Sonoma State University

Suzanne C. Toczyski, Ph.D.

Emerita Professor of French

Suzanne Toczyski
Suzanne C. Toczyski, Ph.D.
she/her/hers

Dr. Toczyski arrived at Sonoma State in 1998, where she taught all levels of language, culture, history, and literature, as well as several General Education courses, the most popular being her classes on the literature of Haiti and the Haitian-American diaspora. She also worked extensively with first-year students in various first-year student programs, including the Freshman Seminar, the Freshman Learning Community, and the University 150 Learning Across Disciplines Program.

In addition, Dr. Toczyski served as advisor to the French Club for twenty-five years. Her service to the university was diverse, and included many years as a member of the Global Studies Steering Committee and the Academic Advising Subcommittee, among others. Dr. Toczyski was one of a team of three who organized the Common Read of Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race (2021-2023), a highly impactful endeavor that brought students, staff, faculty, and administrators together in many discussions over the course of two years. Finally, until the university shifted to machine-read names at Commencement, Dr. Toczyski’s voice could be heard ringing out students’ names at that ceremony; this was perhaps her most cherished form of service.

Biography

Prior to teaching at Sonoma State University, Dr. Toczyski taught French and francophone language and literature classes as a teaching assistant at Yale University; she was later an adjunct faculty at the University of Washington (Seattle) and Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma).

Suzanne Toczyski was editor of French 17: An Annual Descriptive Bibliography of French Seventeenth-Century Studies from 2000 to 2008, having served as a contributing editor from 1997 to 2000. Her own research includes work on French seventeenth-century theater (Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine), women’s writing (Madeleine de Scudéry, Jacqueline Pascal, Gilberte Pascal), moralists (Blaise Pascal), and the travel narratives of the French missionary Jean-Baptiste Labat, with a focus on food and culture.  She has also published articles on contemporary Caribbean novels by Gisèle Pineau and Patrick Chamoiseau. Her current projects include a book-length study of the representation of women in St. Francis de Sales' Treatise on the Love of God, published in 1616, as well as a book on The Nineteenth-Century Salesian Pentecost, written in collaboration with Dr. Wendy Wright, Dr. Joseph Chorpenning OSFS, and Dr. Joseph Boenzi SDB and published (2022) with Paulist Press.  Dr. Toczyski has also made brief forays into works by Lilas Desquiron, Virginia Woolf, Camara Laye, Eugene O’Neill, Charles Baudelaire, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Choderlos de Laclos. She received the Sonoma State Teaching Excellence Award in 2006, and served as one of two SSU representatives to the CSU World Languages Council, acting as Secretary-Treasurer of that organization from 2002 to 2019.

Education

Ph.D. & M.Phil., French Literature, Yale University
B.A., French and mathematics, State University of New York at Buffalo

Degrees

Ph.D., M.Phil., B.A.

