Walter Gordon Langlois

Walter G. Langlois (1925, USA — 9 Nov 2020, USA) was a professor of French and historian of modern French literature, his primary area of interest concerning French writer and Culture minister Andre Malraux, about whom he published four books and established and edited two scholarly reviews. 

After teaching French at University of Kentucky, he joined the University of Wyoming, Department of Modern and Classical Languages, in 1974. A World War II veteran, Langlois was decorated with the Bronze Star and the Croix de Guerre. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Florence (1952), a Guggenheim Fellow (1967−1968), an American Council Learned Societies Senior Fellow (1970−1971), a National Endowment Humanities Senior Fellow (1980−1981), and a visiting professor at Osaka University, Japan, (1984−1986). 

Seeing in André Malraux the ​“ultimate novelist of our modernity”, and ​“a metaphysician more than an art critic”, Walter Langlois, who often lunched with his mentor at the latter’s favorite gastronomic restaurant in Paris, Lasserre, he published his André Malraux: The Indochina Adventure in 1966 and served as Executive Secretary of the Malraux Society and the editor-in-chief of Malraux Miscellany (Mélanges Malraux), which became the André Malraux Review under the leadership of Robert S. Thornberry, and later the Cahiers André Malraux.

Langlois was a member of the Modern Language Association, American Association of Teachers of French, The Malraux Society, the Manuscript Society, and the Societe d’études du XXeme siecle. He also was director of the National Endowment of the Humanities summer sessions at UW (1984, 1988, 1989, 1990).