Areas of Specialization
Selected Publications
Current Research Projects
Areas of Specialization
Selected Publications
Current Research Projects
Nineteenth-century cultural memory (French modernist narrative and poetry esp. Baudelaire, Flaubert and fin de siècle culture; narrative theory; visual arts; history and theories of leisure studies)Contemporary French and Francophone culture (post-colonial minorities; critical theory; Middle Eastern Francophone culture; poetics and politics of space)
French as a second language (applied linguistics; testing techniques; Internet-based course management systems).
Books
· Narrative Memory in Flaubert’s Works. Series “Currents in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures” (Vol. 99). New York: Peter Lang, 2001.
Articles
· “Critique du positivisme et fictions d’un gai savoir dans Bouvard et Pécuchet.” The Romanic Review 91:1 (Summer 2002).
· “Subtexts in Flaubert: The Underlying Currents of Meaning.” RS/SI. Recherches sémiotiques/Semiotic Inquiry 21.1–2–3 (2001).
· “Flaubert’s Chateaubriand: Plagiarism or Palimpsest?” Romance Notes 41:2 (Jan. 2001).
· “Paris, 1890: la décadence au miroir alexandrin.” Romance Studies 18:2 (Dec. 2000).
· “Flaubert’s Pearl Necklace : Weaving a Garland of Images in the Reader’s Memory.” Symposium 54:3 (Fall 2000).
· “Histoires d’engendrements et engendrement d’Histoire.” With Véronique Gaultier. In “Claude Simon 3. Lectures de Histoire” (Ralph Sarkonak, ed.), La Revue des Lettres Modernes (Paris: Lettres Modernes / Minard, 2000).
· “Flaubert’s Literary Shop in Times of ‘Industrial’ Art.” LittéRéalité 11:2 (Winter 1999).
· “Système du bonnet flaubertien.” In “Fashion & Fashionability in Modern French & Francophone Culture” (Sima Godfrey, ed.), L’Esprit Créateur 37:1 (Spring 1997).
· “La Vérité toute nue sort du puits: communication et sexualité dans La Fortune des Rougon.” Excavatio, Vol. X, 1997.
· “Le Syndrome Borel chez Baudelaire: comment peut-on être lycanthrope au second degré?,” in Didier Maleuvre and Catherine Nesci, eds., L’oeuvre d’identité. Essais sur le romantisme de Nodier à Baudelaire (Montréal: Paragraphes, 1996).
My two main research projects can be described as follows:
The first project builds on the study of cultural memory developed in my dissertation and subsequent book on Flaubert’s works, in addressing the pivotal role of leisure in modernist culture and deciphering the implicit or explicit narratives that organize and codify its different forms, their variations and interactions. The focus is on the ethics of leisure in turn-of-century French culture, broadly considered, and develops a comparative point of view concerned with our own representations of leisure in the post-modern age. Some conference papers on Proust, Gide and others have addressed this issue, as well as some recent articles, such as those on fin de siècle representation of Hellenistic models of leisure in Romance Studies, and on Bouvard and Pécuchet’s peculiar and parodic enterprise in leisure in The Romanic Review. My interest in current representations of leisure in popular culture and media, and analyses of leisure in our own turn-of-century, especially in the fields of sociology, cultural history and visual arts, has informed my approach, as evinced both in my work on Dumazedier, Quignard or Beineix and in my teaching of a class on this subject. In the coming months, I will further explore the cultural links between leisure representations in these two transitional periods, and plan to give lectures on travel writing, sport and politics, and works by Flaubert, Tinan, Redon and Houellebecq.
My second project addresses new trends both in Francophone studies and women studies. Previous work and research experience in Egypt and Lebanon in the fields of sociology and literature has fostered my interest in Francophone Middle Eastern literature and culture. Two years ago, aided by a grant from Amherst College, I undertook with the help of colleagues both in Lebanon and the USA an edition of selected poems of Lebanese poet Nadia Tuéni (1935-1983) on the Lebanese civil war, and secured rights for an English translation. This book is currently under consideration for publication. My recent lectures at the MLA 2001 Women in French Panel in New Orleans and at the 2002 20th-Century French Studies Colloquium in Hartford on Tuéni’s treatment of collective and individual Lebanese identities as affected by war is part of this work. I see the work on Tuéni as a starting point for a major editing project concerned with translation and promotion of understudied Lebanese Francophone authors.