Odile Cazenave

Odile Cazenave is Professor of French in Romance Studies, the African Studies Center, and the Center for the Study of Europe.

Her research interests focus on the impact of age, gender and location on the writing and reception of postcolonial literary and filmic narratives in French. Her publications include Femmes rebelles: naissance d’un nouveau roman africain au féminin (L’Harmattan, Paris 1996), Afrique sur Seine. Une nouvelle génération de romanciers africains à Paris (L’Harmattan, 2003)–both are available in translation (Rebellious Women (Lynne Rienner, 1999), and Afrique sur Seine A New Generation of African Writers in Paris; Lexington Books, 2005)), and Contemporary Francophone African Writers and the Burden of Commitment (University of Virginia Press, 2011, co-written with Patricia Celerier, Vassar College). The guest editor for Présence Francophone 58, ‘Francophonies, Ecritures et Immigration,’ and co-editor with writer and philosopher, Tanella Boni, of Cultures Sud, 172 L’engagement au féminin, she has written on a large number of Francophone writers and a wide range of topics related to gender and sexuality, history and memory, the local and the global, representations of postcolonial violence, the diaspora, as well as issues of displacement, migration, and citizenship in a global world. She just co-edited (with Patricia Célérier) a special issue for Présence Francophone, PF85, on the artistic post-genocide production in and on Rwanda.

Odile Cazenave has held visiting appointments at Brown University, Harvard University, M.I.T., Wellesley College, and has taught in the Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies. She is a core faculty for the African Studies Center, the Center for the Study of Europe, and is part of World Languages and Literatures, Middle Eastern and North African Studies, and Cinema and Media Studies.