GTMUN Program Advisor
Stéphanie Boulard (Ph.D, Emory University, 2006) is Associate Professor of French in the School of Modern Languages at Georgia Tech and an affiliate of the French Research Center Groupe Hugo-CERILAC (EA 4410) of the Université Paris-Diderot, France.
A specialist in French literature from 19th century to present, Dr. Boulard is a recognized expert in Hugolian studies. Her books include the groundbreaking monograph Rouge Hugo (Septentrion UP, 2014), the first comprehensive examination of the death penalty and the guillotine in Victor Hugo’s writings and drawings, and Ego Hugo (Revue des Science Humaines, 2011), which examines the enduring relevance of Victor Hugo and his modernity. She also studies the innovative exchange between the written and the visual in Hugo’s novels and one of her recent articles on Toilers of the Sea was published in Penser et (d)écrire l’illustration. Le rapport à l’image dans la littérature des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles (PU Blaise Pascal, 2019).
Dr. Boulard’s expertise includes Word and Image studies, feminine writing, and contemporary critical theory. She has published extensively on the works of contemporary French writers, affording new perspectives on major writers of 20th- and 21st-century French literature. Her current research interrogates contemporary writers’ collaborations with artists and poets, exploring different links and perspectives between the readable and the visible and between poetry and philosophical thought, such as in her books Ententes – à partir d’Hélène Cixous (PSN UP, 2019; co-edited with Catherine Witt) and Visions/visitations/passions: en compagnie de Claude Louis-Combet (Corlevour, 2008).
Dr. Boulard is a member of the Reading Committee of Le Sans-visage (Faceless), a journal on the works of Pascal Quignard and her publications in French literary studies include several contributions to Pascal Quignard studies, such as Traversées de Pascal Quignard (Tangence, 2017; co-edited with Stella Spriet) and Trace(s), Fragment(s), Reste(s) (SITES, 2014; co-edited with Christophe Ippolito). She has also authored numerous book chapters and articles and contributed to Dictionnaire Sauvage Pascal Quignard (Hermann, 2016). As a scholar of modernism in literature and the visual arts, Dr. Boulard has published extensively on topics such as the violence of the French Revolution as seen through a 19th-20th-century lens; myths in contemporary French literature; (auto)portrait and identity; and migration and exile in literature and the arts. She has authored over 30 book chapters or journal articles on works by authors such as Hugo, Balzac, Cixous, Quignard, Michaux, Genet, Louis-Combet, and artists such as Dado, Rembrandt, Ducruet, and Abdessemed.
As a teacher, Prof. Boulard’s pedagogy centers on the role of literature, film, media and art in telling stories of identity and singularity, in giving testimony of trauma and migration and in exploring political, social and cultural issues in France and the Francophone world. She has developed creative collaborations with practicing artists and filmmakers, inviting many to her classes.
In Georgia Tech’s School of Modern Languages Dr Boulard is the former Director of the French Program (2018-2021), Director of the LBAT France Study Abroad program, and the current co-curator of the Global Media Fest, which invites filmmakers to campus to discuss their works through the lens of sustainable development.
She is also curator of Georgia Tech’s French and Francophone Film Festival, the French Speaker Series and the newly created library of the French Club, for which she serves as advisor. In 2013 she organized the 20th-21st-century French and Francophone Studies Colloquium at Georgia Tech with Pascal Quignard as keynote speaker.
In 2010 Dr. Boulard was honored with a one-year guest professorship at University Pablo de Olavide in Seville, Spain, where she taught special courses on Literature and Cinema, and Translation. In 2019 she received Georgia Tech’s Faces of Inclusive Excellence Award, which recognizes individuals who have distinguished themselves in professional endeavors related to their research, teaching, leadership and public service activities. She is also a recipient of the 2017 Class of 1940 Course Survey Teaching Effectiveness Award, based on student evaluation scores.