Society of Cinema and Media Studies, the Renaissance Society of America, Society for the History of Discoveries and the United States Handball Association. Since 2000 he and his spouse, Verena Conley, have been Faculty Deans of Kirkland House at Harvard University.

Scholarly works

Conley’s scholarship examines the intersections of writing, space, and visual culture, with particular emphasis on early modern France, cartography, and film. His books include Film Hieroglyphs (1991; new edition 2006), The Graphic Unconscious in Early Modern French Writing (1992; paperback reprint 1996), The Self-Made Map: Cartographic Writing in Early Modern France (1996; new edition 2010), L’Inconscient graphique: Essai sur la lettre à la Renaissance (2000), Cartographic Cinema (2006), An Errant Eye: Topography and Poetry in Early Modern France (2011), À fleur de page: Voir et lire le texte de la Renaissance (2015), and Action, Action, Action: The Early Cinema of Raoul Walsh (2022), the first volume of a diptych to be followed by Walsh War Warner, covering 1939–1964 (under contract). He is also the author of Su realismo (1988), a critical study of Luis Buñuel’s Las Hurdes (1932), and co-editor, with T. Jefferson Kline, of the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Jean-Luc Godard (2014).

Among his more than 250 articles and book chapters are contributions to volumes in film studies such as The History of Cartography, Volume 3: The European Renaissance (2006), Cinema and Modernity (2007), the Wiley-Blackwell companions to Michael Haneke (2010), Fritz Lang (2013), Luis Buñuel (2013), and François Truffaut (2013). His essays have appeared in The Epic Film (2010), Film Analysis (2005), Opening André Bazin (2011), Burning Darkness: A Half-Century of Spanish Cinema (2005), Film, Theory and Philosophy (2009), and European Film Theory (2008).

In early modern literature, his work appears in A New History of French Literature (1989), The Cambridge Companion to Montaigne (2005), The History of Cartography, Volume 3: The European Renaissance (2006), La Satire dans tous ses états (2009), and French Global (2010), among others. Recent chapters include contributions to Walter Melion’s Mixti Moti (2024).

Conley has also translated major works of theory and cultural history, including Michel de Certeau’s The Writing of History (1988; new edition 1992), The Capture of Speech and Other Political Writings (1997), and Culture in the Plural (1997); Gilles Deleuze’s The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (1993); Jean-Louis Schefer’s Paolo Uccello, The Deluge, the Plague (1995); Réda Bensmaïa’s The Year of Passages (1992); Marc Augé’s In the Metro (2003) and Casablanca: Movies and Memory (2009); and Christian Jacob’s The Sovereign Map (2006).

Awards

• 1992 (Jan–June) – Hermon Dunlap Smith Fellowship in the History of Cartography, Newberry Library
• 1998 (Spring) – A. D. White House Fellow, Cornell University
• 1998 – NEH Summer Seminar Leader on Cartography and Early Modern French Literature
• 1999, 2000, 2001 – Nomination, Levinson Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching, Harvard University
• 2000, 2003 – Clarke Fund Grant
• 2001 – Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques
• 2002 – Walter Channing Cabot Fellow, Harvard University
• 2003–04 – John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2011–12 – Research Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (declined Research Fellowships at Stanford Humanities Center, Dumbarton Oaks, Institute for Research in the Humanities)
• 2011 (Dec.) – Honorary Doctorate, Université Blaise-Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand (France)
• 2015–16 – Research Fellow in Garden and Landscape Studies, Dumbarton Oaks Research Collections
• 2016 – Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2020 (Spring) – Berlin Prize, American Academy in Berlin
• 2025 – Everett Mendelsohn Award for Outstanding Mentorship and Advising in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, Harvard University

