CURRICULUM VITAE

EMPLOYMENT

Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, Canada

Based at St Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia.

Two-year position beginning August 2023.

University of Melbourne

Lecturer in French Studies (Melbourne Early Career Academic Fellow), January 2022-July 2023 [2.5 year position].

EDUCATION

PhD, Cornell University, French Studies (from the Department of Romance Studies), 2022 (defended February 4, 2022)

Dissertation Title: Identity Out of Place: Flaubert, Beckett, Godard, and the Subject of Modernism

Special committee: Enzo Traverso, Jonathan Culler, Fouad Makki, Tracy McNulty

MA, Cornell University, Romance Studies (French Studies) (2017)

MA (Research), Monash University, Critical Theory (2012) – First-Class Honours

BA, Haverford College, English Literature, with Minor in Film Studies (2008)

  • Received departmental honours for best undergraduate thesis: “Picturing Memory, Puncturing Vision: Nabokov’s Pale Fire”

Coursework for BA, University of Melbourne (2004-2006)

PUBLICATIONS

BOOKS

(In Progress) Just Personal: Impersonality and Aesthetic Subjectivity From Flaubert to Godard

PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES

  • “No Messing With Love: Maurice Pialat’s A nos amours.” Senses of Cinema 114 (forthcoming, June 2025).

  • “Mastery and Genericity: Marx, Badiou, Beckett.” New Literary History 55.4 (forthcoming, February 2025).

  • “The Dweller on the Threshold: Whiteness, the Family and the End of Classical Cinema.” Film-Philosophy 29.1 (February 2025): 169–198.

  • “The Mortal Subject of Radical Reflection: Self-Consciousness, Sociality, and Politics in Merleau-Ponty.” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 29.6 (December 2024): 3-18.

  • “Modernism and Identity: The Subject of Madame Bovary.” MLN (Modern Language Notes) 136/4 (Fall 2021): 827-853.

  • “Immanence et transcendance dans le marxisme: Retour sur le débat Sartre / Lefort / Merleau-Ponty.” Implications Philosophiques: Espace de recherche et de diffusion, special section on Marxismes français d’après-guerre (2021).

  • “Politique symbolique et expression: « L’expérience prolétarienne » entre Merleau-Ponty et le post-marxisme.” Rue Descartes 2019/2 (no. 96), pp. 117-126.

  • “Socialism For Our Time: Freedom, Value, Transition.” Review Article on Martin Hägglund, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom. b2o: boundary2 online (June, 2019).

  • “Alves’ Appurtenances: Realism as Doctrine and as Imperative.” Colloquy: Text Theory Critique, Issue 27 (September, 2014), pp. 109-128.

  • “The Tension of Rationality.” Review article on Roberto Schwarz, Two Girls and Other Essays. Colloquy: Text Theory Critique, Issue 25 (August, 2013), pp. 58-88.

ACADEMIC BOOK CHAPTERS

  • “An Ethics of Acknowledgement: The Transgression of Identity and the Singularity of the World in La fille inconnue.” In ReFocus: The Films of the Dardenne Brothers, ed. Jamie Steele. Forthcoming 2025, Edinburgh University Press.

  • “The Intimate Distance of Spiritual Freedom: Desire, Self-Consciousness, and Socialism in This Life.” In A New Hegelian Marxism: Debating Martin Hägglund’s This Life, ed. Michael Lazarus. Forthcoming 2025, Routledge.

  • “The Mystery of The French Inhaler.” In Warren Zevon and Philosophy: Beyond Reptile Wisdom, ed. John Mackinnon. Carus Books, 2023, pp. 53-60.

  • “Self-Hatred as Identity.” In Better Call Saul and Philosophy: I Think Therefore I Scam, ed. Joshua Heter and Brett Coppinger. Carus Books, 2022, pp. 77-88.

  • “Keywords: Communism.” In Understanding Marx, Understanding Modernism, ed. Mark Steven, pp. 231–233. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.

  • “Picturing Memory, Puncturing Vision: Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire.” The Goalkeeper: The Nabokov Almanac, Academic Studies Press: Boston, 2010, pp. 124–151.

BOOK REVIEWS

  • Fredric Jameson, The Antinomies of Realism. Affirmations: Of The Modern, Volume 2 (1), Winter 2014: pp. 165–175.

