Dr Nathalie Wourm

Overview

Biography

Dr Nathalie Wourm is a lecturer in Contemporary French Literature and the Director of the Centre for French, Francophone and Comparative Studies (CFFCS).

Dr Wourm’s career at Birkbeck started in October 1989 when she arrived from France as a teaching assistant, part of an exchange with the University of Lyon 2, where she was a postgraduate student. She spent the following year as a teaching assistant at the University of Pennsylvania and then came back to Birkbeck for good in 1991. She worked as an Associate Lecturer while reading for a D.Phil. at Oxford, and was subsequently promoted to Lecturer. Dr Wourm’s research and publications are in the field of contemporary French literature, especially radical and/or experimental poetic practice.

Highlights

• Poètes français du 21e siècle: entretiens (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017)

  Blurb: This is a unique and fascinating document on an exciting period of contemporary French literature. The book is a collection of interviews conducted by academic Nathalie Wourm, who identifies a whole new current of French poetry around the turn of the 21st century. Included in the volume are interviews of Anne-James Chaton, Anne Portugal, Olivier Cadiot, Pierre Alferi, Éric Sadin, Jean-Michel Espitallier, Christophe Hanna, Nathalie Quintane, Charles Pennequin, Vannina Maestri and Jacques Sivan, Jérôme Game, Jean-Marie Gleize, and as commentators, poet Christian Prigent, and publishers Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens and Laurent Cauwet. A critical introduction by Nathalie Wourm precedes these enlightening interviews, discussing the original new findings that have emerged from them.

  "This volume is essential reading for anyone interested in French poetry of the last thirty years. Through fascinating interviews with fourteen poets and two publishers, Nathalie Wourm succeeds in delineating the parameters and motivations of some of the most innovative contemporary poetic practice while also allowing the diversity of that practice to emerge."
  Emma Wagstaff, French Studies, Volume 72, Issue 3, 1 July 2018, Pages 476–477.

Qualifications

• DPhil, Oxon

Administrative responsibilities

• Director, Centre for French, Francophone and Comparative Studies (CFFCS)
• Erasmus+ Academic Coordinator (France)
• Programme Director for BA Language and Politics/Global Politics
• Programme Director for BA Language and English
• Programme Director for BA Language and History of Art

Research

Research interests

• Contemporary French Literature
• Contemporary French Poetry
• French Poststructuralism
• Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

Research overview

My current research and publications are in the field of contemporary poetic practice in France.

I am particularly interested in the influence of post-structuralist thought on contemporary poetry, and the way in which this is leading to a reassessment of the literary activity. The authors I study include Pierre Alferi, Olivier Cadiot, Anne-James Chaton, Jean-Michel Espitallier, Christophe Fiat, Jérôme Game, Jean-Marie Gleize, Christophe Hanna, Vannina Maestri, Charles Pennequin, Anne Portugal, Nathalie Quintane, Eric Sadin, Jacques Sivan and Christophe Tarkos.

I am the founder and director of the Centre for French, Francophone and Comparative Studies (CFFCS).

I have also published in the fields of comparative literature and literature in English, especially in relation to Symbolism and Modernism.

Research clusters and groups

• Member, Communauté des Chercheurs sur la Communauté
• Steering Group Member, Centre de recherche internationale de poésie (CRIP)
• Member, Contemporary French Poetic Practice: an interdisciplinary approach
• Member, Society for French Studies

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Supervisions within Birkbeck:

3

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students who are interested in undertaking research in any of my areas of research interests:

• Contemporary French Literature
• Contemporary French Poetry
  
• French Poststructuralism
• Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
  

Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

• CARLY ROBINSON

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2016

  Title of thesis:

  Schizo-narratives: Feminist activism through Affect in Contemporary Women's Experimental Writing

  Awarded:

  2024

• DALILA VILLELLA

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2017

  Title of thesis:

  Rhizomatic Poetry. A form of political engagement against capitalist society in twenty-first-century France.

  Description:

  The main purpose of my project is to undertake a Deleuzo-Guattarian reading of the poetry of Jacques Sivan, Vannina Maestri and Jean-Michel Espitallier, in order to demonstrate how the concept of the ‘rhizome’ has affected their work. I argue that rhizomatic poetry is used by these three poets to criticise and undermine capitalist ideology.

  The rhizome – a sprawling plant stem – is used as a model of thought by Deleuze and Guattari in opposition to the hierarchical, tree-like structure at the basis of capitalist thinking. Deleuze and Guattari consider that hierarchical or arborescent thought is a source of oppression in capitalist societies and they criticise the unimaginative way of life that derives from it. As poststructuralists and deconstructionists, they believe that the way rhizomes evolve – unstructured, horizontal and chaotic – can be replicated in thought to deconstruct or undo the capitalist model. In that sense, it is an effective tool to transform society and free human existence from the capitalist regime. The idea of rhizomatic thought has been influencing the way 21st-century French poetry politically engages in the fight against capitalism, and this is what I explore in my thesis.

   

  Awarded:

  2023

• SALLY O'REILLY

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor

  Title of thesis:

  Writing the Railway: Biosemiotic Strategies for Enforming Meaning and Dispersing Authorship in Site-Specific Text-Based Artworks

  Awarded:

  2020

Teaching

I am convenor of the following BA modules:

• Contemporary Literature in French
  
• Translation from and into French
  
• Voice, Identity, Gender: Women's Writing in France
  

I also teach French poststructuralism on the module "French Thought: from the Enlightenment to Postmodernity" and on the MA  Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies.

Publications