My research and teaching focus on twentieth and twenty-first century literature, with a particular interest in representations of everyday life, chance and contingency in literature, documentary narrative, and theories of fictionality. These concerns are united by an enduring fascination with literature’s varied modes of depicting and mediating reality, and by a commitment to exploring the social and collective meanings of literary forms.
My first book, Constraining Chance: Georges Perec and the Oulipo (Northwestern UP, 2009) delves into the work of a major French writer, examining Perec’s use of formal and semantic constraints both as a spur to literary inspiration and as a means of exploring the tension between chance and determinism, fate and freedom, historical forces and human agency. The Documentary Imagination in Twentieth-Century French Literature (Oxford UP, 2020) analyzes works by a range of authors (Gide, Aragon, Yourcenar, Duras, Modiano) who integrate documentary materials to develop new forms of literary ethnography, archival autobiography, or testimonial writing. While that book investigates literature’s claim to grasp and represent facts, my current research turns to the other side of the coin and to recent literary production, exploring shifting conceptions and uses of fictionality in the last three decades. In a series of edited or co-edited volumes and journal issues, I have tackled complex conceptual issues in the theory and history of literature, such as the paradoxical cognitive attitudes associated with fiction (The Routledge Handbook of Fiction and Belief) or the challenges of theorizing and representing chance and indeterminacy in narrative or artistic form (Figures of Chance II). My recent projects have also aimed to take stock of new directions and broad tendencies in contemporary literature (Écrire le quotidien aujourd’hui; Déplacements de la fiction?)
My teaching has a strong interdisciplinary component, often relating literature to the visual arts and/or cinema (“Littérature et photographie”; “Écrire le quotidien, XXe–XIXe siècles”). I have also taught undergraduate and graduate courses on twentieth-century poetry, history in the novel, literary games, the literary avant-garde, realism, travel writing, and autobiography.
Books and edited volumes
- Co-editor (with Anne Duprat): Figures of Chance II: Chance in Theory and Practice. New York: Routledge, 2024.
- Co-editor (with Corinne Grenouillet and Maryline Heck): Écrire le quotidien aujourd’hui. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2024.
- Co-editor (with Akihiro Kubo and Françoise Lavocat): The Routledge Handbook of Fiction and Belief. New York: Routledge, 2023.
- The Documentary Imagination in Twentieth-Century French Literature: Writing with Facts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
- Constraining Chance: Georges Perec and the Oulipo. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2009.
- Co-editor (with Christophe Reig): Frontières de la non-fiction: littérature, cinéma, arts. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2013.
Journal issues
- Co-editor (with Alison Rice): “Déplacements de la fiction/Displacements of Fiction?” Special issue, Revue critique de fixxion française contemporaine 28 (2024).
- Co-editor (with Dominique Viart): “Littératures de terrain/Field Literatures.” Special issue, Revue critique de fixxion française contemporaine 18 (2019).
- Co-editor (with Olivier Dubouclez): “Valère Novarina: une poétique théologique?” Special issue, Littérature 176 (2014).
- Editor: “Forms of Formalism.” Special issue, L’Esprit créateur 48.2 (2008).
Selected articles and book chapters
- “Modern Figures of Chance: Accidents and Procedures” (with Julia Jordan, Isabelle Krzywkowski, Jason Puskar, Sarah Troche, Christelle Reggiani, Christina Vogel, Sébastien Wit). In Figures of Chance I: Chance in Literature and the Arts (16th–21st Centuries), edited by Anne Duprat, Fiona McIntosh Varjabédian and Anne-Gaëlle Weber. New York: Routledge, 2024: 324–390.
- “Le tournant documentaire et les déplacements de la fiction.” In P.O.L: futur, ancien, actuel, edited by Stéphane Bikialo, Maryline Heck and Dominique Rabaté. Paris: Les Presses du réel, 2023: 365–379
- “The Exalting Alliance: Pre-Socratic Poetics in Postwar France.” In Brill’s Companion to Classical Reception and Modern World Poetry, edited by Polina Tambakaki, Brill, 2023: 174–206.
- “The Fictional in Autofiction.” In The Autofictional, edited by Alexandra Effe and Hannie Lawlor. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022: 41–60.
- Oulipian Feelings: On the Emotional Effects of Constraints.” Contemporary French & Francophone Studies: Sites 25.5 (2021): 557–565.
- “False Documents and Fragile Fictions in Contemporary French Literature: Convergences, Configurations, Conversions.” L’Esprit créateur (Summer 2021): 10–23.
- “Return to Form? Expanded Formalism and the Idea of Literature.” Continental Theory Buffalo: Transatlantic Crossroads of a Critical Insurrection, edited by David R. Castillo, Jean-Jacques Thomas, and Ewa Plonowska Ziarek. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2021, 93–108.
- “ ‘Qui dit ça?’: Problèmes d’énonciation dans le roman non fictionnel.” La Non-fiction: un genre mondial, edited by Alexandre Gefen, Philippe Daros and Alexandre Prsotojevic. Bern: Peter Lang, 2021: 169–80.
- “Randomizing Form: Stochastics and Combinatorics in Postwar Literature.” Palgrave Handbook of Literature and Mathematics, edited by Alice Jenkins, Robert Tubbs, N. Engelhardt. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, 207–225.
- “Nothing that is So is So”: Fiction and Detachment in Philippe Lançon’s Le Lambeau.” Contemporary French & Francophone Studies: Sites 24.2 (2020): 168–76.
- “Dans la caverne de Platon ou de la fiction comme ‘réalité augmentée.’” In Régis Jauffret: éclats de la fiction, ed. Christophe Reig. Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2017: 101–118.
- “Interlingual Oulipo.” Modern Language Notes 131.4 (2016): 864–76.
- “History-Forms: Jacques Jouet’s Documentary Poems.” Contemporary French & Francophone Studies: Sites 20.3 (2016): 444–452.
- “Thinking the Everyday: Genre, Form, Fiction.” L’Esprit créateur 54.3 (Fall 2014): 78–91.
Recent Courses in RLL
- FREN 21740 Introduction à la poésie française du XXe siècle (Winter 2017)
- FREN 22203/32203 The Literary Avant-Garde (Autumn 2017)
- FREN 23444 Voyages littéraires, XXe-XXIe siècles (Spring 2020)
- FREN 23711/33711 Littérature et photographie (Autumn 2016, Winter 2021)
- FREN 23810 Memory and Identity in French Literature: Proust to the Present (Spring 2019)
- FREN 24111/34111 L'écriture du quotidien au XXe siècle (Winter 2019)
- FREN 24210/34210 Écrire le quotidien (XXe-XXIe siècles) (Spring 2024)
- FREN 24888/34888 Jeux littéraires, XXe/XXIe siècles (Winter 2021)
- FREN 25600/25600 Realism and Its Returns in 20th-Century France (Spring 2023)
- FREN 26003 Introduction à l'autobiographie (Autumn 2020)
- FREN 26680/36680, ENGL 26680/36680, CMLT 26680/36680 Literary Games: Oulipo and Onward (Spring 2025)
- FREN 27777/37777 Existentialism and Its Literary Legacies (Spring 2020)
- FREN 38510 Margins of Fiction in Contemporary France (Spring 2019)
- RLLT 37000 Revising Prose (Autumn 2019)