AS EDITOR

  • “Far From The Masters: Post-New Wave French Cinema.” Dossier, Senses of Cinema Issue 114 (June 2025, Forthcoming), edited by Conall Cash and Corey Cribb.

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS

  • HOSIF Funds, University of Melbourne School of Languages and Linguistics. Awarded for French Film Club screening series in June 2023 ($450), and for conference support for the academic symposium “After the New Wave: Cinema, History, Belatedness” ($870).

  • Peer Collaboration Grant, Cornell Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines. Award for collaboration between myself and another writing seminar instructor, Emir Yigit, to develop co-teaching strategies and organize activities between our classes, Fall 2021 ($250).

  • Chateaubriand Foundation, Semester-long dissertation research fellowship, Spring 2020 ($8300).

  • Cornell-Oxford Brettschneider Exchange Award, Summer 2019 ($5000).

  • Corson French Essay Prize, Cornell University, 2019 ($750).

  • Dissertation Writing Group Award, Cornell Society for the Humanities, 2018-19 ($1000).

  • Peter Uwe Hohendahl Critical Theory Essay Prize, 2017 ($250).

  • Research Travel Grant, Cornell Society for the Humanities, 2017 ($1000).

  • Michele Sicca Research Grant, Cornell Institute for European Studies, 2017 ($3000).

  • Graduate Reading Group Award, Cornell Institute for Comparative Modernities, 2015-16 ($1000).

  • SAGE Fellowship for PhD Research, Cornell University (app. $25,000 p.a.), 2014-15 & 2017-18.

  • Australian Postgraduate Association Scholarship for Masters Research, (app. $24,000 p.a.), 2010-11.

  • Ian Walker Prize for thesis, Haverford College English Department, 2008.

  • Departmental Honors, Haverford College English Department, 2008.

CONFERENCE AND SEMINAR PRESENTATIONS

"Beckett and Johns' Foirades/Fizzles." Invited Panelist, Melbourne Rare Book Week, July 26 2024.

"Television, Temporality, and Aesthetic Experience." Invited presentation to Philosophies of Screen Media Symposium, University of Melbourne, July 13 2024.

"'The Moment When It Claimed Their Lives': Mortality and History in Merleau-Ponty." International Merleau-Ponty Circle, Annual Conference, Deakin University, December 4-6 2023.

"Just Personal: Modernist Anxieties and Utopias of Impersonality." Invited seminar presentation, St Francis Xavier University English department, November 14 2023.

"Mastery and Genericity: Marx, Badiou, Beckett." Invited seminar presentation, Dalhousie University English department seminar, October 13 2023.

"Why Walter White Had To Be Killed: Life and Aesthetic Experience in Breaking Bad." American Society for Aesthetics Conference, Santa Fe NM, July 7-9 2023.

"The Body and its Image After the New Wave, or Philippe Garrel's Les baisers de secours as Comedy of Remarriage." After the New Wave/Après la nouvelle vague: Cinema, History, Belatedness Symposium, University of Melbourne, March 18 2023.

"Redetermining Character: Emma Bovary and Self-Presentation." Modern Language Association, roundtable on "To Be and to Have Character" organised by Prof. Annabel Kim (Harvard University), January 2023 (online).

"Resisting Movement: Disidentifying the jeune fille from Madame Bovary to Rien à foutre." Australian Society for French Studies Conference, Victoria University Wellington, December 2022.

"Modernity Redefined, Maturity Reclaimed: Merleau-Ponty and the Modernist Critique of Mastery." Australasian Modernist Studies Network, The University of Auckland, December 2022.

"Emergence From Immaturity: Childhood, Maturity, and Modernity in Robert Brandom's Hegel." Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy Conference, The University of Melbourne, November 2022.

"Giving Oneself: Godard's Vivre sa vie." Invited presentation to University of Otago Languages and Cultures Research Seminar, September 20, 2022.

"Se donner: Possession, Sex, and Recognition in Godard's Vivre sa vie." Invited presentation to DRAFT Research Seminar in French Studies in Australia, June 2022.

"Impersonality and Devastation: Flaubert, Joyce, Morrison." Australian Association for Literature 2022 Conference: 1922 Turned Upside-Down. Western Sydney University, June 2022.

