American · b. 1965
Joshua Landy teaches French and comparative literature at Stanford University, where he has made the study of Proust accessible to new generations of readers. His work bridges literary criticism and philosophy, examining how fiction shapes thought and how reading can serve as a mode of training. Landy specializes in nineteenth and twentieth-century French literature, with particular focus on questions of self-fashioning, aesthetics, and the relationship between art and ethics. His scholarship demonstrates that literature offers tools for living—not moral lessons but practices that develop capacities we need. Beyond Proust, his research extends to Baudelaire, Flaubert, and the role of fiction in human cognition. As a teacher and writer, Landy rejects the view that literary study should reduce art to historical document or political statement, instead arguing that great works merit attention for their formal achievement and their power to transform readers.