Wesleyan University Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

Liana Pshevorska

With one foot in French and the other in Francophone studies, Liana’s scholarship examines the works of contemporary migrant (translingual) writers in France from historically non-francophone regions. Her research lies at the intersection of migrant and transnational studies as well as multilingualism and self-writing.

While many studies in translingualism focus on the interaction between several languages in the text or the authors’ direct accounts of engaging with a new language, Liana’s current book project, In-Betweenness: Aesthetics and Identity in Contemporary Translingual Francophone Literature, examines the aesthetic, non-linguistic implications of translingualism in ways that extend beyond these traditional terms of bilingualism. Her project also examines the socioliterary reception of translingual authors in France and their place in a larger debate on world literature in France. Through three case studies – Vassilis Alexakis (Greece), Brina Svit (Slovenia), and Andreï Makine (Russia) – she examines the emergence of new aesthetic forms which, while rooted in the tension between native and adopted tongues, also subvert this language binary and its exploitation by marketing forces. Her analysis calls for a necessary refinement of current approaches to translingualism in order to account for forms of in-betweenness that have been overlooked in the shadow of the bilingual lens.

Book Chapters

“L’espace dédalesque de Vassilis Alexakis : errance, (im)mobilité et fabulation dans L’Enfant grec,Vassilis Alexakis : chemins croisés, edited by Marianne Bessy and Ioanna Chatzidimitriou, Presses Universitaires de Rennes (forthcoming).

Articles

“Le fransè ke chparl ègzist”: Translanguaging in the Work of Katalin Molnár,”
     Literary Multilingualism Studies, special issue of Journal of Literary Multilingualism (upcoming 2023)

“Unsettling Closeness, Unsettled Memories: War Trauma and Identity Conflict in Nancy Huston’s L’Empreinte de l’ange.
     The French Review, vol. 96, no. 4, 2023 (pdf)

L’Ignorance de Milan Kundera: Pour en finir avec le Grand Retour odysséen.”
     La francophonie translingue, special issue of Interfrancophonies. no. 9, 2018 (pdf)

“Through the Translingual Lens: Persian Calligraphy in Mana Neyestani’s L’Araignée de Mashhad.
     Translingual Writing in French / Translingual French Literature, special issue of Contemporary French and Francophone Studies: SITES, 2023 (under peer review).

“Off the Map: Spatialization of the Self in Vassilis Alexakis’ La Langue maternelle” (in progress).

Conference Proceedings

“Comment ils se voient? Les jeux exophones de Vassilis Alexakis’ and d’Andreï Makine.”
     Lasemaine.fr 2017 : FLUP 20-24 mars, Porto, Universidade de Porto. Faculdade de Letras, 2018 (pdf)

Book Reviews

“Book Review: Evil: A History in Modern French Literature and Thought. by Damian Catani.”
    AmeriQuests: Nature, Law and Society  11:1, 2014 (link)

“Book Review: Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. ed. by M. G. Murayeva, R. M. Toivo.”
    MLN, vol. 129 no. 5, 2014

©2022 Liana Pshevorska - Split Template by One Page Love