Editing Roland Barthes (section)

=== Early academic career ===
In 1948, he returned to purely academic work, gaining multiple short-term positions at institutes in [[France]], [[Romania]], and [[Egypt]]. During this time, he contributed to the leftist Parisian paper ''Combat'', out of which grew his first full-length work, ''[[Writing Degree Zero]]'' (1953).

In 1952, Barthes settled at the [[Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique]], where he studied [[lexicology]] and [[sociology]]. During his seven-year period there, he began to write a popular series of bi-monthly essays for the magazine ''[[Les Lettres Nouvelles]]'', in which he dismantled myths of [[popular culture]] (gathered in the ''[[Mythologies (book)|Mythologies]]'' collection that was published in 1957). Consisting of fifty-four short essays, mostly written between 1954 and 1956, ''Mythologies'' were acute reflections of French popular culture ranging from an analysis on soap detergents to a dissection of popular wrestling.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last=Huppatz|first=D.J.|year=2011|title=Roland Barthes, Mythologies|journal=Design and Culture|volume=3|issue=1|pages=85–100|doi=10.2752/175470810X12863771378833|s2cid=144391627}}</ref> Knowing little English, Barthes taught at [[Middlebury College]] in 1957 and befriended the future English translator of much of his work, [[Richard Howard]], that summer in New York City.<ref name="Howard">Richard Howard. "Remembering Roland Barthes," ''[[The Nation]]'' (20 November 1982): "Mutual friends brought us together in 1957. He came to my door in the summer of that year, disconcerted by his classes at Middlebury (teaching students unaccustomed to a visitor with no English to speak of) and bearing, by way of introduction, a fresh-printed copy of ''Mythologies''. (''Michelet'' and ''Writing Degree Zero'' had already been published in France, but he was not yet known in America—not even in most French departments. Middlebury was enterprising.)" Reprinted in ''Signs in Culture: Roland Barthes Today'', edited by Steven Ungar and Betty R. McGraw, University of Iowa Press, 1989, p. 32 ({{ISBN|0-877-45245-8}}).</ref>