Oana Panaïté
• Assistant Professor of
French
• Director of Graduate Studies, French Literature
Office: Ballantine Hall
627
Office phone: 855-1134
Email: opanaite @indiana.edu
Research areas:
Literary history, theory and esthetics; French and francophone fiction; contemporary studies; writing and politics; comparative and transnational approaches to literature
Education:
- PhD, Romance Literatures and Languages, The Johns Hopkins University, 2005
- Docteur ès Lettres, U.F.R. de Littérature française et comparée, Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV), 2004
Background:
My research in French and
Francophone literature focuses
primarily on the connection
between literary history
and literary theory. In
my current book project,
Frontières de la
littérature française.
Stratégies esthétiques
et réflexion théorique
dans la prose narrative
contemporaine, I provide
an examination of works
by authors such as Pierre
Michon, Jean Rouaud, Marie
Ndiaye, Linda Lê,
Gisèle Pineau, Patrick
Chamoiseau, Boubacar Boris
Diop, Tierno Monénembo,
Calyxthe Beyala and Nina
Bouraoui. First in my analysis
I set out to reassess the
relevance of critical concepts
and ideas such as “national
literature”, “committed
author”, “authentic
writing”, by examining
their effectiveness in relation
to recent fiction works.
Second, I offer a dynamic
description of the literary
process envisioned neither
as a reflection of reality
nor a political counter-discourse,
but as a constant exchange
between a series of equally
important agents: writers,
readers, and critics. Third
I aim to provide an “integral” reading
model which closely connects
the temporal dimension of
literature with the artistic
attributes of individual
texts.
Selected awards:
- College Arts and Humanities Institute Faculty Fellowship. Indiana University.
- Arts & Humanities New Perspectives Grant. Indiana University.
- Research Fellowship at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris). Johns Hopkins University.
- Pensionnaire roumaine de l’École Normale Supérieure (rue d’Ulm).
Courses recently taught:
- Êtres de papier. Le personnage littéraire au XXe siècle
- The Trouble with Literature. Issues in Literary Theory
- The Politics of Writing from Franz Fanon to Édouard Glissant
- Les Femmes dans la littérature française
- Voyages et aventures
- La littérature
et les arts dans
l’œuvre
de Patrick Chamoiseau
Publication highlights:
Articles
"La Discipline du refus : sur le formalisme des écrivains". L’Esprit créateur. Vol. 48. No. 2. Summer 2008. P. 66-73.
"Poétiques du personnage contemporain". La Fabrique du personnage. Ed. Françoise Lavocat, Claude Murcia et Régis Salado. Paris : Éditions Honoré Champion. 2007. P. 115-127.
"Les fins de l’écriture. Réflexion et pratique du style dans les œuvres de Pierre Michon et Jean Echenoz". French Forum. Spring 2006. Vol. 31. No. 2. P. 95-110.
"Fiction au conditionnel. L’essai romanesque de Jean Echenoz". Études littéraires. Vol. 37. No.2. 2006. P. 171-182.
"Le Multiple et le Divers. De l’universel au comparable en littérature". Palabres. Revue d’études africaines et antillaises. Vol. V. No 2-2004-05. P. 155-176.
