Anne Berger

Adjunct Professor of French Literature

Overview

Anne Emmanuelle Berger holds an “agrégation de Lettres modernes” (1981),  a doctorate from the University of Paris VIII (613 pages, 1990), as well as an “”Habilitation à diriger des recherches” (263 pages, 1999).  Formerly Professor of French Literature and currently adjunct Professor in the department of Romance Studies at Cornell, she is now Professor of Gender Studies and French Literature at the University of Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis, where she co-chairs the Centre de Recherches en Etudes Féminines et études de genre. She is also the director of a newly created Institute, the Institut du Genre, a nation-wide research unit backed by the French CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research).

Anne E. Berger’s research and teaching interests are multiple: they include feminist theory, American gender and queer theory, XIXth-century poetry and poetics, Enlightenment and continental philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, deconstruction,  the politics of language, and the cultural politics of the Maghreb. She is the author of several books: Le Banquet de Rimbaud (Champ Vallon, 1992), Scènes d’aumône: Misère et poésie au XIXe siècle (Champion, 2004),  and Le Grand Théâtre du Genre: Identités, Sexualités et Féminisme en ‘Amérique’ (Belin, 2013), translated by Catherine Porter as The Queer Turn in Feminism: Identities, Sexualities, and the Theater of Gender, (Fordham University Press, 2013). She has edited several volumes, among which: Lectures de la différence sexuelle (Des Femmes, 1994, with Mara Negron), Algeria in Others’ Languages (Cornell University Press, 2002), Genres et postcolonialisme: dialogues transcontinentaux (Archives contemporaines, 2011, with Eleni Varikas), and Demenageries: Thinking (of) Animals after Derrida (Rodopi, 2011, with Marta Segarra). Her work has also appeared in scholarly journals such as Romantisme (France), Littérature (France), Po&sie (France), Les Cahiers de l’Herne (France), Labyrinthe (France),  Etudes françaises (Canada), New Literary History (USA), Diacritics (USA), Differences (USA), Parallax (UK), and Lectora: revista de dones i textualitat (Spain).

Research Focus

  • Enlightenment
  • Modern poetry and poetics
  • Psychoanalytic Theory
  • Deconstruction
  • Feminist criticism
  • Politics of language
  • Politics of the Maghreb

Publications

Books

  •  Scènes d’aumône. Misère et Poésie au XIXe siècle, Paris: Champion, 2004
  •  Le Banquet de Rimbaud. Recherches sur l’oralité, Champ-Vallon, France, Coll. L’or d’Atalante, Spring 1992. (287 pp.)

Edited Collections

  • Algeria in Other(s)’ Languages, Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2002 (246pp.)
  • Lectures de la différence sexuelle, Conference Proceedings, coedited with Mara Negron, Paris, Des Femmes, 1994. (317 pp.)

Articles, Prefaces and Interviews

  • “Popularity of Language: Rousseau and the MotherTongue,” in Emergencies, M.McQuillan ed., Routledge, 2004.
  • “Pas de deux,” spécial Derrida, Cahiers de l’Herne, M.L. Mallet and G.Michaud, eds, Paris: 2004.
  • “L’amour sans hache,” special issue on George Sand, Littérature, Spring 2004.
  • “The Impossible Wedding: Nationalism, Languages and the Mother-tongue in Post-Colonial Algeria,” in Algeria in Others’ Languages. Cornell UP, 2002.
  • “The Newly Veiled Woman: Irigaray, Specularity and the Islamic Veil,” Diacritics, Spring 1998, vol.28. Pp.93-120.
  • “Comment peut-on être Persanse?,” Contretemps n.2/3, Paris:Galilée, 1997.
  • “The Latest Word from Echo” (translation of “Dernières nouvelles…” by R.Gabarra), New Literary History, 1996, Vol.27. Pp.621- 40.
  • “Le sexe du coeur. Essai de stéthoscopie de la poésie lyrique” (on Rimbaud, Rilke and Hofmannsthal), in Lectures de la différence sexuelle, op.cit, pp.125-138.
  • “Comment un hérisson de paroles” (on Derrida and poetry), in Le Passage des Frontières. Autour de Jacques Derrida, Paris, Galilée, 1994. (Pp.111-119.)
  • “L’idole maternelle en régime poétique bourgeois,” in Du Féminin (Actes du Colloque international de Kingston), Montréal/Presses Univ. de Grenoble, Coll. “Trait d’Union”,1992. Pp. 203-220.
  • “L’apprentissage selon George Sand,” Littérature No 67, Paris, Oct, l987. (Pp. 73-83.)
  • “Celui qui fait éclore la fleur travaille si simplement” (on India, Satyajit Ray and Tagore), Fruits, No.4, Paris (l986). (Pp. 3-9.)
  • “Une conversation avec Jacques Derrida,” Fruits, No. 1, Paris, (l983). Pp. 74-91 (republished in Points de suspension, Entretiens de Jacques Derrida, Paris: Galilée, 1992. (Pp. 141-165)