"The Queerness of Norms: Sexuality, Finite Life, Social Bonds." Historical Materialism Australasia, Melbourne, May 2022.

"The Queerness of Finitude: Normativity, Temporality, and Social Bonds." American Comparative Literature Association, April 2021. (Zoom)

"Freedom as Self-Constitution in Literary Modernism: On Flaubert's Madame Bovary." The Ends of Autonomy Colloquium, Monash/Warwick Universities, December 2020. (Zoom)

"À moi de jouer: Performance, Futurity, and Selfhood in Beckett's Fin de partie." Australasian Society for French Studies, December 2020. (Zoom)

"The Failure of the Philosophy of History': Merleau-Ponty's Politics." Australasian Society for French Studies, University of New England, Sydney, Australia, December 2019.

"The Intimate Distance of Spiritual Freedom: The Normative Framework of Socialism in This Life." Invited panel on the work of Martin Hägglund, Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy, Annual Meeting, University of Melbourne, Australia, December 2019.

"Is History Structured Like A Body? Merleau-Ponty, Althusser, and Overdetermination." Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, September 2019.

"Langage et comportement dans la pensée politique de Merleau-Ponty et Lefort aux années 50." International Conference "Langage et travail: une approche interdisciplinaire," Université de Paris 10 -- Nanterre, March 2019.

"Conscience révolutionnaire, violence révolutionnaire: Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Fanon." Workshop / Journée d'étude "Marxismes français d'après-guerre,"Université de Paris 10 -- Nanterre, 2017.

"History and Class Consciousness in France: Merleau-Ponty and Debord." Historical MaterialismConference, London, UK, 2017.

"The Place of Consciousness in Conjunctural Analysis: From Jameson's Postmodernity to Today." Invited research paper presented to "The Current Conjuncture in World Affairs" workshop, Sussex University, Brighton, UK, 2016.

"What is Southern Theory?" Ideas of South Romance Studies conference, Cornell University, 2016.

"Sartrean Seriality and Nietzschean Heroism in Serial Killer Narratives." On Seriality conference, Cornell University, 2015.

"Jameson and Mimesis." American Comparative Literature Association, Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA, 2015.

"The Prostitute and the Maestro: Realism and Character in Eça de Queirós' The Maias, Following Jameson." Workshop on Fredric Jameson's The Antinomies of Realism, Centre for Modernism Studies in Australia, University of New South Wales, 2014.

"The Cinema of Lee Chang-Dong: Between Vehicle and Allegory." Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy, Annual Meeting, University of Western Sydney, 2013.

"On Not Seeing Films: Experience and Ideas in Criticism." Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand Annual Meeting, University of New South Wales, 2010.

CONFERENCE/WORKSHOP ORGANIZATION

"The Thought of the Novel and the Limits of Form: A Symposium on Timothy Bewes' Free Indirect." Organiser of this workshop on the work of Dr. Timothy Bewes (Brown University) as part of his visit to St Francis Xavier University. Speakers include Dr. Michael D'Arcy (StFX University), Dr. Mathias Nilges (StFX University), Dr. Thomas Laughlin (Acadia University), March 2025.

"Aesthetics and Politics." Convenor of this speaker series in the English and Modern Languages departments at St Francis Xavier University, 2024-25. Speakers include Dr. Elizabeth Wijaya (University of Toronto), Dr. Andrew Cole (Princeton University), and Dr. Michael Lazarus (Deakin University).

"Après la nouvelle vague / After the New Wave: Cinema, History Belatedness." Symposium at the University of Melbourne hosted by the French Studies program, 18 March 2023. Lead organizer.

"Ideas of South." Cornell University Department of Romance Studies Graduate Student Conference, Spring 2016. Co-organizer with Benedetta Carnaghi, Jackqueline Frost, Nick Huelster.

One-day workshop on Fredric Jameson's The Antinomies of Realism. University of New South Wales, Sydney, July 2014. Lead organizer.

Postgraduate Colloquium. Monash University School of English, Communications and Performance Studies, December 2010. Co-organizer with Samuel Cuff Snow and David Blencowe.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

COURSE DESIGNER / CO-ORDINATOR / INSTRUCTOR OF RECORD

"MULT40007: Special Research Topics." University of Melbourne, Semester 1, 2023.

