Summer 2024

Growing Old in the Nineteenth Century: Texts, Fictions, Representations

Guest Editors, Elizabeth Emery and Florence Fix

What did it mean to grow old in post-Revolutionary France when models predicated on respect for the elderly were increasingly replaced by secular frameworks privileging speed, efficiency, work, and (re)production? We welcome contributions that examine this question through the lenses of literature, medicine, law, economy or art.

In press

 

Fall 2024

Abortion in Contemporary Francophone Women's Writing

Guest Editors, Dominique Carlini Versini and Caroline Verdier

This special issue considers the ways contemporary French and Francophone women writers have explored the topic of abortion. It investigates how these texts offer new abortion narratives that confront the remaining taboo surrounding it, as well as a range of ambivalent emotions connected to the experience.

In press

 

Winter 2024

Francophonie of the Early Modern

Guest Editors, Downing Thomas and Anny-Dominique Curtius

This issue questions the apparently self-contained time periods of academic specialization to focus on the interdisciplinary cross-pollination of the post/de/colonial Francophone and the early modern. Contributors uproot past literary artifacts to identify ways to reveal the relevance of our field of study for the present moment and to reconsider how the pre-colonial era of exploration, the colonial period, and post/de/colonial reconfigurations intersect and interfere with each other.

In press

 

Spring 2025

Taste and Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France

Guest Editors, Patrick Bray and Alessandra Aloisi

We seek articles that explore how taste relates to aesthetic and political debates around democracy throughout nineteenth-century France. Articles (in English or French) will look at taste from a variety of perspectives and explore its different meanings, whether aesthetic, political or culinary.

In press

 

Summer 2025

Monique Wittig: Sex, Literature and Politics

Guest Editors, William M. Burton, Ilana Eloit, and Benoît Loiseau

Over two decades after her death, this special issue of L’Esprit Créateur examines the enduring legacy of the lesbian feminist writer and theorist Monique Wittig. It offers a transatlantic, intergenerational, and intersectional exploration of Wittig’s literary, theoretical, and political output, and seeks to contextualize the oscillations in interest surrounding Wittig’s work while appraising contemporary reception within and beyond academia.

In press