Staff profile

My research interests lie broadly in questions of embodiment, affect, gender, sexuality and race in 20^th- and 21^st-century French and francophone literature and philosophy. I have published over twenty articles and book chapters on contemporary French and francophone literature and philosophy, and I am the co-editor, with Professor Gill Rye, of three major books on contemporary women’s writing. 

My first monograph, The Becoming of the Body: Contemporary Women's Writing in French (EUP, 2014), analyses representations of the female body in the work of four contemporary francophone authors. It explores through the critical lens of Deleuzian philosophy the contestation and transformation of the conventional boundaries of the body, and considers the implications of the notion of the ‘becoming’ of the body in the light of feminist, postcolonial and queer politics. 

 

Current Research

I am currently working on two projects, one on food, eating, and practices of consumption, and the other on narratives of birth. 

Food and Eating

This project is anchored in the premise that practices of consumption are integral to the making and unmaking of our contemporary cultural worlds. In other words, the ways we interact with food – how we produce, assemble, share, and consume it – have much to tell us about communities, cultures, and the exercise of power. I am completing a monograph on this subject which deepens understanding of a world in crisis by tracing connections between colonialist legacy, capitalist excess, racism, gender inequality, and ecological catastrophe at the heart of global appetite, food pathways, and patterns of eating. Focusing on the distinctive literary landscape of leading francophone Mauritian author Ananda Devi, the book scrutinises representations of the everyday and the extreme, charting the implication of histories of the organisation of labour in sugar plantations in contemporary practices of eating and incorporation. Eating the Other: Ananda Devi and the Politics of Consumption offers ways to rethink flows of consumption, from the local to the global, in a disenchanted, politically divided, and ecologically precarious world.

Narratives of Birth

This project explores the competing discourses (medical, philosophical, cultural, popular) embedded in francophone and anglophone literary representations of childbirth (autobiography, poetry, novels, and short stories). I am particularly interested in the interplay of knowledge, memory and temporality in the articulation of birth, in probing the kinds of knowledges and temporalities that circulate around birth, how birth enters into knowledge and (individual, collective) memory, and how birthgivers can navigate meaningful relationships with knowledge, memory, and time as they go through the transformative embodied event of birth.

Creative Writing

My poetry appears in anthologies, literary journals, and magazines, and has been shortlisted for multiple awards and competitions. I am currently working on my debut pamphlet, this year the plums were for eating, which reflects on experiences of embodiment and incorporation at the beginnings and ends of life. 

Research Supervision

I have supervised PhD students working on 20th and 21st- century French/ francophone philosophy, women's writing and visual culture, feminist and queer theory, postcolonial and decolonial writing, and world literatures, and would be happy to hear from prospective students in these areas.

• 20th- and 21st-century French/francophone literature, philosophy and visual culture
• Embodiment and affect
• Feminism, gender and sexuality
• Food, practices of consumption, disorderly eating
• Narratives of birth
• Postcolonial and decolonial theory
• Race, migration, diaspora

Authored book

• The Becoming of the Body: Contemporary Women's Writing in French
  
  Damlé, A. (2014). The Becoming of the Body: Contemporary Women’s Writing in French. Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748668212.001.0001

Chapter in book

• Introduction
  
  Damlé, A. (2014). Introduction. In A. Damlé & G. Rye (Eds.), Aventures et expériences littéraires : écritures des femmes au début du vingt-et-unième siècle. (pp. 5-18). Rodopi-Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789401210850
• Multiple et changeante: amour, connaissance et fragilité dans Nos baisers sont des adieux de Nina Bouraoui
  
  Damlé, A. (2014). Multiple et changeante: amour, connaissance et fragilité dans Nos baisers sont des adieux de Nina Bouraoui. In A. Damlé & G. Rye (Eds.), Aventures et expériences littéraires: écritures des femmes au début du vingt-et-unième siècle. (pp. 125-141). Rodopi-Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789401210850_009
• Introduction
  
  Damlé, A., & Rye, G. (2013). Introduction. In A. Damlé & G. Rye (Eds.), Women’s writing in twenty-first-century France : life as Llterature.. (pp. 3-16). University of Wales Press.
• The Mutant Metamorphic Subject: Femininity and Embodiment in Virginie Despentes' King Kong Théorie
  
