Scholarship

Books

  • Degenerative Realism: Novel and Nation in 21st-Century France (Columbia University Press, 2020) * Awarded Modern Language Association Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies
  • Rootedness: The Ramifications of a Metaphor (University of Chicago Press, 2016) * Awarded Modern Language Association Prize for a First Book (co-winner)

Book Chapters

  • “Dalí’s Montaigne: Essay Hybrids and Surrealist Practice” in On Essays, edited by Thomas Karshan and Kathryn Murphy, Oxford University Press (2020)
  • “Social Justice and the American Essay, 1860-1920” in The Cambridge History of the American Essay, edited by Jason Childs and Christy Wampole, Cambridge University Press (forthcoming 2022)

Edited Volume

  • The Cambridge History of the American Essay, edited by Jason Childs and Christy Wampole, Cambridge University Press (under contract)

Articles

  • “An Ecocritical Metaphorology,” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, Vol. 25, no. 1 (2021), pp. 52-59
  • “What Is It Like to Be a Drone?: On Jean-Noël Orengo’s L’Opium du ciel,” Modern Language Review, Vol. 115, no. 3 (July 2020), pp. 536-553
  • “Conceptual Botany: Michel Houellebecq and a Burgeoning Vegetal Interest,” French Forum, Vol. 44, no. 2 (Fall 2019), pp. 207-223
  • “Poujade’s Infowars: On Barthes’ Anti-Anti-Intellectualism,” The Yearbook of Comparative Literature, Vol. 62 (August 2019), pp. 73-103
  • “Thinking Too Much: Calvino’s Palomar,” Compar(a)ison, Vol. 33 (2015), pp. 207-217
  • “‘Cyberia, Syberia…’: Clones, Virtual Spaces, and Cyber-Selves in Claudio Magris’s Alla cieca,” MLN, Vol. 129, no. 1 (January 2014), pp. 162-179
  • “Michel Tournier and the Virtual Essay,” Modern Language Review, Vol. 109, No. 1 (January 2014), pp. 96-109
  • “Essayism and the Multiplication of Possibility in Patrick Chamoiseau’s Biblique des derniers gestes,” Small Axe, Vol. 17, no. 3 (November 2013), pp. 35-62
  • “The Impudence of Claude Cahun,” L’Esprit créateur, Vol. 53, no. 1 (Spring 2013), pp. 101-113
  • “Patrick Chamoiseau et l’élan essayistique,” Interculturel Francophonies no. 22 (Nov.-Dec. 2012), pp. 115-127
  • “Cioran’s Providential Bicycle,” Revista Transilvania (Romania), (January 2012), pp. 51-54
  • “Fenoglio’s Vitalist Impulse: Primaverilità, Infuturamento, and the Force of Life in Il Partigiano Johnny,” Quaderni del ‘900, no. 11 (November 2011), pp. 47-58
  • “Slim Prospects: The Anorexic Body in the Postmodern Condition,” Quaderni di Synapsis, Vol. 8, ed. Rosella Carbotti, Mondadori Education (2009), pp. 66-70
  • “Jarry, Tabucchi, Pessoa: The Design of Temporal Navigation,” Pataphysica, Vol. 3 (2006), mNemonik iNk Press,
  • “Founders of Discursivity?: A Foucauldian Glimpse of the Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle,”  Chimères: A Journal of French Literature, Vol. 28 (Fall 2004)

