Research Statement
I am an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of literature, film studies, and intellectual history. I specialize in modern and contemporary France, with an emphasis on 1945 to the present. My current research engages the fields of memory studies and critical geography to analyze literary, visual, and theoretical approaches to the politics of memory and historical violence. My book project, Concentrationary City: Spatial Poetics of the Extreme and the Everyday in Postwar France, brings a spatial humanities perspective to post-Holocaust literature and memory studies. It explores how the Nazi concentration camps shaped ways of understanding space and everyday life in post-WWII France, focusing on the intersections between critical theories of space and the memorial legacies of extreme violence. My research methodology is both historical and hermeneutic, pairing close, formal analysis of textual and visual works with deep contextualization in historical and theoretical discourses. In the broadest sense, my research interests are united by the question of how artistic and cultural works bear witness to their historical moment through their form as well as content, and a sense of urgency in grappling with the political and ethical stakes of the past in the present.
In addition to my book project, a portion of which has appeared in the journal French Studies (winner of the 2021 Malcolm Bowie Prize), my publications on Albert Camus and the cultural memory of Covid-19 (Memory Studies, 2023) and on "retro" cinema in 1970s France (French Historical Studies, 2023) are examples of my work across the fields of film and history, literature and memory studies.
Research Keywords
- 20th-21st century French and Francophone literature and cinema
- Film and Media
- Memory studies
- Holocaust studies
- Architecture and Urbanism
- Critical Geography and the Spatial Humanities
Presentations
- “Memory Cultures in Post-Holocaust France.” Poetics of Memory Symposium, University of Utah. Presentation, Presented, 09/11/2023.
- “Histoire d’un désert: Space, Violence and Survival in Jean Cayrol’s Ecological Writing.” 20th and 21st-Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium. University of Arizona. Conference Paper, Presented, 04/14/2023.
- "Jean Cayrol: from the Camp to the City." Tanner Humanities Center, Work in Progress Talk. Presentation, Other, 04/06/2023.
- “Mourning, Melancholy, and Virtual Histories in Resnais’s Stavisky (1974).” Society for French Studies Annual Conference. Queen’s University Belfast. Conference Paper, Presented, 06/28/2022.
- “Viral Camus: Assessing the Resurgence of The Plague (1947) in the Covid Era.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention. Conference Paper, Presented, 01/08/2022.
- “The bidonville as lieu de mémoire: from Site to Symbol in Postwar France.” Postcolonial Realms of Memory: Sites and Symbols in the Modern Francosphere. Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies (online), 7-8 October. Conference Paper, Presented, 10/08/2021.
- “Concentrationary Aesthetics in Postwar France: Camp, City, Colony.” ACLA Annual Meeting. Virtual Conference, 8-11 April. Conference Paper, Presented, 04/10/2021.
- “Allegory and Emergency in Camus’s L’Etat de siège.” 20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium. Oklahoma City, March 14-16. Conference Paper, Presented, 03/2019.
- “Voices of the Penal Colony: Leïlla Sebbar’s ‘Louisa.’” ACLA Annual Meeting. Universiteit Utrecht (Netherlands), 6-9 July. Conference Paper, Presented, 07/2017.
- “Les travellings sont affaire de mémoire: Memory as Movement in Duras’s Aurélia Steiner.” 20th and 21st Century French and Franchophone Studies International Colloquium. St. Louis, March 17-19. Recipient of the Prix « Recherche au présent » (Classée seconde) . Conference Paper, Presented, 03/2016.
- “Voyage au bout de la nuit: A Politics of Memory (in) Space.” MLA Annual Convention. Vancouver, January 8-11. Conference Paper, Presented, 01/2015.
Publications
- Vanessa Brutsche (2023). “Viral Camus: Mapping Cultural Memory in the Covid Era". Memory Studies. Vol. 17:4. Published, 05/25/2023.
- Vanessa Brutsche (2023). “Retro Visions: Scandalous Politics in Resnais’s Stavisky (1974) and Chabrol’s Violette Nozière (1978)” . French Historical Studies. Vol. 46:2, 277-312. Published, 05/01/2023.
- Vanessa Brutsche (2020). “Duras’s Aurélia Steiner and the Ethics of Cinematic Form” . French Studies. Vol. 74:3, 403-419. Published, 07/2020.