Marva Barnett

An award-winning educator and lifelong teacher of French language, literature, and culture, Marva Barnett holds a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard University.  In 2012, the French government named her Chevalier des palmes académiques for her work on Victor Hugo. 

In her recent book—To Love Is to Act: Les Misérables and Victor Hugo’s Vision for Leading Lives of Conscience (Swan Isle Press, 2020)—Marva explores what Hugo tells us about how to live our best possible lives. Victor Hugo’s last written words, “To love is to act,” epitomize his philosophy. His love of freedom, democracy, and all people—especially the poor and wretched—drove him not only to write his epic Les Misérables but also to follow his conscience.

In essays interweaving Hugo’s life with Les Misérables and pointing to the novel’s contemporary relevance, To Love Is to Act explores Hugo’s thought-provoking guiding principles. Enriching the book are insights from artists who captured the novel’s heart in the famed musical: Les Mis creators Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg (who contributed the book’s foreword), producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh, director Tom Hooper, and two award-winning Jean Valjeans, Colm Wilkinson and Hugh Jackman. Details, including an excerpt, table of contents, and pre-pub reviews, are here.

Marva’s other books include Victor Hugo on Things That Matter (Yale University Press, 2010) and, co-edited with Gérard Pouchain, a French volume of letters to Hugo from the woman who loved him for fifty years, Juliette Drouet:  Lettres inédites de Juliette Drouet à Victor Hugo (Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2012). 

Marva is honored to have hosted many Hugo-related events at the University of Virginia (UVA).  At her invitation, Les Mis composer Claude-Michel Schönberg and librettist Alain Boublil were artists-in-residence in 2014 and 2017.  Hugo scholar and historian Gérard Pouchain has spoken in UVA’s Rotunda several times, most recently in conjunction with his Les Misérables Just for Laughs exhibit. Québécois composer, pianist and singer Alain Lecompte has twice regaled students and community members with his one-man show HUGO LIVE.  Hugo biographer Jean-Marc Hovasse offered the keynote at Marva’s UVA Colloquium “Exile for Victor Hugo and Other Engagé Writers.”

In addition, Marva actively studies and shares Hugo’s life and works.  In October 2017, she was the only American asked to serve on the organizing board for, and present a paper at, a Paris colloquium held at the Maison Victor Hugo and Bibliothèque Nationale de France. She spoke about Juliette Drouet, the first reader and copyist of Les Misérables.  After Marva represented North America at the 2019 international colloquium “Victor Hugo, Visionary of Peace” in Havana, Cuba, she was interviewed by the Havana Casa Victor Hugo. It was her pleasure to be interviewed in 2020 by the Paris-based documentary film company Little Big Story for their series “L’Aventure des manuscrits.”

Marva is Professor Emerita at UVA (where she has taught in the departments of drama and French).  She continues to teach about Hugo’s work—in her University Seminar “Les Misérables Today,” for instance, and in her 2019 J-Term study-abroad course, Victor Hugo’s Paris.  

She also founded and directed for a quarter century the University’s Center for Teaching Excellence (formerly the Teaching Resource Center), making visible her love of teaching and desire to help others engage students deeply in learning.  For her Center work, Marva was awarded in 2011 the Thomas Jefferson Award for service (the highest honor the University community bestows upon its faculty), in 2008 the Excellence in Faculty Mentoring Award, and in 2002 the Elizabeth Zintl Leadership Award.

Known as a Hugo expert and engaging speaker, Professor Barnett has been invited to talk about Hugo’s work and ideas at Michael Kahn’s Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC, the Association France-Amériques in Paris, the American Club of Paris, the Université de Paris III-Censier / La Sorbonne Nouvelle, The Virginia Club of New York, the Virginia Festival of the Book, Kenyon College, Wabash College, Charlottesville Opera, The French Heritage Society, the Fédération des Alliances Françaises USA, and the Alliances Françaises in Milwaukee, WI, and Charlottesville, VA.

In all she does, Marva Barnett aims to follow Hugo’s maxim:  “To love is to act” (“Aimer, c’est agir”).