Research Areas

Professor Britto’s teaching and research interests include Francophone colonial and postcolonial literatures of Vietnam, Africa and the Caribbean.

Office Hours

My fall 2024 office hours will be held Wednesdays 3-5, and by appointment.  Please sign up for a block of time here.   The sign-up sheet will be updated every Wednesday after 5pm, with new times available for the following Wednesday.

Because a major construction project is underway just outside my office window, some of my office hours this semester will be held via Zoom. Each week's sign-up sheet will indicate whether office hours will be in person or on Zoom.  Even when I am holding office hours in person, you will have the option to meet with me via Zoom.

If you would like to meet but are unable to attend office hours at the scheduled time, or if you can't access the sign-up sheet, please get in touch with me via email.

Biography

Karl Britto is jointly appointed in the Departments of French and Comparative Literature. He is a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award, the Berkeley campus's highest honor for teaching, and is currently serving as Associate Dean of Arts & Humanities. (Ph.D., Yale University)

Selected Publications

"Stories Told and Untold: Graham Greene’s The Quiet American and Anna Moï’s Le venin du papillon," Representations 163.1 (Summer 2023)

"'Madame, je ne suis pas une jeune fille': Phạm Duy Khiêm's La Place d'un homme," French Studies 74.4 (October 2020)

"The Place of Paris in Vietnamese Diasporic Fiction," in Paris and the Marginalized Author: Treachery, Alienation, Queerness, and Exile, eds. Valérie Orlando and Pamela Pears (Lexington Books, 2019)

“‘Remembering and Forgetting’: An Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen,” Public Books, September 25, 2018

“The Stranger’s Voice,” Public Books, August 1, 2015, reprinted in Think in Public: A Public Books Reader, eds. Sharon Marcus and Caitlin Zaloom (Columbia University Press, 2019)

Preface to new edition of Nguyen Phan Long’s 1921 Le Roman de Mademoiselle Lys (DatAsia Press, 2014)

“Kim Thúy: A Way with Words,” Public Books, October 15, 2014

“Marie Ndiaye: One Powerful Writer,” Public Books, July 24, 2013

“Lost and Found: Aimee Phan’s The Reeducation of Cherry Truong,” Public Books, September 5, 2012

“L’ésprit de corps: French Civilization and the Death of the Colonized Soldier,” in Empire Lost: France and Its Other Worlds, ed. Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi (Lexington Books, 2009)

Disorientation: France, Vietnam, and the Ambivalence of Interculturality (Hong Kong University Press, 2004)

“Tahar Ben Jelloun,” in The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman (Columbia University Press, 2006)

“‘You don’t know this but I keep telling you’: Memory and Disavowal in Monique Thuy-Dung Truong’s ‘Kelly’,” in Of Vietnam: Identities in Dialogue, eds. Jane Winston and Leakthina Ollier (Palgrave Global Publishing at St. Martin’s Press, 2001)

“History, Memory, and Narrative Nostalgia: Pham Duy Khiem’s Nam et Sylvie,” Yale French Studies 98 (2000)