Eileen Julien
Professor of French
Professor of Comparative Literature
Office: Ballantine Hall 914
Office phone: 855-7537
ejulien
indiana.edu
Research Areas
20th century literature and culture, especially the novel, postcolonial theory, and the literatures of Africa, the African diaspora and France in their relationships to one another
Education
- PhD, French Literature and African Studies, University of Wisconsin, 1978
- MA, French Literature, University of Wisconsin, 1970
- BA, French Education, Spanish Minor, Xavier University of Louisiana, 1969
Background
My teaching and research focus on multiple aspects of literature and culture in Africa and the Americas, their historical and cultural ties and divergences, and the factors of colonialism, decolonization, and contemporary political and economic processes. In the African context I have been especially interested in the perceived tension between being "modern" and being "ourselves" and what this implies for understanding the relationship between "indigenous" or "local" resources, such as oral traditions, and contemporary forms such as the novel. The workings of gender and the diasporic consciousness or yearning that exceeds national belonging are themes that also figure in my work and teaching. In this vein, I have begun to explore most recently the distinctive culture of my birthplace, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Selected Publications
Books
African Novels and the Question of Orality. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992.
Travels with Mae: Recollections of a New Orleans Girlhood and Beyond. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.
Associate Editor, Encyclopedia of African Literature. Ed. Simon Gikandi. Routledge, 2002.
Articles
"Loss, Love, and the Art of Making Gumbo." Interview by Shona Jackson. 30th anniversary
issue of Callaloo on food and literature. 30.1 (2007) 95-109.
"Arguments and Further Conjectures on World Literature." In/Outside: English Studies in Korea 18 (April 2005): 117-33. Published also in Studying Transcultural Literary History. Ed. Gunilla Lindberg-Wada. Et al. Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006.
"When a Man Loves a Woman: Gender and National Identity in Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman and Mariama Bâ's Scarlet Song." African Studies After Gender?. Ed. Catherine Cole, Takyiwaa Manuh, and Stephan Miescher. Bloomington: Indiana U Pr, 2006.
"The Extroverted African Novel." The Novel: History, Georgraphy and Culture. Vol 1. Ed. Franco Moretti. Princeton U Pr, 2006. Also published as "Il romanzo africano: un genere 'estroverso.'" Il romanzo. IV. Ed. Franco Moretti. Milano: Einaudi, 2003. 155-179.
"Reading 'Orality' in French Language Novels from Sub-Saharan Africa." Francophone Postcolonial Studies: A Critical Introduction. Ed. Charles Forsdick and David Murphy. London: Arnold, 2003. 122-132.
"The Romance of Africa: Three Narratives by African American Women." In Beyond Dichotomies. Ed. Elisabeth Boyi. Albany: State University of New York Pr, 2002.
"Terrains de rencontres: Césaire, Fanon and Wright on Culture and Decolonization." The French Fifties. Ed. Susan Weiner. Spec. issue of Yale French Studies 98 (2000): 149-66.
Courses
- Black Artists in Paris
- The Postcolonial Novel
- Peripheral Modernities: The View from Senegal
- Studies in Francophone Literature: From Frantz Fanon to Edouard Glissant
- Roman et poésie
- Littérature du Sénégal
Honors, Fellowships, and Awards
- Guggenheim Fellowship, 1998-1999
- Fulbright Senior Scholar, Dakar, Sénégal, 1993-1994, January-July, 1995
- Carnegie Faculty Fellowship, Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, 1985-1987
