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  • Anais Maurer
  • Anais Maurer
  • Assistant professor of French and Comparative Literature
  • Office Location: AB-4177, CAC
  • Phone: (848) 932-3846
  • Personal Website: Visit Website

Education:

Ph.D., Columbia University
M.A.,Université Paris IV Sorbonne & Tulane University  
B.A., Université Paris IV Sorbonne                 

Fields of Research:

Environmental Humanities, Pacific Studies, Francophone Studies, Indigenous Studies, Decolonial Literatures, Critical Military Studies, Ecofeminism, Marxist Theory

Raised in Mā’ohi Nui, Anaïs Maurer is Assistant Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on Indigenous storytelling, nuclear imperialism, and petrocapitalism. Her first monograph, The Ocean on Fire: Pacific Stories from Nuclear Survivors to Climate Activists (Duke University Press, 2024), analyzes Pacific artists transgenerational fight against the nuclear arms race and climate change, by underscoring the environmental racism at the roots of both existential threats. Anaïs Maurer strives to facilitate decolonial dialogue across cultures and languages and is involved in various curating and translation projects to bring the literature of the French-occupied Pacific to a broader audience. Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals as well as public-facing media, and she has co-directed a special issue on New Directions in Mā’ohi Literature (AJFS, 2024) and a special forum on Transnational Nuclear Imperialism (JTAS, 2020). Her second monograph project, ’Aita Atomi: Les artistes mā’ohi contre le colonialisme nucléaire, was awarded the CAPAS international fellowship (2024). In addition to her academic work, she campaigns for nuclear reparations and for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Books (click on image for details):

Journal Articles

  • “Bonded by the Bomb: Asian-Oceanian Alliances against French Nuclear Colonialism,” in Center-to-Center Relationalities: At the Nexus of Pacific Islands Studies and Trans-Pacific Studies, special issue of Critical Ethnic Studies 7:2 (2022)
  • “Pacific Women Antinuclear Poetry: Centering Indigenous Knowledges,” in Feminist Interrogations of Global Nuclear Politics, special issue of International Affairs 98:4 (2022) [co-authored with Rebecca H. Hogue]
  • “Snaring the Nuclear Sun: Decolonial Ecologies in Titaua Peu’s Mutismes: E ’ore te vāvā,” The Contemporary Pacific, 31:2 (2020)
  • “Océanitude: repenser le tribalisme occidental au prisme des nationalismes océaniens,” Francosphères, 8:2 (2019)
  • “Nukes and Nudes: Counter-Hegemonic Identities in the Nuclearized Pacific,” French Studies, 72:3 (2018)

Edited Special Issue of Journal

  • New Directions in Contemporary Mā’ohi Literature, in the Australian Journal of French Studies, 61:1 (2024). [Co-edited with Julia Frengs and Jeffrey Zuckerman]
  • Transnational Nuclear Imperialisms, Journal of Transnational American Studies, 11:2 (2020) [Co-edited with Rebecca Hogue] 

Book Chapters

  • “Mā’ohi Lives Matter: A Call for Environmental Justice in the Nuclearized Pacific,” In Michelle Beauclair (Ed.), The Francophone World: Cultural Issues and Perspectives, New York: Peter Lang, Second Edition. Forthcoming.
  • “‘Qui ne mourrait pas de cancer dans nos îles?’ L’imaginaire poétique des océaniens antinucléaires," in Renaud Meltz and Alexis Vrignon, Des Bombes en Polynésie : Les essais nucléaires français dans le Pacifique, Paris: Vandémiaire, 2022.
  • “Kakadu – Kwajalein – Ka Pae ’Āina: les nouvelles routes de l’impérialisme nucléaire,” in Sémir Al Wardi, Jean-Marc Régnault (Eds.), Indo-Pacifique et routes de la soie. Les nouvelles stratégies mondiales,Pape’ete : Api Tahiti Éditions, 2021.

Public Outreach

En Polynésie, des oeuvres d'art pour défier le colonialisme nucléaire, The Conversation, 2022

Hear from the academic researching how communities are resisting environmental racism in Oceania, Nesia Daily, 2023

Graduate Courses:

  • The Other Francophonie
  • Environmental Humanities and Decolonial Literature

Undergraduate Courses:

  • Intro to Global Sci-Fi
  • Modern French Literature
  • Power and Place
  • Revolutions
  • Francophonie on Fire
  • Our World: Social Justice and the Environment
  • Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Testing