  Damlé, A. (2013). The Mutant Metamorphic Subject: Femininity and Embodiment in Virginie Despentes’ King Kong Théorie. In G. Rye & A. Damlé (Eds.), Experiment and experience : women’s writing in France 2000-2010. (pp. 13-27). Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0353-0494-7
• Conclusion
  
  Damlé, A., & Rye, G. (2013). Conclusion. In A. Damlé & G. Rye (Eds.), Women’s Writing in Twenty-First-Century France: Life as Literature. (pp. 251-252). University of Wales Press.
• Devenir-autre: Female Corporeality and Nomadic Transformation in Ananda Devi's Writing
  
  Damlé, A. (2011). Devenir-autre: Female Corporeality and Nomadic Transformation in Ananda Devi’s Writing. In V. Bragard & S. Ravi (Eds.), Écritures mauriciennes au féminin: Penser l’altérité. (pp. 155-177). L’Harmattan.
• Phantasmal Relics: Psychoanalytical and Deconstructive Ghosts in the Literature of Ananda Devi
  
  Damlé, A. (2009). Phantasmal Relics: Psychoanalytical and Deconstructive Ghosts in the Literature of Ananda Devi. In P. Collier, A. M. Elsner, & O. Smith (Eds.), Anamnesia: Essays in French Literature, Thought and Culture. (pp. 229-240). Peter Lang.

Edited book

• Aventures et expériences littéraires : Ecritures des femmes en France au début du vingt-et-unième siècle
  
  Damlé, A., & Rye, G. (Eds.). (2014). Aventures et expériences littéraires : Ecritures des femmes en France au début du vingt-et-unième siècle. Rodopi-Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789401210850_002
• Experiment and Experience: Women's Writing in France 2000-2010
  
  Damlé, A., & Rye, G. (Eds.). (2013). Experiment and Experience: Women’s Writing in France 2000-2010. Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0353-0494-7
• Women's Writing in Twenty-First-Century France: Life as Literature
  
  Damlé, A., & Rye, G. (Eds.). (2013). Women’s Writing in Twenty-First-Century France: Life as Literature. University of Wales Press.
• The Beautiful and the Monstrous: Essays in French Literature, Thought and Culture
  
  Damlé, A., & L’Hostis, A. (Eds.). (2010). The Beautiful and the Monstrous: Essays in French Literature, Thought and Culture. Peter Lang.

Journal Article

• Struggling for Breath: Reflections on Respiration in Ananda Devi's Les Jours vivants
  
  Damlé, A. (2021). Struggling for Breath: Reflections on Respiration in Ananda Devi’s Les Jours vivants. Francosphères, 10(1), 143-169.
• Fasting, Feasting: The Resistant Strategies of (Not) Eating in Ananda Devi's Le Voile de Draupadi and Manger l'autre
  
  Damlé, A. (2019). Fasting, Feasting: The Resistant Strategies of (Not) Eating in Ananda Devi’s Le Voile de Draupadi and Manger l’autre. International Journal of Francophone Studies, 22(3-4), 179-211. https://doi.org/10.1386/ijfs_00001_1
• The Wild Becoming of Childhood: Writing as Monument in Nina Bouraoui's Sauvage
  
  Damlé, A. (2013). The Wild Becoming of Childhood: Writing as Monument in Nina Bouraoui’s Sauvage. Forum for Modern Language Studies, 49(2), 166-174. https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqs069
• Towards a Poetics of Reconciliation: Humans and animals in Ananda Devi’s writing
  
  Damlé, A. (2013). Towards a Poetics of Reconciliation: Humans and animals in Ananda Devi’s writing. International Journal of Francophone Studies, 15(3), 497-516. https://doi.org/10.1386/ijfs.15.3-4.497_1
• Truismes: The Simulation of a Pig
  
  Damlé, A. (2012). Truismes: The Simulation of a Pig. Dalhousie French Studies., 98, 15-27.
• Posthuman Encounters: Technology, Embodiment and Gender in Recent Feminist Thought and in the Work of Marie Darrieussecq
  
  Damlé, A. (2012). Posthuman Encounters: Technology, Embodiment and Gender in Recent Feminist Thought and in the Work of Marie Darrieussecq. Comparative Critical Studies, 9(3), 303-318.
• Gender Performance in the Work of Judith Butler and in Cristina Peri Rosi's La nave de los locos
  
  Damlé, A. (2008). Gender Performance in the Work of Judith Butler and in Cristina Peri Rosi’s La nave de los locos. Dissidences, 4(2), 1-16.