Winter 2023
Linda Lê
Guest Editors, Leslie Barnes, Tess Do, Jack A. Yeager
Stunningly original and provocative, Linda Lê published more than twenty-five titles before her untimely death in 2022. Critics have illuminated the various aspects of this originality, including the intricacies of her narrative esthetics, her initial distancing of her origins only to interrogate them more explicitly later, and the major threads running through all her writing: dislocation and displacement, exile and loss, cultural and linguistic tension and conflict, writing and authorship, identity and (un)belonging), haunting and psychosis, life and death. This collection stands as a tribute to Lê’s career and traces new directions in Lê studies.
In press
Spring 2024
Racial Capitalism
Guest Editor, Patrick Lyons
To date, the study of “Racial Capitalism” has had little impact on the field of French and Francophone Studies. To greet the forthcoming French translation of Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (1983), this issue of L’Esprit Créateur invites scholars of French and Francophone literature, culture, history, and politics to incorporate the study of “Racial Capitalism” into the field. It particularly invites scholars working at the nexus of Marxist criticism and French and Francophone Studies to consider how “Racial Capitalism” as a conceptual framework might be adapted to contemporary Marxist approaches to literature, history, and culture.
In press
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. We accept proposals of 300 words by January 15, 2024.