Spring Courses

FREN 312- Major Literary Works of Post-Revolutionary France
FREN 340- Gender across the World: Francophone Expressions of Identity

Valentin Duquet teaches and researches 19th- and 20th-century French and Francophone Literature. Combining Cultural History and Political Geography, his most recent research focuses on the fin-de-siècle period (with a particular interest in naturalist author Émile Zola) and on the colonial literature of early 20th-century Algeria through a postcolonial lens. Valentin also enjoys teaching and researching the French Caribbean, in particular the works of Guadeloupean author Maryse Condé. His peer-reviewed research has been published in both French and English in journals like French Forum, Excavatio, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, and earned the 2019 “Recherche au Présent” prize at the 20th- and 21st-Century French and Francophone Studies Colloquium. Valentin Duquet has a book chapter on settler-colonial literature titled "Remembering Algeria's Future" forthcoming in 2024 with the collective volume Global Histories and Practices of Islamophobia with Georgetown University in Qatar.

Valentin Duquet received his PhD in 2023 at the University of Texas at Austin where he also completed two years of intensive Arabic courses with the Middle Eastern Studies department. He previously completed MA's in both French and English at Syracuse University and the Université de Strasbourg. Valentin was born in Montbéliard, Franche-Comté, and has taught French at all levels of the curriculum, including an advanced seminar in 2021 titled "Crisis and Conflict" which surveyed major literary works from the seventeenth century to the present.

Selected Publications:

- “Anachronistic Visions of Socialism and Colonial Endeavor: The Influence of Saint-Simonian Thought on Émile Zola’s Novels.” Excavatio, vol. XXXIII (2022). http://aizen.zolanaturalismassoc.org/excavatio/journal.html.

- “Terror & Tremor: Earthquakes and Terrorism in Maïssa Bey’s Surtout ne te retourne pas.” Contemporary French & Francophone Studies: SITES, vol. 24, no. 3 (2020), pp. 297-305. https://doi.org/10.1080/17409292.2020.1785730.

- “Victoire: La vie fardée de Maryse Condé.” French Forum, vol. 44, no. 2, (2019), pp. 257–271. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/747816.

Research Areas:

French Cultural and Intellectual History; North-African Francophone Literature; Nineteenth-century French Literature; Colonial/Postcolonial Literature

Education:

PhD, University of Texas at Austin

MA, Syracuse University

MA, Université de Strasbourg