Co-ordinator of individualized special research topic for Honours student Ekaterina Tulyakova. Designed a reading list tailored to student's research interest in theories of sexual and political emancipation in cinema. Readings and discussion conducted in French.

"French 6." University of Melbourne, Semester 2, 2022.

Subject co-ordinator and instructor of advanced intermediate unit in French focused on the theme of conversation. Position involves co-ordinating between multiple teaching staff, revising subject syllabus, and responsibility for administrative issues, in addition to teaching my own section / group in the unit.

"Marx, Nietzsche, Freud." GERST 1170. First-year writing seminar, Cornell University, Fall 2021. Course introduces students to key ideas in the humanities through an introduction to these three thinkers. The key focus of the course as I teach it is on the dynamic of critique and freedom as a guiding thread between Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud: we consider each thinker as engaged in the critique of how human beings are determined (by history, ideology, civilization, repression), to the end of establishing new forms of freedom (through political praxis, genealogy as self-discovery, or psychoanalytic practice).

"The Writing of Life." ROMS 1102. First-year writing seminar, Cornell University, Spring 2021. Uses literary and cinematic texts to introduce students to the idea of writing as a form of self-constitution. Texts are studied for how they find textual means to foreground the tension between 'who you are' and 'what you do'. Authors and filmmakers studied include Flaubert, Ernaux, Godard, Zonca (plus excerpts from TV series including Bojack Horseman and Better Call Saul); theoretical/critical texts by Auerbach, Dennett, Korsgaard, Strawson. Students write five essays, four of which go through at least one redraft.

"Introduction to French and Francophone Literature: Liberté et responsabilité." FREN 2310. Cornell University, Fall 2019. Taught in French. Course introduced students with at least two years' background in French language to literature in French and techniques of literary analysis, looked at through the theme of freedom and responsibility. A central aim of the course was to consider how literature stages the relationship between freedom as an escape from determination and responsibility as an effort to communicate one's experience to others. Authors studied include Montaigne, Balzac, Rimbaud, Genet, Beauvoir, Sartre, and Fanon.

"Critical Theory of the Family." Centre de Langues Social Science section, Paris 8 Université, France, Spring 2019. Course covering Marxist, feminist, and queer approaches to the family in critical theory, alongside works of film and television. Key concern of the course is to get students to draw out relationships between cultural texts that present family life and the social realities that constitute the family in its capitalist, patriarchal form; and, through this, to consider tensions within and resistances to this predominant form of the family. Authors include Beauvoir, Parsons, Firestone, Donzelot, Edelman, Lewis; film and television looked at includes The Sopranos, Ozzie and Harriet, North By Northwest, The Birds, Roma.

LANGUAGE INSTRUCTOR

Intermediate French. FREN 2090. Cornell University, Fall 2020. Led discussion section three times weekly (on Zoom). All material taught online.

Elementary French. FREN 1210-1220. Cornell University, 2015-16. Led discussion section four times weekly and graded all materials.

TEACHING ASSISTANT

"The Rise of the Novel." University of Melbourne, Semester 1, 2022 (course co-ordinated by Prof. Véronique Duché). Led weekly tutorial groups, graded all student work, collaborated with course co-ordinator on structure of course, and gave a guest lecture on Flaubert and the twentieth-century avant-garde.

"Screening Cosa Nostra: The Mafia and the Movies From Scarface to The Sopranos." ITAL 3010. Cornell, Spring 2017 (course co-ordinated by Prof. Timothy Campbell). Led bi-weekly discussion sections, graded papers.

"American Cinema." AMST 2760. Cornell, Fall 2016 (course co-ordinated by Prof. Sabine Haenni). Led weekly discussion sections, graded papers and exams, gave lecture on "New Hollywood and the End of Classical Narrative Cinema."

"World History 1 & 2." Victoria University, Australia, 2012-13 (course co-ordinated by Prof. Robert Pascoe). Led weekly discussion sections, graded papers and exams, presented lecture on "The City in History."

"Forms of Narrative Cinema." Monash University, Australia, 2010 (course co-ordinated by Dr. Adrian Martin). Led weekly discussion sections, graded papers and exams, presented lecture on the films and writings of Raúl Ruiz.

"Contemporary Film Studies." Monash University, Australia, 2010 (course co-ordinated by Dr. Julia Vassilieva). Led weekly discussion sections, graded papers and exams.