Invited Lectures/Panels

  • 2021 “On Bridges: A Conversation with Thomas Harrison, Marjorie Perloff, and Christy Wampole” (panelist), University of California, Los Angeles
  • 2021 “TL ; DR: On Economic Writing” (panelist), Sprachliche und poetische Ökonomie: Ambiguität und kleine Formen, a joint conference sponsored by Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Literarisches Colloquium Berlin
  • 2021 “Realism and Degeneration,” Department of French and Italian, Northwestern University
  • 2021 “On Roots and Natives,” MDRN Research Lab, University of Leuven, Belgium
  • 2021 “On Degenerative Realism,” Department of French and Italian, Dartmouth College
  • 2021 “Can Nations Degenerate?,” Department of French and Romance Philology, Columbia University
  • 2020 “What Is Degenerative Realism?,” Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University
  • 2020 “On Degenerative Realism,” Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Johns Hopkins University
  • 2020 “Tactical Ekphrasis: On Houellebecq’s La Carte et le territoire,” Department of French and Italian, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena, Germany
  • 2020 “What We Talk about When We Talk about Our Roots,” French and Francophone Lecture Series, Salisbury University
  • 2020 “Self-Edification through the Essay,” College of General Studies, Boston University
  • 2019 “Simone Weil’s Fear of Abstraction,” Simone Weil Working Group, University of Minnesota
  • 2018 “Radical Thought,” European Cultural Studies, Brandeis University
  • 2018 “Scholarly Utopias: Reimagining the University,” Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke University
  • 2017 “Seriousness: A Taxonomy,” The Night of Philosophy and Ideas, Brooklyn Public Library/Cultural Services of the French Embassy
  • 2016  “Houellebecq as Filmic Object,” University of Pennsylvania, hosted by Cinema Studies Program
  • 2016 “Rootedness: The Ramifications of a Metaphor,” Stanford University, Department of French and Italian
  • 2016 “Essayism and the Public Intellectual,” Stanford University, Program in Structured Liberal Education
  • 2016 “Creative Writing Workshop in Literary Non-Fiction,” Stanford University, Program in Structured Liberal Education
  • 2016 “The Ivory Tower,” New York University, La Maison française
  • 2015 “Web Presence and the Public Intellectual,” New York University, Department of French, Professional Writing Practices Graduate Seminar
  • 2015 “The Conference Manifesto,” Metatagung Conference, hosted by Alfred Toepfer Stiftung and Merkur, Siggen, Germany
  • 2014 “Rootedness in 20th-Century France and Germany: Untangling a Tangled Metaphor,” Yale University, co-hosted by the Departments of French and German
  • 2014 “Quickness,” Stanford University, Will Literature Survive the Next Millennium? A Symposium Inspired by Calvino’s Six Memos
  • 2014  “The Other Serious,” Collegium Institute, University of Pennsylvania
  • 2013 “Quiet Impositions: On Involuntary Silence” (Keynote), University of Pennsylvania, Annual French and Italian Graduate Conference