Selected Publications & Presentations

  • Co-authored with Joseph Boenzi, SDB, Joseph F. Chorpenning, OSFS, and Wendy M. Wright, The Nineteenth Century Salesian Pentecost:  The Salesian Family of Don Bosco, the Oblates and Oblate Sisters of St. Francis de Sales, the Daughters of St. Francis de Sales, and the Fransalians, Paulist Press, 2022.  
  • “Qu’il me baise d’un baiser de sa bouche:  La Sulamite dans le Traité de l’amour de Dieu,” in Oeuvres & critiques XLV, 1 (2020), 117-129.
  • "Performing Secrets in Madeleine de Scudéry's Célinte," reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800: Madeleine de Scudéry. Ed. Lawrence Trudeau. Gale/Cengage Learning, 2017.
  • "'Because She Has Shown Great Love': Female Figures of the Gospels in St. Francis de Sales' Traité de l'amour de Dieu,"Journal of Salesian Studies 18.1 (January-June 2017): 27-51.
  • "'Je cite aucunes fois l'Ecriture Sainte': Women of the Old Testament and the Scriptural Imagination in St. Francis de Sales' Traité de l'amour de Dieu," in Love is the Perfection of the Mind, eds. Joseph Chorpenning, O.S.F.S., Thomas F. Dailey, O.S.F.S., and Daniel P. Wisniewski, O.S.F.S. (Center Valley, PA: Salesian Center for Faith & Culture, 2017), 103-119.
  • "'Blessed the Breasts at Which You Nursed': Mother-Child Intimacy in St. Francis de Sales' Treatise on the Love of God," Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 15.2 (fall 2015): 191-213. Refereed.
  • "O manioc-roi!: Community, Commensality, and Communion in Patrick Chamoiseau's Solibo Magnifique,"L'Erudit franco-espagnol (spring 2015): 66-81. Refereed.
  • "Voyage-cyclone: Souvenirs d'Éliette dans L'Espérance-macadam de Gisèle Pineau," Nouvelles Etudes Francophones: Revue du Conseil International d'Etudes Francophones 27.2 (fall 2012): 6-16. Refereed.
  • "Jean-Baptiste Labat & the Buccaneer Barbecue: Documenting the Culinary in 17th-Century Martinique." Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 10.1 (winter 2010): 60-69. Refereed.
  • "Rodrigue's Balancing Act," Origines: Actes du 39e congrès annuel de la North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, eds. Russell Ganim & Thomas M. Carr, Jr. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, Biblio 17/180 (2009): 107-114.
  • Editor, French 17: An Annual Descriptive Bibliography of French Seventeenth-Century Studies, 2000-2008, volumes 48-55. (Contributing Editor, 1997-2000). Awarded the Prix Web17 in 2002.  Journal went on-line (including archived material from the past ten years of publication) in summer 2007 through collaboration with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Center for Digital Research in the Humanities.
  • “Navigating the Sea of Alterity:  Jean-Baptiste Labat’s Voyage aux îles,” Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature 67 (2007): 485-509.  Refereed.
  • “Chimène, or the Scandal of the Feminine Word," reprinted in Literature Criticism, 1400-1800 (v.135) of Literature Criticism, ed. Larry Trudeau, Thomson Gale, 2007.
  • "A Brief History ~ The Love Affair Between France and Chocolate." Chocolate French. TCB-Café Publishing, 2003. pp.16-25.
  • "Growing Up Polish-American in Buffalo." Autobiographical essay published in CollegeWritingOnline, Longman Publishers, 2003. 
  • Co-authored with Karen Brodsky. "Information Competence in the Freshman Seminar." Academic Exchange Quarterly (winter 2002): 46-51.
  • Co-authored with Christine Renaudin. "(Im)possible Translations of The Waves: The Necessity of a 'Bridge Called Art'." Virginia Woolf Bulletin, 11 (September 2002): 22-31.
  • "Corps sacré, discours souverain: le couple dans Les Femmes illustres" in Madeleine de Scudéry: Une femme de lettres au XVIIe siècle. Delphine Denis & Anne-Elisabeth Spica, eds. Artois: Artois Presses Université, 2002. 155-164.
  • "Performing Secrets in Celinte,"Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, 56 (2002): 177-195. Refereed.
  • "Teaching Phèdre: Desire and the Phenomenology of Action," Actes du 31e congrès de la North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, PFSCL/Biblio 17 (2000): 321-332.
  • "Feminine Theatricality: Woman and Her Masks," Women in French Studies 8 (2000): 15.
  • "Performative Tension: Parabolic Resistance in the Pensées of Blaise Pascal," Cahiers du dix-septième, VII.2 (2000): 141-148. Refereed.
  • "'The Memory of Naked Ages': Charles Baudelaire, Eugene O'Neill, and The Great God Brown." Eugene O'Neill Review, 23.1/2 (spring/fall 1999): 60-77. Refereed.
  • "Gilberte Pascal," "Jacqueline Pascal," "Port-Royal," "Préciosité," Feminist Encyclopedia of French Literature, ed. Eva Sartori, Greenwood Press, 1998.
  • "Two Sisters' Tears: Paralinguistic Protest in Horace,"La Rochefoucauld, Mithridate, Frères et sœurs, Les Muses sœurs: Actes du 29e congrès de la North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, PFSCL/Biblio 17 (1998): 221-229. Refereed.
  • "Wolmar, metteur-en-scène," Rousseau on Arts and Politics: Autour de la Lettre à d'Alembert, ed. Melissa Butler, Pensée libre, 6 (1997): 91-99.
  • "Ce dont l'esprit est capable: Beauty and Truth in Madeleine de Scudéry's Les Femmes illustres,"L'esprit en France au XVIIe siècle, ed. François Lagarde, Actes d'Austin, PFSCL/Biblio17 (1997): 197-205. Refereed.
  • "Chimène, or the Scandal of the Feminine Word," Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, 43 (1995): 505-523. Refereed.
  • Translation of Christian Jouhaud, "Richelieu, or 'Baroque' Power in Action," Yale French Studies 80 (1991): 183-201.