Department of French and Italian

• African Studies Program
• Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
• Department of Comparative Literature
• Institute for European Studies

20th- and 21st-century literature in French from Europe, the Caribbean, North-Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa; the segregation between Francophone and French literatures and the construction of a common library in French; aesthetics, politics and the institutions of literature (literary history, literary criticism and theory); memory, history and biography.

In my first book, Des littératures-mondes en français. Écritures singulières, poétiques transfrontalières dans la prose contemporaine (Rodopi Press, Amsterdam/New York, 2012), I analyzed contemporary fiction produced by 20 contemporary writers from Pierre Michon, Annie Ernaux, Jean Échenoz, and Antoine Volodine to Patrick Chamoiseau, Maryse Condé, Ananda Devi, Fatou Diome, and Alain Mabanckou. My study showed that authors from different national, political, and cultural backgrounds engage with similar transfrontier themes such as filiation and heritage, memory and identity, and contemporary forms of subjectivity. Ultimately, it offered a critical framework for overcoming the institutional and ideological segregation between “French” and “Postcolonial Francophone” texts and authors.

My second monograph, The Colonial Fortune in Contemporary Fiction in French (Liverpool University Press, 2017), conceptualized a “paracolonial aesthetics” for understanding the fraught yet productive relation between current literature and the colonial past by addressing its re-imagining, revisiting, and recasting in recent literary works. The book examined writers either directly involved in the debate about the French empire and its remanence such as J. M. G. Le Clézio, Paule Constant, Édouard Glissant, Tierno Monénembo, Marie NDiaye, and Leïla Sebbar or those who do not overtly manifest such concerns like Stéphane Audeguy, Marie Darrieussecq, Régis Jauffret, Pierre Michon, and Claude Simon. It argued that their works should be envisioned as expressions of the “paracolonial” which describes the enduring presence of the colonial in contemporary imagination through discrete and often insidious phenomena of revival, resurgence, and residue.

In another monograph, entitled Necrofiction and the Politics of Literary Memory (Liverpool University Press, 2022), I engaged with “narratives of the aftermath” which are the contemporary avatars of the “literary tomb” genre. Necrofiction fulfils in distinct ways the social and artistic function of an individual or collective act of remembrance of a familiar or historical figure (individual or collective) allowing writers to honor the past while casting off its burdensome legacy. Situated in connection with Achille Mbembe’s concept of “necropolitics,” the genre is defined and discuss in relation to other literary forms such as trauma writing, historical novels, archival narratives, biofiction, or field literature.

In 2024 I published a study, entitled Fictions of Race in Contemporary French Literature: French Writers, White Writing (co-authored with Étienne Achille) with Oxford University Press. I am currently developing a second installment of this in-depth analysis of racialization in literatures in French tentatively entitled Race as Relation. 

Books

• Necrofiction and the Politics of Literary Memory. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022. 216 pp. Print and E-book. ISBN 9781802077179.
• The Colonial Fortune in Contemporary French-Language Fiction, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017. ISBN 978-1-7869-4029-2. 216 pp.
• Des littératures-mondes en français. Écritures singulières, poétiques transfrontalières, Rodopi Press, Amsterdam/New York, 2012, ISBN 978-90-420-3552-2, 311 pp.

Edited volumes

• CFC Intersections (Vol. 3, September 2024, with É. Achille): Decolonizing Literature in French and the Question of the White Writer
• “Fictions ‘françaises’.” Special issue of Fixxion: Revue de Fiction Contemporaine. December 2019, No 19. Co-edited with Alexandre Gefen and Cornelia Ruhe. http://www.revue-critique-de-fixxion-francaise-contemporaine.org/rcffc/issue/view/32
• “Fait et fiction dans le récit historique francophone.” Dossier in Nouvelles Études Francophones. Vol. 34, No 2, 2019.
• “Sense and the Senses I”. Special issue of *Contemporary French and Francophone Studies: SITES. 22. 3. 2018.
• *Entre-Textes. Dialogues littéraires et culturels. Classroom anthology based on a dialogical study of classical and contemporary texts. (co-edited with Vera Klekovkina, University of Wisconsin- Stevens Point). London: Routledge, 2017.
• Communautés de lecture : pour une approche dialogique des œuvres classiques et contemporaines/Reading Communities. A Dialogical Approach to French and Francophone Literature. Cambridge Scholars, 2016.
• “La Pensée littéraire/The Idea of Literature”. Special issue of the journal *L’Esprit créateur. Journal of French and Francophone Studies. Fall 2014. Vol. 54. No 3. Fall 2014.
• “Crise du français, impact de la francophonie?”. Alternative Francophone. Vol. 1, No 7 (2014). Special issue co-edited with Timo Obergöker (University of Chester).