Selected publications

Books

• Conley, Tom (2022-06-01). Action, Action, Action. SUNY Press. doi:10.1515/9781438488875. ISBN 978-1-4384-8887-5.
• Conley, Tom (2015). À fleur de page: voir et lire le texte de la Renaissance. Études et essais sur la Renaissance. Paris: Classiques Garnier. ISBN 978-2-8124-3248-4.
• Conley, Tom (2011-01-29). An Errant Eye: Poetry and Topography in Early Modern France. University of Minnesota Press. doi:10.5749/minnesota/9780816669646.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-8166-6964-6.</ref>
• Conley, Tom. Cartographic Cinema. U of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-1-4529-0894-6.
• Conley, Tom (2000). L' inconscient graphique: essai sur l'écriture de la Renaissance ; (Marot, Ronsard, Rabelais, Montaigne) (in French). Presses Univ. de Vincennes.
• The Graphic Unconscious in Early Modern French Writing. Cambridge; New York; Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-521-41031-2.
• Film Hieroglyphs: ruptures in classical cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-8166-4970-9.
• Cartographic Cinema. Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8166-4356-1.

Translations

• Jacob, Christian (2006). The sovereign map: theoretical approaches in cartography throughout history. Translated by Conley, Tom. Chicago, Ill.: Univ. of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226389530.
• Augé, Marc (2009). Casablanca: movies and memory. Translated by Conley, Tom. Minneapolis (u.a.): Univ. of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0816656417.
• Augé, Marc (2008). In the metro. Translated by Conley, Tom (Nachdr. ed.). Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press. ISBN 9780816634378.
• Certeau, Michel de (1997). The Capture of Speech and Other Political Writings. Translated by Conley, Tom. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-2769-1.
• Certeau, Michel de (1988). The Writing of History. Translated by Conley, Tom. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-05575-8.
• Buchanan, Ian; Gilles, Deleuze; Conley, Tom (1994). "The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque". SubStance. 23 (3): 124. doi:10.2307/3685373. ISSN 0049-2426. JSTOR 3685373.
• Uccello, Paolo [The Deluge, the Plague]. Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Translated by Conley, Tom. Oxford University Press. 2011-10-31. doi:10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.b00186676.
• Bensmaïa, Réda (2008). The year of passages. Theory out of bounds. Translated by Conley, Tom (Nachdr. ed.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-2393-8.

Journal Articles

• Conley, Tom (2003). "From Detail to Periphery: All French Literature Is Francophone". Yale French Studies (103): 166–176. doi:10.2307/3182544. ISSN 0044-0078. JSTOR 3182544.
• Conley, Tom (2000), "III. Ronsard et le sonnet-figure", L'Inconscient graphique, Presses universitaires de Vincennes, pp. 99–129, doi:10.4000/books.puv.981, ISBN 978-2-84292-079-1, retrieved 2025-10-03
• Conley, Tom (2008-01-01). "Le métier d'écrire". L'Homme (185–186): 333–342. doi:10.4000/lhomme.24186. ISSN 0439-4216.
• Conley, Tom (2011-01-29), "The Apian Way", An Errant Eye, University of Minnesota Press, pp. 53–80, doi:10.5749/minnesota/9780816669646.003.0003, ISBN 978-0-8166-6964-6, retrieved 2025-10-03
• Conley, Tom (2009). "A Devil in Diversion: Number and Line in the Essais". Configurations. 17 (1): 87–103. doi:10.1353/con.0.0068. ISSN 1080-6520.
• Conley, Tom (2005). "Cinema and its Discontents: Jacques Ranciere and Film Theory". SubStance. 34 (3): 96–106. doi:10.1353/sub.2005.0038. ISSN 1527-2095.
• Conley, Tom (2004). "A Fable of Film: Ranciere's Anthony Mann". SubStance. 33 (1): 91–107. doi:10.1353/sub.2004.0003. ISSN 1527-2095.
• Conley, Tom (2003). "A Writing of Space: On French Critical Theory in 1973 and its Aftermath". Diacritics. 33 (3): 189–203. doi:10.1353/dia.2006.0005. ISSN 1080-6539.

Further reading

• Bernd Renner and Phillip Usher have edited a Festschrift of 23 essays, Illustrations inconscientes: Écritures de la Renaissance. Mélanges en honneur de Tom Conley (Paris: Éditions Garnier, 2013).

External links

• Works by Tom Conley at Open Library
• Portrait: Tom Conley (The Crimson, March 9, 2006)
• Portrait: Tom Conley (Radcliffe Institute)