Research Areas
20th and 21st century French and Francophone literature and film / Critical Theory / Marxism/ Critical Race Studies / Post-Colonial Studies
My dissertation, Glory Dispossessed: Race, Immigration, and Work during the ‘Trente Glorieuses,’ is a study of the cultural representation of North African immigrant workers in France during the thirty-year boom in French capitalism known as the ‘Trente Glorieuses’ (1945-1975). This period is cited as the definitive golden-age in modern French socio-economic history, ushering in a steady rise in national prosperity, life-expectancy, the modernization of work, and the spread of consumer culture. The diverse media studied in my project shift attention towards sites on the margins of this story of economic progress (the street, immigrant worker foyers, shantytowns, and factories) in order to chart a counter-narrative of the ‘Trente Glorieuses’ from below.
Selected Publications
I am currently designing a special issue of the journal L’Esprit Créateur on ‘Racial Capitalism in French and Francophone Studies.’
Recent publications include:
Peer Reviewed Articles:
“En règle et rejeté : Homelessness and Recognition in Driss Chraïbi’s Les boucs.” Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol. 57 no. 3, July 2021, p. 332–351
“Tracing the Obscure Image: Maurice Blanchot on Photography.” French Forum, vol. 43 no. 1, 2018, p. 113-129.
Shorter Publications:
"Interview with Mohammed Kenzi on La Menthe Sauvage" Diacritic
"Recourse to History (on Éric Vuillard) Sidecar (blog of New Left Review)
"Radical Incisions" (on Joseph Andras) Sidecar (blog of New Left Review)
"A Stone in the Global Edifice: An Interview with Joseph Andras." Verso Books Blog
"Écrire : Entretien de Patrick Lyons avec Joseph Andras" Diacritik
I currently have two other manuscripts in progress. One on utopian immigrant worker politics in Mengouchi and Ramdane’s L’homme qui enjamba la mer (1978), and another on the ‘récit historique’ as political anti-genre in the works of Joseph Andras.