Isabelle Alfandary
French philosopher, literary historian and psychoanalyst
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Through Psychoanalysis
Education and career
She completed her doctoral thesis in American literature in 1999, entitled, in French, "Esthétique de la grammaire dans l’œuvre d’E. E. Cummings," at Sorbonne Nouvelle University. She is a professor of American Literature and critical theory at Sorbonne Nouvelle University since 2013 and chair of the collegial assembly at the Collège international de philosophie.
She is a member of the awards jury at Les Rencontres Philosophiques de Monaco, which gives annual awards for philosophical works. She is the director of programs for psychoanalysis and philosophical at the Collège international de philosophie, where she is also former president (2013-2019). As a member of the French Scholars she co-founded the Northwestern University's Sorbonne Nouvelle Institute for Psychoanalysis. She is a professor at the European Graduate School.
From 1999-2006, she was a professor at Paris-Nanterre University. Then she joined the faculty at Lumière University Lyon 2, where she remained as professor until 2011. From 2011-2013, she taught at Paris-East Créteil University, where she also exercised the functions of vice-president of international affairs.
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Research and reception
She works notably on modern poetry, literature theory, and the lines between philosophy and psychanalysis, as well as questions about gender identity and sexuality.
Her book Le Scandale de la séduction (PUF, 2024) came out near the time of the Pelicot rape case in Mazan and is even more broadly treated in the context of the Me Too movement. In the book, Alfandary discusses how the contemporary movement exposed a longtime policy of silence, rooted in the Freudian coverup of sexual abuse confessed by his patients, which he initially believed but reversed later.
Honors & distinctions
- 1997-1998 : Fulbright scholar at Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts) and University of Texas at Austin, TX
- 2009-2011 : Recipient of the France-Berkeley Fund grant for the project "Transatlantic Transactions: American Poetry and French Theory," in collaboration with Charles Altieri (University of California, Berkeley) and Axel Nesme (University of Lyon 2)
- 2011-2014 : Winner of the Partner University Fund (PUF) for the project "Transatlantic Transactions: French Theory and Twentieth Century American Poetry", also with Charles Altieri (University of California at Berkeley) and Axel Nesme (Lumière University Lyon 2)