Articles + book chapters

• “Le Tapis magique immobile. Détail colonial et inattention narrative dans le roman de l’entre-deux-guerres.” (with É. Achille). French Studies. Volume 77, Issue 2, April 2023: 236–251. Print and Web.
• “Mondialité.”, Nouveaux fragments d’un discours théorique. Un lexique littéraire. Edited by Emmanuel Bouju Québec, Codicille éditeur, 2023.
• “Le sens du détail: Tropisme colonial et dysfonctionnement textuel dans Au revoir là-haut de Pierre Lemaitre.” (co-authored with Étienne Achille). MLN, Vol. 136, N^o 4, Sept. 2021, French Issue, pp. 939-956. Print.
• “Relating the Universal, Universalizing the Relation: The Glissant-Derrida Ch(i)asm(us).” 2021 MLN, Vol. 136, N^o 4, Sept. 2021, French Issue Supplement: “The Poetry of Life, the Life of Poetry: Essays in Honor of Jacques Neefs,” pp. 134-154. Print.
• “The Afterwor(l)ds of Édouard Glissant.” Francosphères, Vol. 11, N^o 1, 2022, pp. 105-121. Web.
• “The Work of “littérature-monde” and the Fictional Laboratories of Alice Zeniter and Bessora.” French Cultural Studies. Vo. 31, Issue 2, 2020. P. 136-146.
• “Archives”. *Postcolonial Realms of Memory. Edited by Étienne Achille, Charles Forsdick, and Lydie Moudileno. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 2020. P. 23-33. Print.
• “Une poétique de l’inscriptible: Patrick Chamoiseau et le tombeau littéraire contemporain”. *Patrick Chamoiseau et la mer des récits. Edited by Pierre Soubias and Delphine Rameau. Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux. Forthcoming 2017. Print.
• “Writing (as) Africans: French Fiction between Empathy and Orientalism”. Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies. 2015-2016. Vol. 2, Issue 3-4. P. 84-93. Print and web.
• “Mondialisation culturelle et mondialité poétique chez Dany Laferrière”. Interculturel Francophonies, Nov.-Dec. 2016. No 30. P. 197-211. Print.
• “Introduction.” Reading Communities : A Dialogical Approach to French and Francophone Literature/Communautés de lecture: pour une approche dialogique des œuvres classiques et contemporaines. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2016. P. 1-5. Print and web.
• “‘Roiseau Pensant’”: Marie NDiaye and Blaise Pascal.” With Hall Bjørnstad. Reading Communities: A Dialogical Approach to French and Francophone Literature/Communautés de lecture: pour une approche dialogique des œuvres classiques et contemporaines. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2016. P. 154-167. Print and web.
• “Tombeaux littéraires contemporains”. Pour un récit transnational : la fiction au défi de l’histoire immédiate. Edited by Yolaine Parisot et Charline Pluvinet. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. 2016. P. 101-119. Print.
• “Destination, Destiny and Paracolonial Aesthetics in Le Clézio’s Révolutions”. Contemporary French and Francophone Studies: SITES. March 2015. Vol. 19. Issue 2. P. 215-223. Print.
• “Étrangèreté, non-savoir et écritures transfrontalières: Hélène Cixous, Nina Bouraoui et Leïla Sebbar”. Modern Language Notes. September 2014. Vol. 129. Issue 4. P. 796-811. Print.
• “La pensée littéraire entre précarité et potentialité”. *L’Esprit créateur. Journal of French and Francophone Studies. Fall 2014. Vol. 54. No 3. P. 1-13. Print.
• “Crise du français, impact de la francophonie?”. Alternative Francophone. Vol. 1, No 7 (2014). P. 1-11. Web.
• “La querelle des bibliothèques ou la gêne de la critique française face à la littérature en français”. *Nouvelles Études Francophones. Vol. 28. No 2. 2013. P. 145-161. Print.
• “Le retour du contreauteur”. *Lire contre l’auteur. Edited by Sophie Rabau. Presses Universitaires de Vincennes. 2012. P. 67-85. Print.
• “How Not To Speak of Books You Can’t Ignore”. *Romance Notes. Vol. 52. No 3. 2012. P. 279-287. Print.
• “‘La race des fils’. Atavisme fictif et autorité littéraire”. L’Autorité en littérature. Exercice, partage, contestation. Edited by Emmanuel Bouju. Presses Universitaires de Rennes. 2010. P. 211-221. Print.
• “Poétiques de récupération, poétiques de créolisation”. *Littérature nº 151 (3/2008). P. 52-74. Print.
• “La discipline du refus. Sur le formalisme des écrivains”. L’Esprit créateur. Journal of French and Francophone Studies. Vol. 48. No 2. 2008. P. 60-73. Print.
• “Gustave Lanson et Marcel Schwob. Anachronies contemporaines”. Dix-Neuf. Journal of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes. No 10. April 2008. P. 35-46. Web.
• “‘La race des fils’. Atavisme fictif et autorité littéraire”. L’Autorité en littérature. Exercice, partage, contestation. Edited by Emmanuel Bouju. Presses Universitaires de Rennes. 2010. P. 211-221. Print.
• Les fins de l’écriture. Réflexion et pratique du style dans les œuvres de Pierre Michon et Jean Echenoz”. *French Forum. Spring 2006. Vol. 31. No 2. P. 95-110. Print.
• “Fiction au conditionnel. L’essai romanesque de Jean Echenoz”. *Études littéraires. Vol. 37. No 2. 2006. P. 171-182. Print.

