Jeffrey Mehlman

Jeffrey Mehlman, a literary critic, translator, and scholar of French literature whose writings introduced generations of American readers to modern French thought while illuminating the intersections of literature, politics, psychoanalysis, and Jewish history, died on July 5, 2026. He was 82.

Born in New York City on March 1, 1944, Mehlman grew up on East 84th Street and York Avenue, where he lived above Melnikoff's, the neighborhood clothing store run by his family. While he never aspired to carry on the family business, it was one of the store's regular customers who launched his career. Thanks to connections in France, he helped organize Mehlman’s first trip to the country – on a cycling trip through the countryside – that would fascinate him for decades. Mehlman graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, a selective public high school where he liked to point out that he had more impressive classmates than at Harvard and Yale, where he completed his undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Early in his career, Mehlman emerged as one of the first American scholars to engage deeply with the new currents of French literary theory. Two works in particular, a special issue of Yale French Studies, known as French Freud: Structural Studies in Psychoanalysis (1972) and Revolution and Repetition (1977), established the qualities that would define his work: intellectual boldness, close scrutiny of language, and an ability to connect literary criticism with larger historical and philosophical questions.

Those writings also changed the course of his personal life. The Argentine writer and literary scholar Alicia Borinsky invited Mehlman to lecture at Johns Hopkins University, where she taught. That first encounter evolved into a lifelong conversation about literature and ideas that lasted his whole life. They married in 1977, and Mehlman joined the Johns Hopkins faculty before both continued their careers at Boston University, settling in suburban Newton, Massachusetts where they raised two children.

Over more than five decades, Mehlman explored the intersections of literature, politics, memory, psychoanalysis, and history. His scholarship combined meticulous reading with archival research and a conviction that literature is inextricably intertwined with the ethical and political questions of the moment. His translations and essays introduced French intellectual life to generations of English-speaking students and readers, especially around questions of psychoanalysis, antisemitism, and memory. For his contributions to French culture, the French government named him an Officer of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques in 1994.

Mehlman's intellectual and personal lives were always intertwined. Amid all these scholarly accomplishments, he sat through hours of violin lessons, packed many school lunches, and drove countless carpools. He loved opera, played the piano, and delighted in making music, reading books, playing Scrabble, and “having a catch” with his grandchildren. He and his wife shared a love of Argentine tango, and they danced together in milongas in Buenos Aires and in their Brookline living room. His love of sugary sweets was unmatched, and his pockets were not only reliably filled with pens to annotate the multiple books he carried everywhere, but also a few crumpled candy wrappers.

Jeffrey Mehlman is survived by his wife, Alicia Borinsky; his daughter, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela; his son, Ezra Mehlman; and five grandchildren.

A funeral service for Jeffrey will be held on Sunday, July 12, 2026, at 11:00 AM at Stanetsky Memorial Chapel, 1668 Beacon Street, Brookline, MA followed by interment in Mishkan Tefila Memorial Park, W. Roxbury, MA. Shiva will be held in the family home following interment until 5:00 PM.