Dr Rebekah Vince, Ph.D. M.Res

Profile

I am a memory studies scholar specialising in French postmemory narratives, francophone postcolonial studies, and the Mediterranean francosphère. In 2018, I received a Wolfson-funded PhD from the University of Warwick, focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as depicted in literary texts by Franco-Maghrebian authors. Before joining Queen Mary in 2020, I was an Early Career Fellow at Warwick's Institute of Advanced Study and a Teaching Fellow in French at Durham University. I was also a visiting scholar at the Cultural Memory Studies Initiative, Ghent University (Belgium) in 2017 and a visiting fellow at St Edmund's College, University of Cambridge in 2019.

My research moves at the intersection between postcolonial studies, Jewish studies, and transnational French studies, engaging with dialogic approaches to memory. My current project explores memories of Jewish life in Muslim-majority countries across the Mediterranean. I am editor of the bilingual journal Francosphères and co-editor (with Hanna Teichler) of the new book series Mobilizing Memories, published by Brill.

Teaching

My research into transcultural memory studies informs my teaching philosophy, which emphasises translation as a form of migration and a way of constructing dialogue with the past in post-colonial perspective. This involves engagement with contrapuntal reading, postcolonial theory, and decolonial thinking, while seeking to balance domestication and foreignisation in translation.

I teach across Modern Languages & Cultures and Comparative Literature, and I am the theme lead for 'Language and Culture' for the Liberal Arts programme. I became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2022.

Semester 1

Afropean Identities: Convenor

Translation (French III): French to English

Semester 2

Postcolonial Francospheres: Memories of Colonialism in the French-Speaking World: Covenor

Culture and Language Block 3 (Gender, Race, Class, Religion, Postcolonialism)

Race and Racism in Europe

Research

Research Interests:

• Transcultural memory studies
• Francophone postcolonial studies
• World literature and translation
• French postmemory narratives
• North African literature in French
• Jewish-Muslim interactions
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Examples of research funding:

2021 ‒ French Embassy postdoctoral fellowship for Troubled Memories project

2020-2022 ‒ British Academy research grant for Contested Returns joint project (P-I with Co-Is Toufic Haddad, CBRL-Jerusalem and Anna Toufic, UCL)

Publications

Co-Edited Volume

• [With Sami Everett] Jewish-Muslim Interactions: Performing Cultures between North Africa and France (Liverpool University Press, 2020)

Journal Articles

• ‘Inter-doubt dialogue in Slimane Benaïssa’s Prophètes sans dieu’, Contemporary French Civilization, 47.2, 221‒245
• ‘The (Im)possibility of the Jewish-Palestinian in Hubert Haddad’s Palestine’, Francosphères (Liverpool University Press), 7 (2018): 103‒20
• ‘Intersubjective Memory in Maïssa Bey’s Novel Entendez-vous dans les montagnes’, Africa and the West, 13 (2017): 70‒85
• ‘Out of Sight but not Out of Mind: Absence as Presence in French Postmemory Narrative’, Journal of History and Cultures, 5 (2015): 41‒64

Book Chapters

• [With Rebecca Infield] ‘Jewish Culture in 21st Century France’, in Aurelien Mondon, Marion Demossier, Nina Parish, David Lees (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of French Politics and Culture (Routledge, 2019), pp. 257‒67
• ‘Pulled in All Directions: the Shoah, Colonialism and Exile in Valérie Zenatti’s Jacob, Jacob’, in Dirk Göttsche (ed.), Memory and Postcolonial Studies: Synergies and New Directions (Peter Lang, 2019), pp. 235‒53

Interviews

• [With Hanna Teichler] ‘Challenging Binaries and Unfencing Fields: An Interview with Bryan Cheyette’, Exchanges, 6 (2019): 94‒113
• [With Maria Roca Lizarazu] ‘Beyond Trauma or Memory Goes Planetary: An Interview with Stef Craps’, Exchanges, 5 (2018): 1‒15
• ‘“Je commence là où ça se tait”: An Interview with Slimane Benaïssa’, Bulletin for Francophone Postcolonial Studies, 9 (2018): 2‒10
• ‘“L’humain n’a pas de frontière”: An Interview with Hubert Haddad’, Bulletin for Francophone Postcolonial Studies, 8 (2017): 2‒10

Poetry

• [With translations into French by Khalid Lyamlahy], ‘Frontiers/Frontières’, in Apulée: revue de la littérature et de la réflexion, Vol. 4: Traduire le monde (Zulma, 2019), pp. 215‒16
• [With translations into French by Khalid Lyamlahy], ‘Pour ainsi dire... et écouter’, Apulée, Vol. 5: Les droits humains (Zulma, 2020), pp. 357‒58

Supervision

I welcome expressions of interest from candidates seeking to undertake doctoral research in the following areas:

• Francophone North African literature
• French postmemory narratives
• Jewish-Muslim interactions in France