Hélène Cixous, one of the foremost intellectuals and creative writers in France, will be on campus Sept. 19-23 for her first official visit as an A.D. White Professor-at-Large.

Cixous will take part in a two-day conference dedicated to her works, "Writing at a Distance: With Hélène Cixous," Sept. 20-21 at the Kahin Center. Her keynote address, "Volleys of Humanities," is open to the public, Sept. 21 at 5 p.m. in Lewis Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall.

Cixous is a major figure in the emergence of postmodern literary theory, and "in what we used to call 'French feminism,' a turn of gender studies toward deconstruction and radical psychoanalysis, ... a challenge to the sexist assumption of male privilege allegedly built into our very consciousness and our use of language," said Ellis Hanson, English department chair.

Her friendship with poststructural philosopher Jacques Derrida inspired Cixous to seek "to deconstruct this dimension of language and literature through an examination of the feminine in language and culture," Hanson said. "She was attempting a feminist revolution in language."

"Cixous is a formidable writer who contributed to renovating the way we think by transforming the way we write," said Laurent Dubreuil, professor of French and comparative literature. "While academic prose is often conventional in its poetics, Cixous always understood that literary expression offers a strong possibility for theoretically and practically renovating scholarly discourse in the humanities."

Her work -- more than 40 novels, 10 plays and 15 volumes of theory and essays, including the influential "'The Laugh of the Medusa" (1975) -- has been translated into more than 20 languages. She has published criticism on Edgar Allan Poe, Derrida, James Joyce, Brazilian author Clarice Lispector and many others; and has collaborated with comedian Ariane Mnouchkine and the avant-garde stage ensemble Théâtre du Soleil for many years.

"The world she created in her fictions and dramas is the result of a deep, ethical meditation on the inevitable difficulties of being a human animal, and of living with or through differences," Dubreuil said. "In a very singular fashion, this meditation is always interlaced with a striking reflection on the power of language."

A professor emerita in Paris, Cixous "still holds six-hour long seminars on Saturdays, for an audience of more than 100 students," said Dubreuil, who once had Cixous as head of his dissertation committee. "Her incredible attention to the grain of languages makes her a remarkable reader, an extraordinary teacher, and, certainly, one of the greatest creative writers in French for the last 50 years."

Her public personality includes being seen by some as "an icon of the intellectual Left since May 1968," said Laurent Ferri, who is co-organizing the conference as acting director of French studies and curator of rare books and manuscripts at Cornell Library. "She understands that, and never skirts her responsibilities when taking sides publicly is the right thing to do."

She also "is a shy and reserved person, and someone who resists the term 'intellectual,' arguing that today, and especially in a country like France, it refers mostly to an exclusive club or caste of (mostly male) sophists, designed and selected by the corrupt establishment and by the media industry. She has no taste and no time for that," said Ferri, a former student of Cixous. "What matters to [her] is literature understood not only as the production of texts, but as a way of life."

Cixous' term as an A.D. White Professor-at-Large is 2009-14; appointees visit several times during their terms. She has visited Cornell as a guest speaker twice before.