Laurent Dubreuil’s research and writings are at the interface of literary theory and practice, the arts, philosophy, and cognitive science. He is the author of twelve books, including (in English): Empire of Language (Cornell UP: 2012), The Intellective Space (U of Minnesota P: 2015), The Refusal of Politics (U of Edinburgh P: 2016), Poetry and Mind (Fordham UP: 2018), and Dialogues on the Human Ape (U of Minnesota P: 2019; co-authored with Sue Savage-Rumbaugh).
Laurent Dubreuil’s initial training was in most areas of the humanities (at the École normale supérieure in Paris), with an emphasis on classics, philosophy (doctorate at the Université Paris-8: 2002) and literary studies (doctorate at the University of Bordeaux: 2001). He has been a student of Jacques Derrida, Hélène Cixous, Pierre Judet de La Combe, Umberto Eco, among others.
In 2010, a part of his scholarship began to come closer to cognitive science. That same year, he stayed for a week at Sue Savage-Rumbaugh’s lab in Des Moines, IA, where he also met with Liz Rubert-Pugh and the members of the bonobo family, Kanzi, Panbanisha, Nyota, and Teco especially. Dubreuil later visited the lab in several other occasions.
Laurent Dubreuil is a Professor of Comparative Literature, Romance Studies, & Cognitive Science at Cornell University (USA) as well as the incoming Senior International Chair of Transcultural Theory at Tsinghua University (PR of China). In November 2017, he began undertaking The Ape Testimony Project in concert with Cathy Caruth.