Current Members

Otilia Baraboi

• Francophone and 20th century French literature, postcolonial theory, bilingualism and writing, style, fragmentary writing, language theory, politics and poetics of translation. She is writing her dissertation on Cioran, French and Romanian philosopher, with a particular focus on style, language imaginary and identity, within the controversial boundaries of Francophone Studies.

Lisa Connell

• Lisa is interested in 20th century Francophone autobiography with an
  emphasis on the relationship between memory, history, and identity, and the
  public and private spheres.

Lisa Friedli-Clapié

• As a firm believer in “the living utterance” and historical context, Lisa cannot but focus on politically engaged literature and cinema. Her recent projects include:
  1. A study of the mythological structure of Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah n’est pas obligé that considers the novel’s reversal of the Soundjata epic as denunciation of both globalization and the use of child soldiers as cannon fodder.
  2. A semiotic study of the metaphor of political renewal and maternity in Malika Mokeddem’s Des Rêves et des assassins that exposes her revolutionary interpellation of women to dismantle from within the misogynist social structure fueling the Algerian reign of violence.
  3. Her dissertation research is inspired by the extensive and delectable writing of Irène Némirovsky. Informed by 19th Russian Nihilists such as Turgenev and Sofya Kovalevskaya, Némirovsky’s literary revolt is a subtle and moralistic one. Far from the ‘ressentiment’ typically associated with base nihilism, her novels decry bourgeois indifference to the plight of the downtrodden in a deeply empathic fashion. Her concerns, and Lisa's, are the mechanization of war-time fervor and collaboration.

Julia Holter

• Julia is interested in XX century “less-known” writers (Léon-Paul Fargue, Emmanuel Berl, Julien Gracq), in French-Russian literary crossings, and various themes in contemporary literature associated with language, multiple identities, nomadic thought, nostalgia and internal exile.

Jessica Kamin

Laureta Mema

• Laureta has finished her Master's in French Literature with a minor in Pedagogy and a certificate in Women Studies. She is in her second year of the Phd program and specializes in Francophone and Twentieth Century French Literature. She also writes poetry in Albanian.

Yuqiu Meng

• Yuqiu's main area is 19th-century literature. She is interested in aesthetics in general and filmic aesthetics in particular, questions of “modernity” and “modernities,” and transcultural and interdisciplinary studies.

Alex Price

Joel Strom

James Terry

• James is interested in Medieval French literature with an emphasis on courtly literature, especially Marie de France. Representations of women, medieval and renaissance music.

Insook Webber

Will Mitchell

• Will is working on 20th century novel and visual economy in colonial and postcolonial France with an interest in "indochine."