Rate My Professor Bruce Hayes

Bruce Hayes is Professor of French and Chair of the Department of French, Francophone, and Italian Studies at the University of Kansas. He specializes in Renaissance literature and culture, humor studies, late medieval and Renaissance drama, and religious polemics. Hayes received his Ph.D. in French from Yale University in 2001, M.Phil. in 1998, and M.A. in 1997, as well as an M.A. in French Studies from Brigham Young University in 1995 and a B.A. in French Studies in 1993. He joined the University of Kansas in 2001 as Assistant Professor in the Department of French and Italian, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2008, and to Professor in 2020.

Hayes is the author of two monographs: Hostile Humor in Renaissance France (University of Delaware Press, 2020), which analyzes religious polemics and sardonic humor during the French Wars of Religion, and Rabelais’s Radical Farce: Late Medieval Comic Theater and Its Function in Rabelais (Ashgate, 2010), exploring the role of popular farce in Rabelais's satire. He co-edited Yale French Studies no. 134, “The Construction of a National Vernacular Literature in the Renaissance” (2018) with Jessica DeVos, and Œuvres et Critiques 38 no. 2, “Jean Boucher (1548–1646?): Prêtre, prédicateur, polémiste” (2013) with Paul Scott. Recent publications include “Rabelaisian Satire and the Conciliation of the Satyre Ménippée” in Lingua Romana 17 no. 1 (2023), “The Contested Politics of Humour at the End of the French Wars of Religion” in Australian Journal of French Studies 59.4 (2022), and “The Affaire des placards, Polemical Humour, and the Sardonic Laugh” in French Studies 70 no. 3 (2016). His current project examines the birth of atheism in France through comic satire. Hayes has secured numerous grants and awards, including the Big XII Faculty Fellowship (2023), Grant Goodman Undergraduate Mentor Award (2020), National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend (2012), American Philosophical Society Franklin Grant (2012), Newberry Library Short-Term Fellowship (2011), Hall Center for the Humanities Fellowship (2013), and multiple Jessie Marie Senor Cramer & Ann Cramer Root Cramer Awards for Teaching and Research (2003, 2005, 2010, 2014) and General Research Fund Grants from the University of Kansas. As department chair, he has led the launch of the Francophone Studies Program and contributed to the department's designation as a Center of Excellence by the French Embassy in 2022.