Eve Morisi

Picture of Eve Morisi
On leave
Associate Professor of French
Ph.D., Princeton University and Université Paris IV-Sorbonne, 2011, French and Francophone Literature
M.A., Princeton University, 2007, French Literature
M.A., Columbia University, 2005, French and Romance Philology (Comparative Literature Thesis, French/American)
M.A., Université Paris VII, 2004, American Literature
University of California, Irvine
206 Humanities Instructional Building
Irvine, CA 92697
Research Interests
19th-21st French and Francophone literature; poetics, politics & ethics; representations of violence; Hugo, Baudelaire, and Camus studies
Academic Distinctions
European Institutes for Advanced Study Fellowship. Paris Institute for Advanced Study. 2015-2016

Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship, Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Study (Marseilles), Fall 2015-Winter 2016 (declined to accept Paris IAS fellowship)

Kirby Prize for best essay, South Central Modern Language Association, 2015

Laureate of the 2006-2011 Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition in French Studies, 2011 (declined)

“Mention très honorable avec les félicitations du jury à l’unanimité,” French literature doctorate. La Sorbonne. 2011

Mary Isabel Sibley Fellowship in French Studies. The Phi Beta Kappa Society. 2010-2011

Charlotte Elizabeth Procter Honorific Fellowship. Princeton University. 2009-2010

Laurance S. Rockefeller Graduate Prize Fellowship of the Center for Human Values. Princeton University. 2009-2010

École Normale Supérieure Fellowship. Princeton University. 2008-2009

Alfred Foulet Teaching Award for Language Instruction. Princeton University. 2008

Donald and Mary Hyde Research Award. Princeton University. Summer 2008

PIIRS Predissertation Fellowship. Princeton University. Summer 2007

Forbes College Graduate Fellowship. Princeton University. 2006-2008

“Mention Très Bien” (summa cum laude). “Maîtrise” in American Literature, Université Paris VII. 2004

Université Paris VII, UFR Charles V / University of Arizona Academic Exchange Fellowship. 2002-2003

“Mention Très Bien” (summa cum laude). “Licence” in American Civilization, Université Paris VII. 2002

“Mention Très Bien” (summa cum laude). “D.E.U.G.” in English Language, Literature, and Civilization, Université Paris VII. 2001

“Mention Très Bien” (summa cum laude). “Baccalauréat littéraire.” Brunoy, France. 1999
Research Abstract
Ève Morisi's research seeks to interrogate some of the intersections of poetics, politics and ethics in French and Francophone literature. Part of her work focuses on the representations of extreme human violence and resistance from the 19th to the 21st century. It examines the ways in which literary language and forms shed light on the socio-political and moral questions posed by these phenomena, with a particular interest in Hugo and Baudelaire for the 19th century, and in Camus and Algerian Francophone writers for the 20th and 21st.

She is currently revising the manuscript of a monograph that explores the relationships between poetics and ethics in Victor Hugo’s, Charles Baudelaire’s, and Albert Camus’s works centered on capital punishment. She is also beginning research on the faces of terror and terrorism in French and Francophone literature, from Victor Hugo to Boualem Sansal.

In 2011, she published "Albert Camus contre la peine de mort" with the support of Amnesty International (Gallimard; prefaced by Robert Badinter, the former French Minister of Justice who abolished capital punishment in France, also former President of the Conseil Constitutionnel). This volume was the basis for a public exhibition that Professor Morisi curated at the Camus Center in Aix-en-Provence in 2012. In 2013, her book "Albert Camus, le souci des autres" (Classiques Garnier) came out. In 2014, she edited a volume on the broader question of "Camus et l'éthique" (Classiques Garnier).

Articles that stem from her interest the craft of writing about or in the face of especially pressing ethical and political matters have also focused on such questions as infanticide, female objectification, bloodshed, colonialism, and the resistance to forgetting—in the works of Corneille, E. A. Poe, Hugo, Baudelaire, Camus, and the OuLiPo, among others.