• The French Melting Pot
• What Can Literature Do?
• Vivre, c’est choisir: Living, Loving and Fighting under the Nazi Occupation and the Vichy Régime
• “Réécrire, désécrire : les textes contemporains et la tradition littéraire”
• The Colonial Imagination in French Literature and Film
• Blue, White and Red : Seeing the World Through French Eyes
• “The Colonial Fortune: Literature, Education, and Ideology in Early 20th Century France”
• “The French Exception”
• "Scandalous Books"
• Êtres de papier. Le personnage littéraire au XXe siècle
• The Trouble with Literature. Issues in Literary Theory
• The Politics of Writing from Franz Fanon to édouard Glissant
• Les Femmes dans la littérature française
• Voyages et aventures
• La littérature et les arts dans l’œuvre de Patrick Chamoiseau

• President of Conseil International d’Études Francophones. 2019-2022.
• Vice-President of Conseil International d’Études Francophones. 2017-2019.
• Organizing Committee Coordinator for the 37th International Colloquium in 20th and 21st-Century French and Francophone Studies “Le Sens et les sens/Sense and the Senses”. Indiana University. April 6-8, 2017.
• “Arts of Survival. Recasting Lives in African Cities” Summer Institute for College and Universities. National Endowment for Humanities Grant. Faculty Co-Convener. Indiana University. 2016.
• Trustees’ Teaching Award. Indiana University. 2014-2015.
• Individual Research Award. Institute for Advance Study. Indiana University. 2014.
• Member (2014-2015; 2017) and Chair (2015) of the Modern Language Association Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies Selection Committee.
• Chaire des Amériques Visiting Professor. Institut des Amériques. Université de Haute-Bretagne – Rennes 2. Fall 2013.
• Summer Stipend Office of the Vice Provost for Research Indiana University. 2013.
• US Representative Member of the Executive Board (Conseil d’Administration) of Conseil International d’Études Francophones (CIÉF). Elected to a three-year term. 2010-2013.
• “Memory and Civic Contention” Fellowship. Center for the Study of History and Memory. Indiana University. 2012-2013.
• College Arts and Humanities Institute Travel Research Grant. Indiana University. 2012.
• Prix de la Francophonie des Amériques (Best Presentation Award). Conseil International d’Études Francophones et Centre de la Francophonie des Amériques. New Orleans. June 2009.
• College Arts and Humanities Institute Faculty Fellowship. Indiana University.
• Arts & Humanities New Perspectives Grant. Indiana University.
• Research Fellowship at école des Hautes études en Sciences Sociales (Paris). Johns Hopkins University.
• Pensionnaire roumaine de l’école Normale Supérieure (rue d’Ulm).