Notes on Contributors
Charlotte Berkery
teaches at University College Dublin, lecturing in French language and literature in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics. A scholar of nineteenth-century French literature and Night Studies, she holds a doctorate in French literature from Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7, Sorbonne Paris Cité (research funded by a National University of Ireland Travelling Studentship), as well as a research masters in modern French literature from Université Rennes 2. Her research focuses primarily on the Paris night as depicted in cultural productions of the nineteenth century.
Noémie Boeglin
(research associate at the Laboratoire Récits FEMTO-St UMR 6174) is an architect with a Ph.D. in history. Her research focuses on the transformations of domestic and urban areas, especially through modernization. She is the author of several papers on the city, architecture, geomatics, and fictional cartography, notably “Paris, ville morte dans le roman français au XIXe siècle” (in Sociétés & Représentations, 2016) and “Mapping Urban Fingerprints of Odonyms Automatically Extracted from French Novels” (in International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 2019).
Céline Duverne
is a doctor of French literature and a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure of Lyon (France). She recently published her Ph.D. dissertation titled Poètes, poésie et poéticité dans l’œuvre d’Honoré de Balzac (Droz, 2024). She is also co-author of a university study devoted to the novel Le Cousin Pons (Atlande Editions, 2018) and has participated in the critical edition of George Sand’s Théâtre de Nohant. Her other works question the self-representation and iconographic reception of artists, the intergeneric dialogue in the romantic era, the aesthetic and ideological construction of the female character, and the relationships between text, image, and performing arts.
Olivier Le Blond
is an Associate Professor of French at the University of North Georgia (UNG). He has published in The French Review, Nouvelles Études Francophones and Women’s Studies International Forum. He has contributed chapters in Éduquer en pays dominé (2019) and Abdellah Taïa’s Queer Migrations: Non-Places, Affect, and Temporalities (2021). He is a member of UNG’s Gender Studies Council and is committed to creating a safer campus for students and faculty of the LGBTQIA+ community through his involvement in the Safe Zone Trainings. He also served as Director of French and Francophone Studies of the Northeast MLA (2019–2022).
Levilson Reis
taught French at Otterbein University, Ohio, for more than 20 years, and is currently an independent scholar. His research straddles medieval and modern literatures and cultures, exploring the dialogue between the two periods. Recent work on the interplay between sociopolitical events and their representation in literature and film has examined the impact of France’s same-sex marriage law on the cross-dressing narrative in French film (in French Screen Studies, formerly Studies in French Film), and that of the sex-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church of Lyon on fictional documentary film narrative (in Refocus: The Films of François Ozon).
Carole Salmon
is professor of French and Linguistics in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. A native of France, she lived in Paris for several years. She holds a Ph.D. in French Studies from Louisiana State University. Her research focuses on representations of identities across Francophone communities in the United States, especially the Cajuns of Louisiana and the Franco-Americans of New England. Her current research explores Paris’ influences in the Americas. Salmon’s interdisciplinary approach is informed by her teaching experience as well as her research in Sociolinguistics, Film Studies, and Cultural Studies.
Isabelle Schaffner
is a Professor of French Language, Literature and Culture at the École Polytechnique, and Associate Director of the Centre International de Langue et Culture Françaises at the Institut Polytechnique de Paris. She holds a Ph.D. in French and Comparative Literature (University of California, Riverside) and a Doctorate in American Literature (Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3). A member of the LinX (an interdisciplinary Laboratory in the Humanities, École polytechnique) and the ITEM-CNRS (Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes, ENS), Isabelle Schaffner is a researcher in French and Comparative Literature of the nineteenth century and specializes in naturalism in a comparative perspective.
Eliza Jane Smith
is an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of San Diego. She has published on representations of argot and criminality in several literary journals. Her book entitled Literary Slumming: Slang and Class in Nineteenth-Century France (Lexington Books, 2021) reveals how the use of slang in French literature and culture led to the emergence of a sociolinguistic phenomenon that prioritized criminal life and culture in a way that expanded class boundaries and increased visibility for minorities within the public sphere.
David Spieser-Landes
is an Associate Professor of French and Cultural Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW). After a Master’s degree in English Language and Literature from Université Lyon 2 and a Ph.D. in French Literature and Politics from the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Spieser-Landes has published articles in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including The European Journal of Language Policy, Essays in French Literature and Culture, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, Performing Islam, Contemporary French Civilization, New Readings, French Cultural Studies and Les Lettres Romanes. Prior to joining the faculty at UNCW, he taught at Penn State University, Lycoming College and the University of Pittsburgh.
Aurélie Van de Wiele
is an Associate Professor of French and Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Intercultural Studies at Salisbury University (MD). Her research focuses on aesthetics and philosophical discourses addressing social injustice and metaphysical distress in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French literature. She has published articles in various peer-reviewed journals, including The French Review and Nineteenth-Century French Studies, and on such authors as Charles Baudelaire, Aimé Césaire, Albert Camus, André Gide, Georges Perec, Jacques Prévert, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Her most recent article, which appeared in Cincinnati Romance Review in 2022, examines the influence of Paris on Prévert’s social awareness and writing style.