Biography

Riley Lim is a first-year MA/PhD student in French. He holds a B.A. in French and Francophone Studies and Communication at the University of San Diego. He has a longstanding interest in the nineteenth century and has shared his passion for poetry with various audiences, including members of the French and Francophone Studies Club. Through a Summer Undergraduate Research Experience, Riley combined his interests in French poetics with critical cultural studies on migration, race, and Francophone identity, which led to completing an honors thesis called “L’Esthétique et L’enjeux identitaire chez Ying Chen et Édouard Glissant.”

As a first-year student, Riley wants to continue exploring the development of 20th-century postcolonial theory/literature and Black thought within the Francophone sphere. He is alarmed by how France's colonial legacy traumatically impacted the phenomenological and psychoanalytic experiences of colonized people and wants to analyze the diverse forms of resistance against this oppression. Therefore, he is currently interested in the poetic and theoretical works of Caribbean intellectual revolutionaries, such as Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, and Édouard Glissant, that subvert the heliocentric paradigm of the Metropole and its "peripheral" colonies to recenter the consciousness of all colonized people.

Outside of the classroom, Riley enjoys open-water swimming in the Bay and visiting Golden Gate Park with friends.