{"id":362,"date":"2026-10-31T01:45:05","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T05:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rafaelhett.com\/?page_id=362"},"modified":"2026-10-31T19:15:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T23:15:20","slug":"home","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/rafaelhett.com\/fr\/","title":{"rendered":"home"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Literature \u00b7 Fashion \u00b7 Teaching \u2014 Montr\u00e9al<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading the clothes<\/em> of fiction.<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m Rafael Hett, a researcher in literature and fashion and a French teacher based in Montr\u00e9al. I study how novels dress their characters: what a coat says about class, and what it does to the body that wears it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read the research<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
About me<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Fig. 1 \u00b7 Current project<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dress in Balzac, between social sign and lived body<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Le Colonel Chabert<\/em> (1832), a soldier returns from the dead in a worn greatcoat, and Paris judges him by it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Research<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Clothing sorts people into classes. It is also something they feel on their skin.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In La Com\u00e9die humaine<\/em>, Balzac reads society through its fabrics, cuts and stains. My project follows dress from both sides, as a sign others read and as an experience of the body, in dialogue with fashion theory from Georg Simmel to Gilles Lipovetsky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It builds on a decade of work on fashion, from my first conference talk on Le Colonel Chabert<\/em> in 2015 to a master\u2019s thesis on fashion and aesthetics, and now turns to the fashion system as a whole and its place in literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More on the research \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Research & writing<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fashion and fiction<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Articles, essays and talks on fashion and literature, from Balzac onward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publications \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Lectures<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fashion and literature, taught<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Lectures and short courses on the fashion system and its place in literature, for universities, schools and cultural centres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lecture topics \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Reading circle<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Le cercle des imaginaires<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A free monthly online circle reading French-language literature together. This season: the French classics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Join the circle \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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From the notebook<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Open the notebook \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Your first notebook posts will appear here.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Literature \u00b7 Fashion \u00b7 Teaching \u2014 Montr\u00e9al Reading the clothes of fiction. I\u2019m Rafael Hett, a researcher in literature and fashion and a French teacher based in Montr\u00e9al. I study how novels dress their characters: what a coat says about class, and what it does to the body that wears it. Fig. 1 \u00b7 Current […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-362","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelhett.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelhett.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelhett.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelhett.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelhett.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelhett.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":425,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelhett.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/362\/revisions\/425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelhett.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}