Thomas D’Amato
Thomas D’Amato is a professeur agrégé de Lettres Modernes and a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University. In 2017, he earned a Master’s degree summa cum laude in French Literatures from the Sorbonne (Paris IV) with two theses engaging with Gender Studies and Psychoanalysis. The first one focused on the presence of hysteria in medieval French literary and religious texts. The second one revolved around the seducer’s figure in several interwar period French novels. After teaching literature in high schools for three years, he joined the French Ph.D. program at Johns Hopkins University in 2021, where he could further develop his interest in Environmental Humanities. In 2023, Thomas co-created the Graduate Working Group on Environmental Humanities at Johns Hopkins University, which gathers graduate students from various departments and allows them to read and discuss recent publications in Environmental Humanities as well as present their works in progress. His current research focuses on the features of the relationship between a subjectivity facing a situation of crisis and its natural environment in 20th- and 21st-century French and Francophone literature. His research interests include Ecocriticism, Environmental Humanities, Eco Phenomenology, and Affect Theory.
Jean-Ederson Jean-Pierre
Jean-Ederson Jean-Pierre received his MA in French and Francophone studies from Syracuse University after completing a BA in Sociology at the State University of Haiti. Jean-Ederson taught French language during four semesters as part of his Teaching Assistant duties at Syracuse University, where he was honored both as Outstanding MA student in French and Outstanding Teaching Assistant. His research interests include, but are not limited to, the relationship between literature and society with a focus on the Francophone Caribbean literature.
Clara Kheyrkhah
Clara Kheyrkhah is a fourth-year PhD student in the Modern Languages and Literatures department at the Johns Hopkins University. She earned her BA in French with a minor in English literature from McGill University (Montreal, Canada). Her honors thesis examined the writing of exile in Assia Djebar’s L’amour, La fantasia. At Hopkins, she works on contemporary French literature and medical humanities, with a particular focus on the concept of immunity and body theory.
Annie Lulu
Annie Lulu
is a PhD student in the French Program at Johns Hopkins’ Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. She graduated in Philosophy at the Sorbonne and earned two certificates in Criminal and Criminological Sciences at Paris Pantheon-Assas university. Her research interests reflect her singular cultural upbringing between an African and an Eastern European background, embracing French and francophone modernity’s avant-garde transcultural poets and novelists, from the Congolese post-colonial poetry and fiction works of Tchicaya U’Tamsi and Sony Labou Tansi, to the works of Benjamin Fondane and the interwar French writing poets of the Romanian Jewish artistic exile in Paris, as well as the rare Romani francophone literary productions, in particular the works of the sole 20th century French Roma novelist, Mattéo Maximoff.
A multi-awarded francophone creative writer, her first novel, “La Mer Noire dans les Grands Lacs” received the Senghor Prize, the Alain-Fournier prize, the first edition of the Cocteau literary prize, and was a finalist to several francophone awards such as the Grand Prix du Roman Métis or the Ahmadou Kourouma Prize of the International African Geneva Bookfair. She received the Prix du Roman d’Écologie 2023 for her second novel, “Peine des Faunes”. Along with novels and essays, she regularly writes for poetry reviews and contemporary art books, such as “Recaptioning Congo”, a collective exhibition catalog (New York Times Best Art Books of 2022).
Wanyun Luo
Wanyun Luo holds an M.A. in French Language and Literature at Peking University, with a thesis regarding the representation of faces in Jean Cocteau’s works. In 2016-2017, she was a visiting student at SciencesPo Paris and in 2020, at L’École normale supérieure de Lyon. Her research is centered on the history, representation and philosophy of the face, and the ways in which words, images and sounds participate in the perception and memory of human faces. Wanyun’s longtime interest in visual arts has triggered her reading of modern and contemporary French writers who write about arts, and later, her investigation on the procedures of the writing of the art history. Wanyun is also a dedicated multi-lingual translator (French, English, Chinese) in contemporary literature and theatre.
Julianne Mehra
Julianne Mehra is a PhD student in the French Program of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Johns Hopkins University. She graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College, with a BA in Comparative Literature and a thesis exploring music and literature in the context of French Enlightenment aesthetics. Her current research focuses on the eighteenth-century French conception of the sublime in literature and theater. She also serves as an editorial assistant for the MLN French Issue.
Camille Roche
Camille Roche is a PhD student in the French Program of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. Her research interest centers on the writings of the self (journals, diaries, letters, autofiction, and other autobiographical forms) in the 20th century, specifically works produced by French authors writing in the American context. She also cultivates a strong interest in Documentary Photography (which she practices). Prior to joining JHU, she earned her MA in French Literature from Paris-IV Sorbonne (now Paris Sorbonne Lettres) and worked for several years in finance and publishing.
Julien Tribotté
Julien Tribotté possesses a rich multidisciplinary background. Holding degrees in philosophy, art history, and cinema from the École Normale Supérieure (Ulm) and the Sorbonne, he brings a diverse perspective to his academic pursuits. His research centers on contemporary French literature, specifically exploring the theme of flight through the works of notable authors such as Annie Ernaux, Édouard Louis, Michel Houellebecq, Paul B. Preciado, and Alain Damasio. Among his literary accomplishments is the novel ‘Chronicle of a Love,’ published by Anne Carrière editions.