Associate Professor of French
Undergraduate Director

Education:

B.A., M.A., University of Geneva, Switzerland
Ph.D., Cornell University

Fields of Research:

I specialize in 20th-century novel and autobiography. My current work, which relies on psychoanalytic theory, explores the relationship between literature and childhood.

In my first book, I sought to establish a correlation between Marguerite Yourcenar's roman and her roman familial, that is, to define her writing(s) as an attempt to retrieve a mother lost at birth. My next project, "Primal Scenes of Writing," discusses the status of autobiography in a writer's production through readings of Romain Gary, Louis-René des Forêts, Annie Ernaux, Claude Simon, Marguerite Yourcenar, Jean Rouaud, and Anne-Marie Garat. Whereas Lejeune's structuralist approach of autobiography can only conceive of a formal connection (i.e. a signature) between this genre and fiction, I intend to uncover it as vital by reading self narratives as a treatise of their author's poetics.

My other research topics include French Canadian fiction and the United States, the poetics of silence, and crime fiction.

Selected Publications:

• “L’autre face du monde: à propos d’Anne-Marie Garat.” Women in French Studies. (Forthcoming, 2010).
• “James Ellroy.” The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century American Fiction.  D. Madden, J. Nieland, and P. O’Donnell, eds. New York and London,Wiley-Blackwell. (Forthcoming, 2009).
  
• "Amies mortelles: autobiographie et résistance à la psychanalyse."  MLN 123.4 (2008): 777-796.
  
• “L’auteur est dans l’escalier: une relecture de La promesse de l’aube de Romain Gary.” Les Lettres Romanes LXI 61.3-4 (2007): 335-348.
• “Toward a Primal Scene of Writing? Biography as Autobiography in Marguerite Yourcenar's Dear Departed.” Autobiografictions. L. Boldrini and P. Davies, eds. Oxford: Legenda, press of the European Humanities Research Centre at Oxford University. (Forthcoming).
• “Annie Ernaux: à la serpe, à l’aiguille et au couteau.” The Romanic Review 97.2 (June 2006): 201-212.
• “A Tooth For a Private Eye: James Ellroy's Detective Fiction.” The Journal of Popular Culture 39.3 (May 2006): 349-364.
• Marguerite Yourcenar: une écriture en mal de mère. Paris: Imago, 2004.
• "La Voix du Paradis ou la Québécitude de Jack Kerouac." Etudes françaises 40.1 (2004): 131-148.
• "Reading Prohibited: The Politics of Yourcenar's Prefaces." Subversive Subjects: Reading Marguerite Yourcenar. J. Holland Sarnecki and I. Majer O'Sickey, eds. Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (2004): 77-100.
• "Au défaut des mères: Duras, Yourcenar et la question de la création littéraire." The French Review 75.5 (April 2002): 891-902.
• "A/Lexis: le silence dans Alexis ou le Traité du Vain Combat." Roman 20-50, 30 (December 2000): 153-163.
• "Le Prix du Pain." La Ville de Marguerite Yourcenar. B. Deprez, ed. Brussels: Racine, 1999. 79-86.
• "La lettre de l'inversion." Marguerite Yourcenar: Ecritures de l'Exil. A. Medeiros et B. Deprez, eds. Brussels: Academia-Bruylant, 1998. 43-51.

Graduate Courses:

• Silence(s)
• Autobiography and Its Discontents
• The French Realist and Naturalist Novel: Flaubert, Zola, Huysmans. (Miami University, Oxford, Ohio)
• French Dreams of America (taught at the World Languages Institute)

Undergraduate Courses:

• The French Crime Novel
• Aspects of French Literature I and II
• The French Novel
• French Theater
• Childhood Memories
• French Civilization