The courses Ève Morisi teaches at UCI, a number of which are cross-listed with Comparative Literature and International Studies, intersect with her scholarship:

- UPPER-DIVISION, taught in French:
• 19th-Century French Literature Survey
• 20th-Century French and Francophone Literature Survey
• Heaven and Hell: Baudelaire and the Poètes maudits (also a graduate seminar)
• Crime and Punishment in Modern French Literature
• Albert Camus: Literature and Ethics
• Research Seminar, Capstone

- UPPER-DIVISION, taught in English:
• The Writer as Fighter or, the Politics of Literary Engagement
• From Conquest to War: French Colonization in Algeria
• Writing Human Rights
• Telling Terror/isms

- LOWER-DIVISION, taught in English:
• Rebels & Renegades

- UPCOMING:
• Modern French Poetry
• Pain
• Parisian Peripheries: Faubourgs, Banlieues, Cités
Publications
BOOKS:

- In progress:
• Ink and the Scaffold: Hugo, Baudelaire, Camus and the Death Penalty (monograph; under advance contract with Northwestern UP)

• Death Sentences: Literature and State Killing (edited volume, in collaboration with Birte Christ; contribution: introduction and chapter on Hugo)


- Published:
• Albert Camus et l'éthique. (Ed.) Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2014.
“To live well, with and for the other, in just institutions.” This is Paul Ricoeur's definition of "ethics," which he opposes to morality. Although the etymology of the two terms points to the same object, our mores, Ricoeur notes that morality is informed by obligations and forbiddings modeled by a norm. "Camus et l'éthique" takes Ricoeur's concise and contrastive definition as a point of departure to revisit the life and works of Albert Camus (1913-1960). The volume examines how the Nobel laureate's reflections, fiction, and actions define and address a number of ethical quests that still seem relevant today: among them "the good life," engagement with our human condition, with others, with history, as well as desirable modes of sharing and forms of community.

• Albert Camus, le souci des autres. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013.
This monograph investigates the ways in which the works and thought of Camus are characterized by the refusal of exclusion and the establishment of a minimal threshold of the human. It analyzes these foundations of Camus's ethics and activism all while considering their limits through a close examination of his journalism, fiction, correspondence, and public interventions—with a particular focus on his less-studied writings. This large corpus confirms the existence of a profound and multifaceted care for vulnerable communities, at once reviving the polysemy, etymology, and mythology of "souci" (meaning both "care" and "concern") and foreshadowing the later development of the concept of care in the Western World.

• Albert Camus contre la peine de mort. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2011.
This exhaustive anthology of Camus’s writings on the death penalty, which includes as-yet unpublished material, presents the writer's defense of numerous men condemned to death during Franco's dictatorship, WWII and the purges that marked the Libération, the Greek Civil War, the repression perpetrated in Eastern Europe under the aegis of Stalinism, and the Algerian War of Independence, among other key moments in contemporary history.
It includes a preface by former French Minister of Justice and President of the Conseil Constitutionnel Robert Badinter, a chronology of the history of the death penalty in France, an introduction on the place of abolitionism in Camus's life, works, and in French history, the author's fiction, essays, editorials, speeches, carnets, and letters on the question of lethal justice, and a closing essay on capital punishment as "Motif, mythe, éthique" in L'Étranger, La Peste and Le Premier Homme.


BOOK CHAPTERS:

• “Visages de 'l'art et la douleur' chez Camus." Camus: l'artiste. Eds. Agnès Spiquel et al. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015. 235-246.
• “Théâtre de la justice et scènes de mort chez Camus." Tout n'est-il que théâtre? Camus en scène. Ed. Jean-Louis Meunier. Le Pontet : Éditions A. Barthélémy, 2014. 103-124.
• “Albert Camus, la morale et l’éthique.” Camus et l’éthique. Ed. Ève Morisi. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2014. 9-29.
• “European Visions in Albert Camus's Abolitionism." Visions of Europe. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Contemporary Cultural Debates. Eds. Anke S. Biendarra and Gail K. Hart. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2014. 121-137.
• “La Misère au quotidien. Camus et la Kabylie.” Camus au quotidien. Eds. André Benhaïm and Aymeric Glacet. Lille : Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2013. 101-119.
• “‘Poésie-boucherie.’ Baudelaire’s Aesthetics and Ethics of Execution.” Thinking Poetry: Philosophical Approaches to Nineteenth-Century French Poetry. Ed. Joseph Acquisto. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 75-95.
• “La Peine de mort dans les romans de Camus. Motif, mythe, éthique.” Albert Camus contre la peine de mort. Ed. Ève Morisi. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2011. 255-327.
• “Le(s) Sens d’un plagiat baudelairien : ‘Le Flambeau Vivant’ et ‘To Helen’ (1848) d’Edgar A. Poe.” Les Cinq Sens et les sensations: Lexicographie contrastive. Ed. A.M. Laurian. Collection Études Contrastives 8. Berne: Peter Lang, 2007. 183-197.


