Emily Wieder French/Francophone Studies Ph.D. student
SELECTED PROJECTS
Lucie Thésée and Suzanne Césaire
During World War II, the periodical Tropiques deployed Surrealism to resist Vichyist forces and to advance a Martinican literary identity. Lucie Thésée contributed more poems than any other woman and her work exemplifies the theories that Suzanne Césaire detailed in the same periodical. Thésée remains, however, an enigma. Other than a handful of poems, she left no trace. This poster summarizes my first attempt to analyze Thésée’s poems. I am applying a critical framework to this study, thanks to my participation in the summer 2022 Critical Theory Workshop. Going forward, I plan to create a course about Black woman Surrealists and to develop a chapter of my dissertation around this rich subject.
â
Dulac and Baudelaire
Each year the Society for French Studies invites postgraduates to submit posters for the annual conference. In 2021, SFS expanded the postgraduate portion of their conference to include video submissions. My contribution summarizes my paper "La correspondance entre les objets et la psychologie féminine dans La Souriante Madame Beudet et L’Invitation au voyage" (unpublished, written May 2021). I argue that Dulac employs baudelairean correspondences to communicate the “interior life” of women and to achieve a purely “visual” cinema.
Turn on subtitles using the button to the left of the settings wheel.
Notes on Surrealism
While exploring Surrealism, starting in summer 2018, I have tried to digest the movement’s growth. My interests have led me to the Surrealists’ political engagement during the 1930s, but the details of the ruptures that decade continue to elude me. As I fill gaps in my own understanding, I hope my notes serve as an at-a-glance review of the fundamentals.
La couette dans ma tête
I often reflected on the power of education while interning and studying in France. Inspired by the literary heritage to which an internship at la Bibliothèque Méjanes (Aix-en-Provence, fall 2017) exposed me, I traced my intellectual growth in nine poems. This assignment, entitled “La couette dans ma tête” [The quilt in my mind] interwove my French-learning experiences and earned IAU College’s French Honors award.
â
Each column corresponds to a location while and each row indicates a time (past, present, future). Despite this structure, the unifying theme of a French-related memory allows the poems to be read in any order. As I continue my studies, I intend to add to this quilt.