Profile
Noah joined Princeton's Department of French & Italian in 2021, after completing a B.A. in Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where he wrote a thesis on the writer and translator Lydia Davis. Working at the intersection of literary studies and history, his dissertation research focuses on French representations of American landscapes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Focusing on writers and scientists like Alexis de Tocqueville, Élisée Reclus, André Michaux, and François-René de Chateaubriand, he explores how contact with North American nature challenged (or reinforced) French aesthetic, political, and philosophical ideals. Secondarily, he is pursuing a smaller project on the interwoven histories of French and American literary rapportage in the twentieth century.
Noah's scholarship has appeared in The Cambridge Companion to the American Essay and Hopscotch Translation. He has also published in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New Republic, The New Inquiry, Harper's Magazine, The Point, and elsewhere. Additionally, he is an active translator, and has translated work by Louis de Saint-Just, Greta Knutson, and Simone Weil. He is currently translating a collection of short stories by the Italian-French novelist Inès Cagnati.
Peer-Reviewed Scholarship
"The Translator's Visibility: On Lydia Davis," Hopscotch Translation (2024)
"American Nature Writing: 1700-1900," The Cambridge History of the American Essay, eds. Christy Wampole & Jason Childs (Cambridge University Press, 2024)
Literary Criticism
- "Annals of an Alternate World: On John McPhee," The Los Angeles Review of Books (2023)
- "Rooney, Resigned: On Beautiful World, Where Are You," for Art Papers (2022)
- "Show & Tell: On Joan Didion," Art Papers (2021)
- "On Grace Hale's Cool Town," Flagpole (2020)
- "On Lucia Berlin," Art Papers (2019)
Translations
- Simone Weil, "The Gate," Currents (2024)
- Simone Weil, "The Stars," Angel Food vol. II (2024)
- Greta Knutson, "Untitled," Angel Food vol. II (2024)
Essays, Reportage
- "None But The Rain," County Highway (2024)
- "Election Night à la Française," The Point (2024)
- "Why Do Universities Fear Their Students?" The New Republic (2024)
- "An American Education," The New Inquiry (2024)
- "Dogtrotting," in Where I'm Calling From (Atlanta: Burnaway, 2023)