Conferences/Talks

  • 2021 “Bricolage and Planet Death” (panelist), The Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium, Georgetown University
  • 2020 “Your Political Autobiography,” Behrman Fellows, Princeton Humanities Council
  • 2019 “A Conversation with Pico Iyer” (discussant), Belknap Global Conversation Luncheon, Princeton University
  • 2018 “Female Pain,” Anne Carson Reading Group, Department of Comparative Literature, Princeton University
  • 2018 “Why France Matters” (panelist), Department of French and Italian, Princeton University
  • 2018 “Comparative Literature Writing and Dissertation Colloquium” (faculty respondent), Department of Comparative Literature, Princeton University
  • 2018 “The Ethics of the Image,” (precept) Creative Arts and Humanities Symposium, Princeton University
  • 2018 “Poetics, Image, Text,”(panel moderator) Surrealism: From France to the World International Conference, Princeton University
  • 2018          “An Evening of Chamber Music: Le modernisme français,” (guest lecture), The Princeton Chamber Music Society, Princeton University 
  • 2018 “The Decontextualized Human: On Roots and Rootlessness,” Princeton Environmental Humanities Colloquium, Princeton University
  • 2017 “Optical Truth: Literary Realism and Photography,” 20th– and 21st-Century French and Francophone Studies, University of Indiana, Bloomington
  • 2017 “A Conversation with Leonardo Colombati and Jhumpa Lahiri” (discussant), Humanities Council Luncheon, Princeton University
  • 2017 “What Is Rootedness?” (keynote), Creative Arts and Humanities Symposium, Princeton University
  • 2017 “Undumbing the Public” (panelist), Democracy, Facts, and the News: A Panel Discussion with Humanities Scholars and Journalists, Princeton University
  • 2017 “Becoming a Public Figure,” Day of Action Teach-In, Princeton University
  • 2016 “On Rituals: Creative Writing Workshop” with students from Ardsley High School (New York), Princeton University
  • 2016 “Filming at the Borders: Migrating to Europe Film Series” (moderator and co-organizer), Department of French and Italian, Princeton University
  • 2016 “A Conversation with Maylis de Kerengal” (discussant), Belknap Global Conversation Luncheon, Princeton University
  • 2016 “Our Vegetal Fear,” 19th-Century French Studies Conference, Brown University
  • 2016 “The Exquisite Corpse,” (precept) Creative Arts and Humanities Symposium, Princeton University
  • 2016 “Rootedness: The Ramifications of a Metaphor: A Conversation with Christy Wampole and Eduardo Cadava,” Labyrinth Books, Princeton
  • 2016 “Where Is the Essay Going?,” panel organizer, American Comparative Literature Association, Harvard University
  • 2015 “The Other Serious: A Conversation with Christy Wampole and Russ Leo,” Labyrinth Books Princeton
  • 2015 “Stories and the Making of Life,” (precept) Creative Arts and Humanities Symposium, Princeton University
  • 2015 “Charlie Hebdo: Contexts and Conversation,” (panelist), Wilson College Discussion co-hosted by the Department of French and Italian, Princeton University
  • 2015 “Cities, Industrialization, Production” (panel moderator), The Legacy of Pier Paolo Pasolini Conference, Yale University
  • 2015 “Crowds, Spectacles, and Contagious Affects” (panel moderator), 19th-Century French Studies Conference, Princeton University
  • 2014 “Teaching Gender,” Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies Graduate Student Reading Group
  • 2014 “How Deep Are Your Roots?” (precept) Creative Arts and Humanities Symposium, Princeton University
  • 2014 “Chrometophobia: Simone Weil and the Fear of Money,” 20th– and 21st-Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium, Columbia University, NY
  • 2014 “L’animal, être de fuite” (panel moderator), Zoopoétique: l’animal en littérature française Colloquium, Princeton University
  • 2013 “La plante renversée : Une figure philosophique, de Platon à Tournier,” Colloque Biennal de la Société des professeurs français et francophones d’Amérique, New York University, NY
  • 2013 “Writing Op-Eds,” The Op-Ed Project’s Public Voices Reunion, Princeton University
  • 2012 “Pacified,” Manifesto Slam hosted by the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities, Princeton University
  • 2012 “Robinson Crusoe and Its Imitators,” (precept) Creative Arts and Humanities Symposium, Princeton University
  • 2012 “The Essayification of Everything,” Preoccupied: The Words, Wounds, and Workings of Occupations, Past and Present (Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate Conference), Berlin, Germany 
  • 2012 “Self-Begetting Theory: Volodine’s Post-Exotic Aesthetics,” Actuality and the Idea Conference, Princeton University
  • 2012 “The Root: The Toxicity of a Metaphor in Twentieth-Century France,” Department of French and Italian Faculty Works in Progress Lecture Series, Princeton University
  • 2012 “The Essayistic Thrust in the Contemporary French Novel,” 20th– and 21st-Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium, Long Beach, CA
  • 2012 “Rootedness, a Troublesome Metaphor: Enracination, Eradication, and the Caribbean,” Northeast Modern Language Association Conference, Rochester, NY
  • 2011 “Endogamie, Exogamie and the Sphere of Possibilities,” Deceit, Desire, and the Novel Fifty Years Later: Mimetic Theory and Literary Studies, Stanford University
  • 2011 “Pragmatism and the Essay Form,” American Comparative Literature Association, Vancouver, Canada
  • 2009 “Procedere quasi a tentoni: Possibilitarianism and the Tentacular in Claudio Magris’ Danubio,” California Interdisciplinary Consortium for Italian Studies Annual Conference, Stanford University
  • 2007 “A Conversation with Modernism/Modernity” (panelist), Modernist Studies Association Conference, Long Beach, CA
  • 2007 “Oeil pour oeil: Retributive Violence in Houllebecq’s Plateforme,” Violence, Disaster, and the Crisis of Representation Conference, University of California, Los Angeles
  • 2007 “Semiosis of Suspicion in Italian Literary Conversion,” Conversions Conference, Stanford University

