Education
PhD, French Literature, Thought and Culture, New York University
MA, Philosophy, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
MSc, Comparative Literature, University of Edinburgh
BA, French and English Language and Literature, Université Aix-Marseille
Research and Teaching Interests
Kaliane Ung was born in Paris and grew up in Martinique.
Her book project “Wounded Writings: Disability in France” focuses on first-person accounts of disability across literary genres. The manuscript is structured around four “situated experiences” of disability (the war wound, mental illness, neurodivergence, and skin disorders) that display four different ways of negotiating the articulation of first-hand experience and the search for community. By investigating writing as a performative and transformative act, it offers a reassessment of agency, through self-invention, in the face of adversity. It argues that writing is a tool for survival when illness and suffering alter the body and claims that in modern France, the “wound” becomes a site of transformation. It explores the multiple ways in which the text transforms the body and invents new patterns of resilience and plasticity after a disabling event. Aspects of this project are derived from the collective digital humanities project undertaken in her health humanities courses “Ailing Bodies: Narratives of Health and Illness” and “Plagues and Pandemics: Public Health in the Francophone World.”
In 2022, she co-edited a special issue of Simone de Beauvoir Studies on “Situating Masculinities” with Dr. Todd Reeser.
In 2023-2024, she is serving as co-chair of the Inclusive Practices Committee with Chiara Montera.
In her spare time, she likes writing fiction, gardening and practicing aerial arts.
Selected Fellowships
American Council of Learned Societies ACLS Fellowship, 2024
Pitt Momentum Funds Arts and Humanities Microgrant, 2023
Princeton University Library Research Fellowship, 2020
Mary Isabel Sibley Fellowship, 2018
Selected Peer-reviewed articles
“L’étrange animalité de Linda Lê dans Autres jeux avec le feu” L’Esprit créateur 63.4 (2023)
“Violette Leduc’s feminist flâneries.” Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature 46.1 (2022)
“Joë Bousquet, crip exemplaire ? Poétique et éthique de la blessure de guerre.” L’Esprit créateur 61.4 (2021)
“Mon désir fou de cinéma: Jean Marais et Isabelle Adjani sous la plume de Violette Leduc et Hervé Guibert.” Sens public (2021)
“Les viols de Violettes dans Trésors à prendre et La Chasse à l’amour.” Violette Leduc: Genèse d’une oeuvre censurée (2019)
“Méditer selon Joë Bousquet.” Sites: Contemporary French & Francophone Studies 22.2 (2018)
Selected Short Fiction
"Rongeur à gyrophares" Selfies: Autoportraits d'enfants du siècle, Le cheval d'août. (2023)
“Baby Shower” MuseMedusa 11 (2023)
“Monarque” Moebius 160 (2019)
“Stigmates” Moebius 157 (2018)
Undergraduate Courses
FR80 - The Modern French Novel
FR88 - Ailing Bodies: Narratives of Health and Illness (cross-listed with GSWS, included in the Health Humanities Certificate and the Certificate in Disability Studies)
FR0221 - Reading French: Literature, Media, Culture
FR1022 - Creative Writing Workshop in French
FR1023 - Theatre Workshop in French
FR1025 - The Idea of France
FR1074 - Plagues and Pandemics: Public Health in the Francophone World
Graduate Seminars
FR2703 - Animality, Sex, Gender (cross-listed with GSWS)
FR2715 - Transatlantic Dialogues: French & American Feminisms (cross-listed with GSWS)
FR2715 - Corporealities/Textualities
FR2795 - French Oral Skills for Graduate Studies
FR2715 - Bodies, Illness, and Philosophy