rwtobin@frit.ucsb.edu
Phelps 5315
Dr. Ronald Tobin’s accomplishments in the field of French and Francophone studies have earned him numerous awards and recognitions, namely: The Grand Prix du Rayonnement de la Langue et de la Littérature françaises 2006, awarded by the Académie Française. Previously, in 2004, the august Société d’Histoire Littéraire de la France had received him as Sociétaire. He has been knighted by the French Government 5 times and has attained the rank of Commandeur, the highest, in the Order of Academic Palms in 2005. The Québec Government also honored Professor Tobin in 1999 by inducting him into the Ordre des francophones d’Amérique. In 2014, the Renaissance Française, a non-profit organization founded in France in 1916, gave Dr Tobin its highest award, the Gold Medal, for the promotion of French language and culture. While Editor of the French Review for 12 years, Ronald Tobin’s decision to widen the journal’s coverage of francophone authors was recognized by the French Government through its honoring the French Review with the Georges Pompidou Prize.
Professor Tobin’s writings cover the great authors of the Classical Age from Descartes and Pascal through Corneille and Molière, to La Fontaine and Racine. In the most recent of the sixteen books he has written or edited (L’Aventure racinienne, 2020) Tobin continues to deepen the intertextual dimension of Racine’s creativity. Having composed the first treatise ever devoted to food in French theater (Tarte à la crème: Comedy and Gastronomy in Molière’s Theater, 1999), Tobin is currently planning a return to Molière, this time with a focus on the psychology of Molière’s audience in the Age of Trump.