Tiffany Premand

My dissertation investigates how contemporary feminist rewritings of the French canon challenge prevailing gender norms and redefine consent, sexual harassment, rape, pedophilia, and incest. Drawing upon feminist, postcolonial, and queer studies, as well as the history of gender and sexuality, I examine rewriting as a literary strategy of resistance and resilience that enables the emergence of alternative narratives to counter patriarchal traditions. My corpus includes rewritings of fairy tales, 17th-century theater, Madame de La Fayette’s La Princesse de Clèves (1678), and Laclos’ Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782), with texts like Christine Angot’s Peau d’Âne (2003), Maria Pourchet’s Western (2023), Marie Darrieussecq’s Clèves (2011), and Virginie Despentes’ Cher Connard (2022). It also encompasses cinematic works, such as Jaques Demy’s Peau d’Âne (1970), as well as texts produced outside official publication channels, like fanfictions.

As a proponent of public humanities, I have chosen to present my dissertation in a podcast format to make my research accessible and engaging beyond academia. In doing so, I aim to enrich public discourse on the role of French literary patri/matrimony in shaping political and media perspectives, particularly on issues of sexual violence and its cultural representations within the #MeToo movement and cancel culture debates. I also believe the immersive nature of audio provides an especially fitting medium for addressing sexual violence: it reunites speech and body. My podcast thus seeks to offer an alternative analysis of the voices in my corpus, whether they convey experiences of sexual violence from the premodern or contemporary area.

Before turning to contemporary literature, I specialized in early modern and classical literature. In 2019, I completed my M.A. at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, where I studied French, Latin, and Ancient Greek languages and literatures. My master’s thesis focuses on the emergence of sensibility in early 18th-century France through the analysis of Étienne Simon de Gamaches’ moral treatise Le Système du cœur. This study also allowed me to explore the history of books and cross-cultural intellectual exchanges between France and England.

Publications:

“Les transferts culturels avant la traduction. Le cas de Gamaches,” in Sophie Abdela et al. (dir.), Histoire de l’édition – Enjeux et usages des partages disciplinaires (XVIe-XVIIIe siècle), Classiques Garnier, 2023, p. 71-84.

“Quand la marionnette s’émancipe. Les Réflexions nouvelles sur les femmes de la marquise de Lambert,” in Diane Desrosiers et Roxanne Roy (dir.), Postures ventriloques (XVe-XVIIIe siècle). Voix de femmes, Classiques Garnier, forthcoming. 

Conferences:

Paper: “Relire et réécrire le canon en féministe,” Colloque de littérature d’expression française de l’Université de Fribourg, “Que font les nouveaux corpus à la recherche en littérature? (XIIe-XXIe siècles)”, September 25-27, 2024, Fribourg (Switzerland).

Paper: “Redéfinir le consentement en réécrivant La Princesse de Clèves,” 55th Northeast Modern Languages Association (NeMLA) Annual Convention, March 7-10, 2024, Boston (Massachusetts, U.S.A.).

Paper: “La réécriture à l’heure du mouvement #MeToo,” 20th & 21st-Century French & Francophone Studies International Colloquium, February 22-24, 2024, Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, U.S.A.).

Workshop: “Poulain de la Barre: Précurseur du féminisme ou purplewashing avant l’heure,” 41st Annual International Conference of the Society for Interdisciplinary French 17th-Century Studies (SE17), October 13-15, 2022, Reykjavik (Iceland).

Paper: “«Je sens donc je suis»: un plaidoyer de la sensibilité féminine,” 4th Transversal Conference of the Centre Interuniversitaire de la Recherche sur la Première Modernité XVIe- XVIIIe Siècles (CIREM 16-18), June 15-17, 2022, Montreal (Canada).

Paper: “La traduction comme symptôme: le cas de Gamaches,” 3rd International Colloquium of the Centre Interuniversitaire de la Recherche sur la Première Modernité XVIe-XVIIIe Siècles (CIREM 16-18), October 20-22, 2021, Quebec City (Canada).

Fellowships:

Chateaubriand Fall Fellowship, awarded by The Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States of America in 2024.

MacMillan International Dissertation Research Fellowship, awarded by the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale in 2023.