GRADER

"Introduction to Film Analysis." PMA 2540. Cornell, Fall 2020 (course co-ordinated by Prof. Veronica Fitzpatrick). Grader of weekly student blog posts responding to films and scholarly materials.

GUEST TEACHER

Guest lecturer in individual sessions of two classes at St Francis Xavier University:

"Sex, Love, and Literature" (course co-ordinated by Prof. Michael D'Arcy), Fall 2024

"Detective Fiction and Film" (course co-ordinated by Prof. Michael D'Arcy), Fall 2023

TRANSLATIONS

(Commissioned translations from French to English)

Roberto Terzi, “Institution as Event and the Ambiguity of History.” South Atlantic Quarterly (forthcoming, 2025).

Frédéric Monferrand, “Raya Dunayevskaya’s Emancipatory Marxism.” In Raya Dunayevskaya’s Intersectional Marxism: Race, Class, Gender, and the Dialectics of Liberation, ed. Kevin Anderson, Kieran Durkin, Heather A. Brown. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021 (pp. 271-284).

Laurent Bove, “Between Spinoza and Matheron, Something Happens…” In Spinoza in Twenty-First Century American and French Philosophy: Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Moral and Political Philosophy, ed. Jack Stetter and Charles Ramond. London: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2019 (pp. 325-334).

OTHER EXPERIENCE

Panelist, Melbourne Rare Book Week discussion on Samuel Beckett and Jasper Johns’ Foirades/Fizzles, University of Melbourne, July 2024, with Bailieu Library Curator Susan Millard and Associate Professor of Art History Anthony White

Reading Group Convenor, on Charles Taylor’s Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment (with colleagues from The University of Melbourne, The University of Toronto, St Francis Xavier University, and Yale University, 2024-25); and on Jacques Rancière’s Modern Times (with colleagues from the University of Melbourne and Monash University, 2023)

Organizer/Convenor of French and Francophone Film Club, University of Melbourne, 2022-23. Weekly screenings with invited speakers from the university and the larger community.

Invited Speaker to Melbourne High School Philosophy Society, 28 March 2023

Thesis Examiner for Honours Thesis in French Studies, December 2022

Organizer/Convenor of French Studies Reading Group, University of Melbourne, 2022

Research Assistant to Prof. J. Ellen Gainor. Translation project on theatre director Jacques Copeau, Cornell University, Winter 2021-2

Panelist, book discussion on Martin Hägglund, “This Life and Marx,” Historical Materialism, 2021 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kP1tuxc-Sw)

Peer reviewer for articles submitted to Parrhesia journal (2024), Transformations journal (2023), Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Literature (2019)

Graduate Student Committee Member, Job Search in Francophone Studies, Cornell University, 2019

Lecturer, Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy (“Art and Philosophy” course), 2013

Co-editor-in-chief, Colloquy: text theory critique, Graduate Student Journal, Monash University, 2011-13

Research Assistant to Dr. Adrian Martin. Annotations for DVD edition of Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma, 2011

Young film critic, Berlinale Talent Press program, 2011

LANGUAGES

English (native) French (near-native fluency) Portuguese (reading knowledge and intermediate speaking) Latin (intermediate reading knowledge) German (intermediate reading knowledge)

REFERENCES

For academic research:

Tracy McNulty. Professor of French and Comparative Literature, Cornell University. tkm9@cornell.edu

Jonathan Culler. Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature, Cornell University. culler@cornell.edu

Martin Hägglund. Professor of Humanities and Comparative Literature, Yale University. martin.hagglund@yale.edu

Michael D’Arcy. Associate Professor of English, St Francis Xavier University. mdarcy@stfx.ca

For teaching:

Michael D’Arcy. Associate Professor of English, St Francis Xavier University. mdarcy@stfx.ca

Flavien Glidja. Senior Lecturer of French Language, Cornell University. ftg2@cornell.edu

Tracy McNulty. Professor of French and Comparative Literature, Cornell University. tkm9@cornell.edu

Marie-Claire Vallois. Associate Professor of French, Cornell University. mv46@cornell.edu

For translation:

Michael Hardt. Editor, South Atlantic Quarterly. Professor of Literature, Duke University. hardt@duke.edu