Reviews

  • “Simone Weil for Americans: A Review of Robert Zaretsky’s The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Concepts,” Los Angeles Review of Books (April 26, 2021) (online)
  • L’abeille et la balance: penser l’essai by Irène Langlet, The French Review, Vol. 91, no. 1 (October 2017), p. 227
  • Volodine, etc. Post-exotisme, poétique, politique edited by Frédérik Detue and Lionel Ruffel, The French Review, Vol. 89, no. 3 (March 2016), p. 217
  • Reading Claude Cahun’s Disavowals by Jennifer L. Shaw, Modern and Contemporary France, Vol. 23, no. 4(April 2015), p. 550-51
  • Crusoes and Other Castaways in Modern French Literature by Joseph Acquisto. H-France, H-France Review, Vol. 15, no. 87 (June 2015) (online)
  • The Novel Essay, 1884-1947 by Stefano Ercolino. Modernism/Modernity, Vol. 21, no. 3 (September 2014), p. 873-74
  • France in Crisis: Welfare, Inequality and Globalization since 1980 by Timothy B. Smith. The French Review; Vol. 79, no. 4 (March 2006), p. 860-61
  • Globalization Redux: New Name, Same Game edited by Tom Conner and Ikuko Torimoto. The French Review, Vol. 79, no. 3 (February 2006), p. 652-53
  • Eleanor of Aquitaine:  Lord and Lady edited by Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons. The French Review, Vol. 78, no. 6 (May 2005), p. 1259-60
  • Cock and Bull Stories: Folco de Baroncelli and the Invention of the Camargue by Robert Zaretsky. The French Review, Vol. 78, no. 4 (March 2005), p. 794-95
  • French Popular Culture: An Introduction edited by Hugh Dauncey. The French Review, Vol. 78, no. 3 (February 2005), p. 602-3
  • Popular Music in Contemporary France: Authenticity, Politics, Debate by David L. Looseley. The French Review, Vol. 78, no. 1 (October 2004), p. 183  
  • France and Women, 1789-1914: Gender, Society and Politics by James F. McMillan. The French Review, Vol.77, no. 3 (February 2004), p. 603-04
  • The French Wars 1792-1815 by Charles J. Esdaile. The French Review, Vol. 77, no. 1(October 2003), p. 176-77

Radio and Print Interviews

  • 2012 to present Interviews with: “To the Best of Our Knowledge” (Wisconsin Public Radio/NPR), La Repubblica, Nouvel Observateur, “Saturday Extra” (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), “Modes de vie, mode d’emploi” (Radio France Culture), “Radio Zündfunk” (ARD), Süddeutsche Zeitung, “On Point with Tom Ashbrook” (NPR), “The Takeaway” (WNYC/Public Radio International), Salon, “Émission Catherine Perrin” (Radio Canada), “Q, with Jian Ghomeshi” (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), New York Magazine, The Daily Beast, “Corso with Gesine Kühne” (Deutschlandfunk), Das Magazin, De Volkskrant, The Bryan Callen Show, “Stand Up with Pete Dominick” (SiriusXM), and others
  • 2011 “An Interview with Writer Sonia Korn-Grimani,” guest host of Professor Robert Harrison’s radio program “Entitled Opinions (About Life and Literature)”
  • 2011 “The Nouveau Roman,” guest on “Entitled Opinions”
  • 2011 “An Interview with Haitian Author Lyonel Trouillot,” guest host of “Entitled Opinions”

