Dr. Henrik C. Borgstrom

Biography

Dr. Henrik C. Borgstrom teaches all levels of intermediate and advanced French language, French cultural history, and French literature and theatre.

His research specialization is French theatre of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and francophone African performance. He has presented scholarly papers on a number of modern French playwrights, including Marguerite Duras, Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett, and Hélène Cixous, and he has published articles treating works by Chekov, Strindberg, Dumas, Tremblay, and Molière. He collaborated on the publication of two books: Reconciling Feminism and Catholicism (U. of Notre Dame Press, 2003) and The Theatre of Teaching and the Lessons of Theatre (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); and he was a major contributor to the most recent edition of the Oxford Encyclopedia of World Theatre.

From 2006-2013, Dr. Borgstrom collaborated with the national French-language theatre company Le Théâtre de la Chandelle Verte, for whom he composed three dramatic manuscripts and directed two staged plays that have been performed for French students at dozens of universities across the United States (including Niagara University, which hosted performances of Michel Tremblay’s Albertine en cinq temps and Marivaux’s Le Jeu de l’amour et du hazard, and his own original piece, Lettres de femmes / femmes de lettres. In 2011, he wrote a new translation and adaptation of the medieval farce La Farce de Maître Pathelin, which toured for two years.

Dr. Borgstrom has also been a regular contributor to the Niagara University theatre program, having directed productions of Molière’s Tartuffe and Learned Ladies, Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, A.R. Gurney’s The Cocktail Hour, and Genet’s The Maids, in his own translation.

Since 2016, Dr. Borgstrom has served as the University’s Associate Provost.

Educational Background

• Ph.D. French Language and Literature, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• M.A. French Language and Literature, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• B.A. French, The College of William and Mary