Maxime Bey-Rozet

Maxime Bey-Rozet holds an MA in Cinema Studies from the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. He completed his Ph.D. degree in Film and Media Studies with a Concentration in French in May 2020, where he also obtained a Ph.D. certificate in Cultural Studies. His dissertation, Irredeemable: Céline, Extreme Cinemas, and the Opacity of Trauma identifies and evaluates the legacy of French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline in 21st century so-called "extreme cinemas." He contends that extreme films - films like I Stand Alone (Gaspar Noé, 1999), In My Skin (Marina de Van, 2002) and Caché (Michael Haneke, 2005) - fall outside of what Leo Bersani has called a "culture of redemption." In their representations of systemic and historical traumas, these films refuse to order and make sense of catastrophic experience, favoring instead discursive opacity, as a way of encouraging the audience to conduct a critical investigation of their own.

Maxime's research has been published in Studies in French Cinema and the French journal Écrans. He edited a special issue of French Screen Studies on 21st-century French horror cinema, and he is also working on an article about the representation of the Paris massacre of 17 October 1961 in Caché.

A versatile instructor, he has experience teaching literature, culture, and film courses in both the French program and the Film and Media Studies program, as well as a long record of teaching French language at all levels. He coordinates the French conversation club, La Parlotte.