The Men Who Made Theory French

Picture an innocent: a corn-fed girl from a landlocked American suburb who loves more than anything to read. She heads east for college, eager to slough off her upbringing, and on arrival she drifts toward the literature department, or maybe art history. She signs up for a 200-level course with a promising but bewildering name—something with “and/as” in the title, perhaps—and welcomes the difficulty it suggests, difficulty being what she came for.