Jennifer Yee, B.A. (University of Sydney), D.E.A., Ph.D. (Université de Paris)
Professor of Literature in French
 

Research

My research interests include Balzac, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Zola, Proust, colonial and 'exotic' writing, literature and the visual arts, and francophone writing.

Teaching

French language and literature, especially nineteenth-century literature.

Graduate Teaching

I teach for the MSt Special Subjects on Nineteenth-Century Prose and Francophone Literature.

I have supervised/am supervising D.Phil theses on nineteenth-century women travelers in the 'Orient', Proust and awkwardness, Proust and other people's minds, literary vocation in Proust and Dante, decadence and French 'Indochina', writing and etching in the work of the Goncourt brothers, tragedy and women's writing in naturalism, public gardens in nineteenth-century art and literature, and sex, gender and identity in turn-of-the-century French writing on China. I am willing to consider DPhil or MPhil supervision on many areas of nineteenth-century literature, some areas of twentieth-century literature, and some areas linking literature and art.

Book Publications

The Colonial Comedy: Imperialism in the French Realist Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). See book reviews by Susan Hiner, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 45: 3-4 (2017) and Robert Lethbridge, Journal of European Studies, 47: 2 (June 2017).

Exotic Subversions in Nineteenth-Century French Fiction (Oxford: Legenda, 2008). See book review at: fs.oxfordjournals.org/content/64/4/495.full.pdf+html

Clichés de la femme exotique: un regard sur la littérature coloniale française entre 1871 et 1914 (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2000)

Edited Volumes and Special Issues

Editor, with Julia Hartley and Wanrug Suwanwattana, French Decadence in a Global Context: Colonialism and Exoticism (Liverpool University Press, 2022)

Editor, with Charles Forsdick, Special Issue of French Studies: ‘A Postcolonial Nineteenth Century’, 72:2 (April 2018)

Editor, with Kathryn Robson, France and ‘Indochina’: Cultural Representations (Lanham/New York: Lexington Books, 2005)

Articles and Chapters

‘Kitsch Enters the Novel: Flaubert’s Satirical Ekphrasis’, in New Literary History 55.2 (Spring 2024), 317-337

'Baudelaire's Ironic Lighthouse: Poem as Image, Poem into Image', in Representations 160:1 (2022), 31-53

‘Émile Zola’s Black Lives: Colonial Experiments and the Limits of Empathy’, in Dix-Neuf, 2022

‘Introduction’, in Julia Hartley, Wanrug Suwanwattana and Jennifer Yee, ed.s, French Decadence in a Global Context: Colonialism and Exoticism (Liverpool University Press, August 2022), pp. 1-27

‘The Whore, the Text and the Critics: Flaubert’s Kuchiuk Hanem as Postcolonial Fetish’, in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 50: 3-4 (2022)

‘Colonial Encounters in the Nineteenth-Century Novel’, in The Cambridge History of the Novel in French, edited by Adam Watt (2021)

‘Towards a Postcolonial Nineteenth Century: Introduction’, by Charles Forsdick and Jennifer Yee, in Co-edited special issue of French Studies: ‘A Postcolonial Nineteenth Century’, 72:2 (April 2018), 1-9

‘Baudelaire and the Chinese Object’, in L’Esprit créateur, 58:1 (2018), special issue on ‘Baudelaire and Other People’ edited by Maria Scott and Alexandra Wettlaufer, 101-113

‘Colonizing the Canon: Metonymy and Metropolitan Fiction’, in French Studies 72:2 (April 2018, special issue on A Postcolonial Nineteenth Century, edited by Charles Forsdick and Jennifer Yee)

‘“La Beauté”: Art and Dialogism in the Poetry of Baudelaire’, in Neophilologus 102: 1 (2018), 1-14

‘L’Empereur désincarné, ou comment Zola démonte la théorie du Grand Homme’, in Les Cahiers naturalistes, 91 (September 2017), 191-205

‘Balzac and the African Explorer: Cognitive Mapping of the faubourg Saint-Germain’, in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 45.3–4 (2017), 163-178

