Timothy Scheie has been a faculty member in the Humanities Department at the Eastman School of Music since 1994, serving as department chair from 2005-2011, and again in 2021. He researches performance and identity in French and American theater, and has authored a book-length study on the place of live performance in the writings of Roland Barthes (Performance Degree Zero: Roland Barthes and Theatre, University of Toronto Press 2006). His more recent research bears on the intersection of national cinemas and film genres, and in 2024 published his second monograph, French Westerns: On the Frontier of Film Genre and National Cinema (Edinburgh University Press). His articles may be found in Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, Screen, Studies in French Cinema, French Forum, and College Literature, among other journals, and he regularly presents his research at national and international conferences. At the Eastman School of Music, in addition to language instruction Professor Scheie offers courses on American and French cinema, performance art and avant-garde theater, and French theater of the opera repertoire. He is also an affiliate faculty member in the Program for Visual and Cultural Studies in the University of Rochester’s College of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Scheie is an advocate for the study of modern languages and cultures. He has conducted workshops for new department chairs and organized panels on current issues and challenges in the field. In 2012 he served on the Modern Language Association (MLA) Steering Committee on New Structures for Languages in Higher Education. He is a founding member of the Association of Departments of Foreign Language’s (ADFL) consultancy service, which has now served over 100 colleges and universities in developing and restructuring programs in modern languages, literatures and cultures. In 2013 he was elected president of the ADFL, an organization of approximately 1000 member departments.

He earned a BA in French from Saint Olaf College (Phi Beta Kappa, with distinction), where he also studied voice and performed with the college choir under the direction of Sir Neville Marriner, Robert Shaw and other conductors in venues including Carnegie Hall, New York’s Town Hall, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. He received and MA and PhD in French from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was an award-winning instructor, and pursued additional studies in Paris, Avignon, and Perugia. He was the Albert Markham postdoctoral fellow, and has had residencies, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, at Northwestern University (1995) and Princeton University (2002). Prior to his current appointment he taught at the University of Oregon and in Paris. At the Eastman School, in addition to his activities as a French Professor he also serves as Director of Foreign Language Instruction and Fulbright Program Advisor.