Awards, Grants & Fellowships

  • 2020 250th Anniversary Fund for Innovation in Undergraduate Education
  • 2019 University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences Grant
  • 2018 Modern Language Association Prize for a First Book (co-winner)
  • 2017 Behrman Faculty Fellow, Princeton Humanities Council
  • 2017 Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award
  • 2015 George H. and Mildred F. Whitfield University Preceptor in the Humanities
  • 2012 250th Anniversary Fund for Innovation in Undergraduate Education
  • 2010 Mellon Foundation Dissertation Completion Fellowship

Courses Taught at Princeton

  • FRE 207 “Studies in French Language and Style”
  • FRE 307 “Advanced French Language and Style”
  • FRE 222 “French Literature, Culture, and Society since 1789”
  • FRE 224 “French Literature: Approaches to the Language of Literary Texts”
  • FRE 225 “Twentieth-Century French Popular Music”
  • FRE 313 “Contemporary French Civilization”
  • FRE 315 “Contemporary French Prose (1990 to present)”
  • FRE 334/HUM 334/ECS 344 “Race in France”
  • FRE 385 “The Art of the Essay”
  • FRE 367 “Feminist Thought in Twentieth-Century French Literature and Art”
  • FRE 398 “Junior Seminar: French and Francophone Studies Now”
  • FRE 405/AMS 405/GSS 402 “French and American Comparative Feminism” (grad/undergrad)
  • FRE 406/GER 406 “Roots in 20th-Century France and Germany” (grad/undergrad)
  • FRE 414/HUM 414/ECS 415/EPS 416 “Fear and France” (grad/undergrad)
  • FRE 524/HUM 596 “Realism and (Post-)Truth” (graduate seminar)
  • FRE 530 “Essayism: Trajectory of a Genre” (graduate seminar)
  • FRE 533/HUM 533/COM 571 “The Contemporary” (graduate seminar)
  • FRE 540/ITA 540/COM 541“Italo Calvino in France” (graduate seminar)
  • FRE 542 “Racial Imaginaries” (graduate seminar)

Committees and Service

  • 2020-2024 Director, Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities
  • 2019-2020 Executive Committee, Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities
  • 2019-2021 Fulbright Adviser
  • 2019-2020 Director, Behrman Undergraduate Society of Fellows
  • 2019-2020 Chair of Eco-Committee, Department of French and Italian
  • 2019-2021 Faculty Co-Chair, Creative Arts and Humanities Symposium
  • 2019-2022 Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of French and Italian
  • 2018-2019 Comité scientifique, Séminaire “Essai médiatique,” Université de Limoges
  • 2017-present Executive Committee, Department of French and Italian
  • 2018-2020 Faculty Affiliate, Department of Comparative Literature
  • 2018-2020 Executive Committee, Program in Journalism
  • 2017-2019 University Student Life Committee
  • 2017-2018 Search Committee, Department of French and Italian
  • 2017-2018 Graduate Committee (placement officer), Department of French and Italian
  • 2015 Jury Member of “The Bridge” Book Award, sponsored by Casa delle Letterature of the Rome Municipality, the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), the Embassy of the United States in Rome, and the American Initiative for Italian Culture (AIFIC)
  • 2014-2015 Graduate Committee (placement officer), Department of French and Italian
  • 2012-present Faculty Affiliate, Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies
  • 2012-2013 Undergraduate Committee, Department of French and Italian
  • 2012-2013 Faculty Adviser, Butler Residential College
  • 2007-2008 Italian Graduate Student Representative, Stanford University
  • 2006 Planning committee for 2007 Stanford French-Italian Graduate Conference
  • 2002 Graduate student representative for professor selection committee, University of North Texas
  • 2002 Graduate student representative for external department review, University of North Texas