JOURNAL ARTICLES:

• “Baudelaire et Camus : penser la peine de mort.” La Revue des Lettres Modernes Série Albert Camus 23. Paris : Lettres Modernes Minard / Classiques Garnier, 2014: 263-81.
• “To Kill A Human Being: Camus And Capital Punishment." Special Issue: A Centennial Celebration of Albert Camus. Ed. Robert Zaretsky. The South Central Review (journal of South Central MLA, Johns Hopkins UP) 31.3 (Fall 2014): 43-63.
• “L’Infanticide de la Médée cornélienne, ou le mal(e)-être héroïque.” La Revue du Paon d’Héra 5, spécial Médée 1/2 (Winter 2009): 93-111.
• “The OuLiPoe, or Constraint and (Contre-)Performance : ‘The Philosophy of Composition’ and the Oulipian Manifestos.” Comparative Literature 60 (Spring 2008): 107-124.
• “Camus hospitalier? Camus fraternel? Les Impossibilités de ‘L’Hôte’ dans le contexte colonial.” French Forum 32 (Winter 2007): 153-69.
• “‘À une dame créole’ de Charles Baudelaire : de l’ambiguïté colonialiste à l’ambiguïté plurielle.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 35 (Spring/Summer 2007): 547-57.
• “The Female Figure of Poe’s Poetry: A Rehabilitation” The Poe Studies / Dark Romanticism 38 (Winter 2005): 17-28.


DICTIONARY ENTRIES:

• “Camus, Albert” and capital punishment. Dictionary entry. Dictionnaire de la mort. Paris: Larousse, 2010. 177-9.
• “Hugo, Victor” and capital punishment. Dictionary entry. Dictionnaire de la mort. Paris: Larousse, 2010. 539-42.


TRANSLATIONS:

• Nash, Suzanne. “L’Album cosmopolite de Vattemare (1837-1839).” L’Ambassadeur extravagant: Alexandre Vattemare . . . pionnier des échanges culturels internationaux. Paris: Le Passage, 2007. 159-67.


REVIEWS AND INTERVIEWS (given and conducted):

• "A Life Worth Living : Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning." Book review of Robert Zaretsky’s monograph (Cambridge, MA and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013) for The Historian 77.3 (Fall 2015): 632-633.
• “Camus, Charlie et le terrorisme.” Newspaper article for The Huffington Post (French version). February 9, 2015.
• “Vues de l’intérieur : les éthiques de Camus.” Interview of Roger Grenier, résistant, journalist, writer and friend of Camus. Camus et l’éthique. Ed. Ève Morisi. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2014. 31-53.
• “Painting WWI, not quite by number.” Book review of Jean Echenoz’s novel 1914 (Trans. Linda Coverdale. New York and London: The New Press, 2014) for the Los Angeles Review of Books. July 11, 2014.
• “Camus, un Homme.” Newspaper article for Le Monde libertaire. November 28-December 5, 2013.
• “Camus, le ‘porte-silence des taiseux.’” Interview with Macha Séry for Le Monde. November 8, 2013.
• “Penser Camus en 2013 : à la rencontre des Camusiens.” Interview with Max Leroy for Rage Mag (other interviewees : hip-hop singer Mystik, philosopher Michel Onfray, historian Benjamin Stora). November 7, 2013.
• “Du ‘monde’ à la ‘mer,’ un tour d’horizon camusien.” Review of “Les dix mots préférés d’Albert Camus,” bilingual creation and musical performance based on Camus’s works developed by Cécile Cotté and Stéphane Scott for NYU Paris, Dec. 2012 in Paris and June 2013 in New York. Chroniques camusiennes 8 (January 2013): 24-5.
Other Experience
Assistant Professor of French
UC Irvine 2013—2016
Visiting Assistant Professor of French
University of St Andrews (UK) 2011—2012
Research Centers
Affiliated faculty, Poetics, History, Theory at UCI
Affiliated faculty, Center in Law, Society and Culture
Affiliated faculty, Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (dissertation co-adviser)
Last updated
12/19/2016