« C’est curieux un écrivain. C’est une contradiction et aussi un non-sens. Écrire c’est aussi ne pas parler. C’est se taire. C’est hurler sans bruit. C’est reposant un écrivain, souvent, ça écoute beaucoup. Ça ne parle pas beaucoup parce que c’est impossible de parler à quelqu’un d’un livre qu’on a écrit et surtout d’un livre qu’on est en train d’écrire. C’est impossible. C’est à l’opposé du cinéma, à l’opposé du théâtre, et autres spectacles. C’est l’opposé de toutes les lectures. C’est le plus difficile de tout. C’est le pire. Parce qu’un livre c’est l’inconnu, c’est la nuit, c’est clos, c’est ça. C’est le livre qui avance, qui grandit, qui avance dans les directions qu’on croyait avoir explorées, qui avance vers sa propre destinée et celle de son auteur, alors anéanti par sa publication : sa séparation d’avec lui, le livre rêvé, comme l’enfant dernier-né, toujours le plus aimé. Un livre ouvert c’est aussi la nuit. Je ne sais pas pourquoi, ces mots que je viens de dire me font pleurer. Écrire quand même malgré le désespoir. Non : avec le désespoir. »
Écrire, Marguerite Duras
Academic Research
With a PhD in French and a doctoral portfolio in Romance Linguistics (specialization in Linguistic Theories), my academic research and work as a theorist focus on language use and linguistic behavior in times of crisis, particularly as related to francophone literary interventions of the late 19th and 20th centuries. I consider literature and poetic texts as unique forms of discourse that profoundly influence the speech communities of a given era. The sociology of literature is of particular interest, specifically the functional role poetry plays in relation to everyday prose. Currently, I am investigating representations and topographies in francophone literatures that concretely influenced the lives of readers throughout major crises of the 20th century.
Publications
« Homme de Lettres: le h mouvant de Jacques Vaché », Histoires Littéraires, n. 104, 2026 (forthcoming)
« Loup », Dictionnaire Henri Michaux, Honoré Champion, 2026 (forthcoming)
« Moi », Dictionnaire Henri Michaux, Honoré Champion, 2026 (forthcoming)
The Linguistics of Crisis Poets: Mallarmé, Apollinaire, and Char Recontextualized (Dissertation, 2024)
Talking Birds: The Phatic Function of Verbal Art During Global Conflict (Capstone Project – Doctoral Portfolio in Romance Linguistics: Linguistic Theories, 2023)
“The Prose Poem in France,” Hayden’s Ferry Review, Issue 48, Spring/Summer 2011, pp. 150-151
Research Foci
Literature and Linguistics | Linguistic Theories | Culture, Crisis, and Conflict | Poetry, Short Prose Forms, and Hybrid Genres | Language, Literature, and Society | Translation | Late 19th-21st Century French and Francophone Literature | Third Republic | Philosophy of Language | Semiotics | Language and Technology
Presentations
“Talking Birds: The Phatic Function of Verbal Art During Global Conflict”: paper presentation at “Poetry and Poetics II,” PAMLA, November 2022, UCLA Luskin Conference Center and Hotel (Los Angeles, CA)
“Apollinaire’s Dislocations: Rendering Visible a Crisis of Meaning”: paper presentation at the FIGSO Working Paper Series, October 2021, University of Texas at Austin Department of French and Italian (Austin, TX)
“De Pierre: Représentations Minérales dans la Littérature de Résistance” : paper presentation at “Parler la Terre” / 20th and 21st Century French & Francophone Studies Colloquium, March 2020, University of Lincoln-Nebraska (Lincoln, NE) (canceled due to COVID-19)
“Patterns of Negation and the Expression of a Rhetorical Sublime”: paper presentation at the FIGSO Working Paper Series, March 2019, University of Texas at Austin Department of French and Italian (Austin, TX)
“Normalcy & Its Discontents”: reading and panel discussion, Georgetown English Graduate Student Association Annual Conference, February 2016, Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.)
“Surreal, Strange, Poetic—or just Idiomatic?”: reading and panel discussion, ALTA Translator’s Conference, October 2013, Indiana Memorial Union Hotel and Conference Center (Bloomington, IN)
Book Reviews
“If Body, Then Pain: Discipline by Dawn Lundy Martin” – BOMB Magazine
“Manoel de Barros’s ‘Birds for a Demolition’” (tr. Idra Novey) – Words Without Borders
“Eduardo Chirinos’s ‘Reasons for Writing Poetry’” (tr. Gregary J. Racz) – Words Without Borders
“Admiel Kosman’s Approaching You in English” (tr. Lisa Katz and Shlomit Naim-Naor) – Words Without Borders
“Andrzej Sosnowski’s Lodgings” (tr. Benjamin Paloff) – Words Without Borders
“Anja Utler’s engulf – enkindle” (tr. Kurt Beals) – Words Without Borders
“Jose Antonio Ramos Sucre’s Selected Works” (tr. Guillermo Parra)- Words Without Borders
Interviews
“An American in Dante’s Inferno,” Interview with Mary Jo Bang – Circumference
“Something Alight, Something Obscured,” Interview with Mary Ruefle – BOMBlog
“Beyond the Physical World: An Interview with David Albahari” – Words Without Borders