Kaliane Ung
- Visiting Assistant Professor
- she/her/hers
Education
PhD, French Literature, Thought and Culture, New York University
MA, Philosophy, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
MA, Comparative Literature, University of Edinburgh
BA, French and English Literature, Université Aix-Marseille
Research and teaching interests
20th and 21st century French and francophone literature; writing and performing the self; disability studies; health humanities; feminism; environmental humanities
Biography
Kaliane Ung holds a Ph.D in French Literature, Thought and Culture from New York University, as well as an MA in Philosophy from the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne and a M.Sc in Comparative Literature from the University of Edinburgh. She was born in Paris and grew up in Martinique.
Her book project Wounded Writings: Disability in Modern and Contemporary France focuses on first-person accounts of disability across literary genres. It argues that writing (in the large sense) is a tool for survival when illness and suffering alter the body. It claims that in modern France, the wound becomes a site of enunciation as well as a site of transformation through the performative act of writing the ailing self. It defines performativity as the way in which the text transforms the body and invents new patterns of resilience and plasticity after the disabling event. By investigating writing as a performative and transformative act, it offers a reassessment of agency, via self-invention, in the face of adversity.
As a feminist, she is particularly interested in the links between animality and gender/queer studies in francophone literature.
In 2022, she co-edited a special issue of Simone de Beauvoir Studies on “Situating Masculinities” with Dr. Todd Reeser.
As a former performer, she encourages creative projects in all her courses.
She regularly publishes fiction in Montréal.
Selected Fellowships
2020 Princeton University Library Research Fellowship
2018 Mary Isabel Sibley Fellowship
Selected Publications
“Violette Leduc’s feminist flâneries.” Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature 46.1 (2022)
“Mon désir fou de cinéma: Jean Marais et Isabelle Adjani sous la plume de Violette Leduc et Hervé Guibert.” Sens public (online, 2021)
“Les viols de Violette dans Trésors à prendre et La Chasse à l’amour.” Violette Leduc: Genèse d’une oeuvre censurée (Paris: Presses Universitaires de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2019)
“Méditer selon Joë Bousquet.” Contemporary French & Francophone Studies, Sites (2018)