‘Exoticism and Colonialism’, in Cambridge Companion to French Literature, ed. by John D. Lyons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 151-167

‘“Like an apparition”: Oriental ghosting in Flaubert’s Éducation sentimentale’, in French Studies, A Quarterly Review, 67:3 (July 2013)

‘Romantisme et empires coloniaux’, articles in Dictionnaire du Romantisme, ed.by Alain Vaillant, CNRS Éditions, 2012

‘Undermining Exoticism: Flaubert’s use of antithesis in L’Éducation sentimentale’, in Dix-Neuf, Journal of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes, 15: 1, April 2011, pp.26-36

‘Mementoes and the Memory of the Reader in L’Éducation sentimentale’, in Dix-Neuf, Journal of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes, 14: 1, April 2010, pp. 1-12

‘The Black Maid and her Mistress in Manet and Zola’, in The Monstrous and The Beautiful: Essays in French Literature, ed. by Amaleena Damlé and Aurélie L’Hostis, Peter Lang, 2010, pp. 167-180

‘French Theory and the Exotic’ in Postcolonial Thought in the French-Speaking World, ed. by Charles Forsdick and David Murphy, Liverpool University Press, 2009, pp. 185-194

‘“Le colonisateur chevaleresque”’: Colonial Feminism and the roman à thèse in the Belle Époque', in Women in France: a Belle Époque?, Di Holmes and Carrie Tarr (Berghahn, 2006)

'Recycling the “Colonial Harem”? Women in Postcards from French Indochina', French Cultural Studies, 15:1 (February 2004), 5-19,  Article Weblink

'Batouala, the First “Roman Nègre” and Dialogism: Writing “Difference” or Writing “Differently”', Francophone Postcolonial Studies, 2: 2 (2004), 51-66

'Chateaubriand et l’exotisme subversif des Natchez', Les Cahiers du SIELEC, 1 (2003), 167-182

'Métissage in France: a Post-Modern Fantasy and its Forgotten Precedents', Modern and Contemporary France, 11:4 (November 2003)

'Articles on ‘René’ and ‘Gérard de Nerval’', in Encyclopædia of Romanticism (Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003)

Editor, with Nigel Harkness, Paul Rowe, Tim Unwin, Visions/Revisions: Essays on Nineteenth-Century French Culture (Bern: Peter Lang, 2003)

'À rebours de l’exotisme: la province et le foyer familial vus des colonies', Revue de Littérature Comparée, April-June (2003), 155-168

'L’Orientale, l’être de fuite par excellence, chez Pierre Loti et ses héritiers', in L’Orient des Femmes, ed. M.-E. Palmier-Chatelain and P. Lavagne d’Ortigue (Paris: Presses de l’École Normale Supérieure, 2002), 257-266

Editor, Pierre Mille, Barnavaux aux colonies suivi d’Écrits sur la littérature coloniale, a re-edition with introduction and critical apparatus by Jennifer Yee (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002)

'Malaria and the Femme Fatale: Sex and Death in French Colonial Africa', Literature and Medicine, Fall (2002), 201-215

'“L’Indochine androgyne”: the Curious Theme of Androgyny in Turn-of-the-century French Writing on “Indochina”', Textual Practice, 15: 2, Summer (2001), pp. 269-282

'The Colonial Outsider: “Malgérie” in Hélène Cixous’ Novel Les rêveries de la femme sauvage', Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 20: 2, Winter (2001), pp. 189-200

'Trahison et traduction: les relations entre l’homme blanc et la femme exotique dans quelques romans de l’Indochine française', Carnets de l’exotisme, 22 (2000), 159-176

'Colonial Virility and the Femme fatale: Scenes from the Battle of the Sexes in French Indochina', French Studies, A Quarterly Review, 54: 4, Oct. (2000), pp. 469-478

'La Tahoser de Gautier et la Salammbô de Flaubert: l’Orientale et le voyage au-delà de l’histoire', Australian Journal of French Studies, 36: 2 (1999), 188-199

'Neither Flesh Nor Fowl: “Métissage” in fin-de-siècle French Colonial Fiction', L’Esprit créateur, 37: 1, Spring (1998), pp. 46-56