From 2010 to 2017, I studied the emergence of a literary genre in which the interaction of reader and text is compared to the interaction of organism and environment. The culmination of this research took place in June 2017, when I obtained my PhD (summa cum laude). My thesis is in open-access, and you can download it.
In 2013-2014, I spent twelve months at the Australian National University in Canberra thanks to a grant from the Swiss National Foundation for Science. In the School of History of ANU, I studied environmental history, environmental attitudes, and I began drafting the foundations of a method for reading and interpreting environmental metafiction.
Alongside my doctoral thesis, I have actively participated in numerous national and international conferences, and I have published several articles or cchapters on topics linked to my research.
Publications [+]
"Mapping Carpentaria: Voices, Stories and Journeys of the Gulf Country." Agrégation anglais 2022. Alexis Wright, "Carpentaria". Ed. Estelle Castro-Koshy and Temiti Lehartel. 2021. Check it out here!
“‘An Australian-made hell’: postcolonial katabasis in Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book.” A Quest for Remembrance:The Underworld in Classical and Modern Literature. Ed. Madeleine Scherer and Rachel Falconer. 2020. Check it out here!
"Ecopoetic metafiction: the interaction of organism and environment in postcolonial literatures." Université de Genève. Thèse, 2017. https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:96382
"The Law of Storytelling: The Hermeneutics of Relationality in Alexis Wright's The Swan Book." Ed. Brigid Rooney and Brigitta Olubas. JASAL: Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 15.3 (2015): 1-12. http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:80456
"Ecopoetic Encounters: Amnesia and Nostalgia in Alexis Wright's Environmental Fiction." Australian Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology 5 (2015): 54–67. http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:78828
"From a Poetics of Collision to a Hermeneutics of Discovery: Rethinking Knowledge, Ecology, and History in Rudy Wiebe's A Discovery of Strangers." Literature, Ethics, Morality: American Studies Perspectives. Ed. Ridvan Askin and Philipp Schweighauser. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto, 2015. 195–214. Print. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 32. http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:76906
"The Aesthetics of the Tide: The Ecosystem as Matrix for Transculturation in Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide." Transculturation and Aesthetics: Ambivalence, Power, and Literature. Ed. Joel Kuortti. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2014. Cross-Cultures 179. 171-186. http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:48084
Conferences [+]
Alongside my academic work in the context of my studies at the University of Geneva, I also participated in conferences that touched upon postcolonial literatures and environmental studies. You can find a list of my presentations and some documents related to my papers on the website of the archives of the University of Geneva here, or on my Academia profile:
"Ecopoetic Metafiction: Alexis Wright's Australia." Poetry, Ecology, Poetics. University of Geneva. 15 December 2018. Download!
"Ecopoetic Knowledge and Text: Self-Reflexivity, Relational Landscape and Metaleptic 'Epistemontology' in Alexis Wright's The Swan Book." ASLE-UKI: Green Knowledge. University of Cambridge. September 2015. http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:75392
"Towards a Postcolonial Ecopoetics of Relationality: Journeying Through the Borders of "Self" in Alexis Wright's The Swan Book." Approaching Posthumanism and the Posthuman. University of Geneva. June 2015. http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:73182
"Economy, Ecology, Ecopoiesis: Trace and Plasticity in Jane Urquhart's A Map of Glass." SAUTE 2015: Economies of English. University of Geneva. April 2015. http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:56065
"From a Poetics of Collision to a Hermeneutics of Discovery: Rethinking Knowledge, History and Ecology in Rudy Wiebe's A Discovery of Strangers." SANAS: Literature, Ethics, Morality. University of Basel. November 2014. http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:42208
"Ecopoetic Encounters: Amnesia and Nostalgia in Alexis Wright's Environmental Fiction." EASA: Encountering Australia: Transcultural Conversations. Monash Prato Centre, Italy. September 2014. http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:40626
"The Law of Storytelling: The Hermeneutics of Relationality in Alexis Wright's The Swan Book." ASAL: Worlds Within. University of Sydney. July 2014. http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:39324
"The Affective Resonance of Country: Performing the Ecopoetic Self through Aboriginal Narratives." Affective Habitus: New Environmental Histories of Botany, Zoology and Emotions. Humanities Research Centre, ANU, Canberra. June 2014. http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:39323
"Towards an Ecology of Reading." Environmental History PhD Workshop 2014. Centre for Environmental History, ANU, Canberra. May 2014. http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:39329
"Ecosystem of Transformation: Migration, Borders and Environmentalism in Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide." ASLE 10th Biennial Conference: Changing Nature: Migrations, Energies, Limits. Lawrence, Kansas. May – June 2013. http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:29597
"The Aesthetics of the Tide: The Ecosystem as Matrix for Transculturation in Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide." Transculturation and Aesthetics, Bergen. September 2012. http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:24215
"Clothing as Sociocultural Marker and Homeostatic Tool in Rudy Wiebe's A Discovery of Strangers." CUSO: Designing the Body: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Fashion, Geneva. December 2011.
"Mapping Carpentaria: Aboriginal Dreaming, Trajectories and Environment in Alexis Wright's Novel." CUSO: Literature and the Environment, Geneva. October 2010.
