Overview
Elise Finielz is a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Romance Studies at Cornell University, where she holds her PhD in French Literature. She previously studied political sciences at Sciences Po Strasbourg, sociology at the University of Paris 1, Panthéon Sorbonne and French and Francophone studies at Syracuse University.
At the intersection of sociology of literature, literary history, poetics and textual analysis, her research focuses on women writers from the Francophone Caribbean, their access to the literary field and their contribution to Caribbean literature of French expression and the postcolonial canon. Her project “Writing on the Edge: Women Writers from the Francophone Caribbean and the Literary Field,” examines the biographical trajectories and literary creation of prominent women writers from Guadeloupe, Martinique and Haiti while revisiting the theoretical model of the literary field as conceived by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, in the light of not only class but also gender and race hierarchies. Her next project will explore « cannibal » poetry by Caribbean women poets of French and Creole expression.
She additionally translated essays by historians Lauren Derby and Richard Turits recently published in “Terreurs de frontière : Le massacre des Haïtiens en République dominicaine en 1937.” edited by Watson Denis and published by Les Publications du Centre Challenges in Haiti (Translation Prize 2023, Latin American Studies Association).
Research Focus
Francophone African and Caribbean literature and culture
French colonial history
Feminist and gender studies
Postcolonial studies
Sociology of literature
Publications
Finielz, Elise. “Reading Pluie et Vent sur Télumée Miracle as a legend of the Just”, in “Le masque et la plume”. Intertextualités spéculatives dans les oeuvres d’André et de Simone Schwarz-Bart. RELIEF, December 2021, https://doi.org/10.51777/relief11441
Finielz, Elise. “Temporal Subversion and Political Critique in Abderahmane Sissako’s Life on Earth.” JUMP CUT A Review of Contemporary Media 57, November 2016.
https://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/-FinielzVieSurTerre/index.html
