Rate My Professor Jason Herbeck

Jason Herbeck is Professor of French, Department Chair, and French Section Head in the Department of World Languages at Boise State University, where he has been on the faculty since 2005. He earned a B.A. in French from the University of Wisconsin in 1993, followed by an M.A. in French from Middlebury College in 1995, which included a year of study at the Université de Nanterre-Paris X. He completed his Ph.D. in French Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002, with a dissertation titled 'Awakening Routinists: Consciousness, Quest and Albert Camus,' examining the philosophical implications of quest in the works of the Franco-Algerian writer. Since 2009, Herbeck has served as Coordinator of the North-American Section and Ex-officio Vice-President of the Société des Études Camusiennes. His career includes numerous conference presentations at national and international venues, contributions to prestigious journals, and leadership roles within his department.

Herbeck's research specializes in the works of Albert Camus, with philosophical approaches to literature, lovers’ discourse, and theatre, as well as literature of the French Caribbean, focusing on evolving narrative forms of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, intertextuality, identity construction, detective fiction, and jazz improvisation. He has authored or contributed to books such as A Writer’s Topography: Space and Place in the Life and Works of Albert Camus (2015) and Architextual Authenticity: Constructing Literature and Literary Identity in the French Caribbean. Key publications include 'POINT DE RENCONTRES: UNE ÉTUDE DE PASSAGES “INFRAHUMAINS” DANS LE ROND-POINT D'ÉVELYNE TROUILLOT' in Romance Notes (2023), 'Le Malentendu and the Failure of Recognition, or Why “You Should Never Play Games”' in Journal of Modern Literature (2022), 'History, Humanity, and the Literary Construction of Haiti in Évelyne Trouillot's Works' (2019), and an interview with Haitian author Évelyne Trouillot in The French Review (2009). With over 60 research outputs, including 25 articles and 13 book chapters, Herbeck received Boise State University's College of Arts and Sciences Award for Research and Creative Activity in 2012 and was inducted into Phi Kappa Phi in 2011. His scholarship has advanced studies in Camus and French-Caribbean literature through innovative analyses of narrative and identity.