Research Interests

Literature and Translation

My Ph.D. dissertation in Comparative Literature addresses the metafictionality of North American Fantastic Fiction through a study of the representation of the fictitious writer and his doppelgänger. Drawing upon methods in literary analysis and textual interpretation, I show that authors such as Stephen King and Patrick Senécal conduct a literary reflection on the artistic identity of the writer and on writing, using the same writing techniques as “mainstream” authors do – self-representation, intertextual references, transgression of narrative levels, and highlighting of a text’s fictionality.

Following the publication of my monograph on Stephen King (which is based on my dissertation's findings), I have extended my research on postmodernism into other genres, notably High Fantasy and the Francophone Graphic Novel. My publications apply analytical methodologies developed for studying mainstream “high” literature, such as narratology, structuralism, or semiotics, and theories such as postmodernism, to demonstrate that so-called popular fiction can convey the same types of artistic, societal, and political ideas as so-called literary fiction.

Drawing upon my professional experience as translator and director of translations in a publishing house specializing in imaginative fiction, my recent research on literature focuses on the literary status and reception of works of fantasy, horror, and science fiction, and on the characterization of their authors. I am notably interested in questioning genres definition: what is Fantastic Fiction? How is it related to Horror Fiction (if it is)? What about Fantasy? Or Magic Realism? Do French readers have the same understanding of a genre than American readers? If not, why and what are the consequences of such discrepancies? I believe such questions are important because mapping traditional genre fiction should allow us to further our understanding of the contemporary boundary crossing between genres.

I have recently turned to the digital humanities and cognitive theories to elaborate a quantitative approach as part of my analysis of the writing and translation of fear. This project is conducted in collaboration with Dr. Daniel Foti from the Department of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University and Mr. Timothy R. Stump, Grad student at Arizona State University in Psychology. Our goal is two-fold: first, to measure the level of fear the subjects experience when reading horror fiction to see if the strategies implemented by the authors are effective. Second, to explore how the language of the reading (native language of the reader, whether it is the narrative’s original language or its translation, versus second language) affects the feeling. The first results focus on the analysis of the foreign language effect.

Professional Communication

My research in Professional Communication directly stems from my teaching of French for Specific Purposes and Business Storytelling. I am notably interested in better understanding the role of culture in advertising campaigns.