Teaching

As a lecturer (Assistant, 2002–2007, Maître-Assistant, 2008–2012, Chargé de cours, 2012–2013) in the Department of French Studies at the University of Lausanne, I was involved in teaching at both undergraduate (B.A.) and postgraduate (M.A.) levels. I was first in charge of supervising students in the framework of their studies and took an active part in transdisciplinary seminars on the cultural history of landscape (14th to 21st century), as well as seminars on French literary history and travel literature. I then taught on modern French literary and cultural history (16th to 21st century), methodologies and theories of literary studies, close reading of Francophone novels and dramas, and supervised academic writing workshops.

In my courses and seminars, I highly valued the study of neglected areas of literary history and favored open debates beyond the boundaries of strictly defined “Literary” Studies in which students could critically engage with their personal perception, lived experience and internalized visions of literature.

Above anything else, I focused on:

- discussing accepted definitions of literature and canonical bodies of literary works throughout history
- surpassing geographical boundaries of “French” literary production (by especially including Swiss, Belgian, and Mauritian writers, by highlighting international literary networks and translocal phenomena, and by favoring transnational/translinguistic comparative perspectives)
- positioning literature at the intersection of several practices of writing and developing an transdisciplinary approach of literary production with reference to Saidian Orientalism, postcolonial theory and global studies.

In particular, I situated several of my teachings at the crossroads of Literary Studies and Religious Studies, furthermore including Ecological Studies and Women Studies. While I generally included the topic of religious issues at stake in modern literary works (thematic aspects, generic and formal effects and theoretical implications), I more specifically selected bodies of works in French which testified to a wide array of entangled relations with Asian (mostly Tibetan and Indian) natural environment, religions and cultures.

My teachings comprised topics such as the following:

- "Pays réel, pays rêvé": Tibet in Francophone literature and culture
- The life of the Buddha in Victor Segalen’s Siddhârtha and in French dramas
- Mysticism and esotericism in Malcolm de Chazal’s metatheater
- Madness, neurosis, death and the beyond in Maurice Maeterlinck’s theater plays
- Perception and representation of Indian religions and cultures in Ananda Devi’s novels
- Literature and religion in the 17th century
- Writing the self: autobiography in the 20th century
- Literature and objects in the 19th century
- Drama and theater before 1650
- Paris in the 19th century literature
- Novel and painting in the 19th century
- Political, ideological, moral and religious uses of tales in the 18th century
- The inception of the figure of the honnête homme in the 17th century