Libertine Botany
Winter 2022
Guest Editors, Natania Meeker and Antónia Szabari
Plant sexual life becomes the subject of intense discussions in early modern botany. How does France, with its legacy of materialist libertine thought, become a hub for botanically-informed critique of human sexual norms and practices? How is early modern botany enmeshed with desire? “Libertine Botany” charts premodern explorations of the nonbinary sexuality of plants and investigates their effects on the gendering of the human polis. In conversation with contemporary discussions of sexuality, this special issue studies how-- through a body of work anticipating queer politics, art, and ecology – the alien pleasures of plants give new contours to human experience.
In press
Spring 2023
Poétiques de l'émeute / The Poetics of Riot
Guest Editors, Justine Huppe and Julien Jeusette
Along with the recent increase in riots observed by sociologists, anthropologists, and historians in France and in the world, there is a fascination for this kind of protest in contemporary literature (David Dufresnes, Lola Lafon, Wilfried N’Sondé, Eric Vuillard…). How do authors deal with this elusive reality that the media often reduce to an irrational and violent crowd movement? To map contemporary riot poetics, this issue examines the riot as a literary phenomenon and describes its specific forms, its political stakes, and its models in the history of literature.
In press
Summer 2023
Jean Echenoz, “comme une nécessité physique”: Action and Bodies in Space.
Guest Editor, Sara Bédard-Goulet
Jean Echenoz’s writing has generated significant scholarship on space, with less attention paid to the “physical necessity” of how bodies exist in space. How does space affect them? How do they contribute to shaping space? This special issue combines literary analyses of Echenoz’s work and theoretical approaches to the body, its existence and movements in the humanities and social sciences.
In press
Fall 2023
Connecting Characters in Modern and Contemporary French-language Fiction
Guest Editors, Rebecca Grenouilleau-Loescher and Kat Haklin
This special issue examines character networks and interdependency in French-language fiction spanning the modern and contemporary periods. Approaching connection as a qualitative phenomenon, articles examine what connects characters in fictional works, how these links shape narrative meaning within and across texts, and how character interdependency reflects diverse social, political, and historical contexts. The issue’s range extends from modes of character interdependency in novel sequences of the nineteenth century to multi-perspectival fictions of today, narratives in intertextual dialogue, and transmedia adaptation.
Proposals in English or French (250-300 words) with a short biography to Rebecca Grenouilleau-Loescher (rloescher001@gmail.com) and Kat Haklin (khaklin@wustl.edu) by October 15, 2022. Completed articles (no more than 6,000 words, including notes) by March 1, 2023.
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.
Send proposals in English or French (250-300 words) together with a short biography to Patrick Lyons (patricklyons@berkeley.edu) by January 15, 2023. The deadline for completed articles (no more than 6,000 words, including notes) is July 15, 2023.
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.
Please send 250-word abstracts to Elizabeth Emery (emerye@montclair.edu) and Florence Fix (florence.fix@univ-rouen.fr) by April 1, 2023, and full article by September 1, 2023.