Elio Brancaforte | e-mail
Newcomb 303 D | 504-862-3092

Associate Professor of German

Elio Brancaforte did most of his graduate work in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, specializing in Early Modern German literature, with minors in French and English. He also studied at the Universitaet Tübingen; the Ecole Normale Superieure in Fontenay-aux-Roses, France; and at the Johns Hopkins University.

His interests include travel literature, cartography, orientalism, and Baroque drama. The relationship between word and image is an underlying theme in his research on the German Baroque scholar Adam Olearius, who traveled from Northern Germany to Persia from 1633-39. He has published articles on Olearius's travel account as well as on the role of emblems in "El principe constante," a work by the Spanish dramatist Calderon.

During the spring term he taught German culture (Love, Death, and Sexuality from the Middle Ages to the Baroque); and his tour-de-force seminar, Reisen ins Fremde, on European travelers to the Orient. In the Fall he will teach both Intermediate German and German for Reading Knowledge. He is an avid soccer player and enjoys (bad) puns in many languages.