Amanda Vredenburgh

Ph.D., French and Francophone Studies, Indiana University
MA in French Literature, New York University
Assistant Professor of French and French Program Director

Department of Modern and Classical Languages
605 Agnes Arnold Hall
Email: ajvreden@central.uh.edu 
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Biographical Summary

Amanda Vredenburgh is a scholar of contemporary French and Francophone Studies. Her work focuses on speculative fiction and film, ecocriticism, and postcolonial studies, and she has published and presented research on the Indian Ocean, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean. Her first monograph, The Contemporary Fantastic: Reimagining Reality in French Novels (2024), develops an epistemology of the fantastic that identifies the emancipatory and reparative power of the supernatural to resist binary and hegemonic thinking and contribute to inclusive communities. Her current project analyzes supernatural representations of the environment to produce a new ecocritical framework grounded in the postcolonial realities of the Indian Ocean.

Teaching

Dr. Vredenburgh teaches courses on French and Francophone cinema and literature, contemporary France, and advanced language.

Research Interests

French and Francophone Speculative Fiction, Ecocriticism, Postcolonial Studies, Diaspora and Transnational Studies, the Indian Ocean.

Selected Publications

MONOGRAPHS

• The Contemporary Fantastic: Reimagining Reality in French Fiction, Lexington Books, 2024. 

ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS 

• “L’afrotopos des morts dans Le Commerce des allongés d’Alain Mabanckou.’”Contemporary French and Francophone Studies: SITES, no. 30.3, 2026, p. 583-599.
•  “The Specular Experience of Migration in Mati Diop’s Atlantique.” French Forum, no. 49.1-2, 2025, p. 157-172.
• “‘Cette terre volcanique me ressemble’: resisting the colonial imaginary in Ananda Devi’s Pagli.” Ecotexts in the Postcolonial Francosphere, edited by Nsah Mala and Nicki Hitchcott, Liverpool University Press, 2025, p. 117-133.

• “‘Nous ne sommes pas malades, ne comprends-tu pas ?’: Folie et Monstruosité dans Moi, l’interdite d’Ananda Devi.” Nouvelles Études Francophones, no. 39.2, 2025, p. 103-115.

• “The Limits of White Hospitality in Marie Darrieussecq’s La Mer à l’envers.” CFC Intersections, vol. 3, 2024, p. 83-104.

• “‘C’est moi, Khady Demba’: genre, identité, et migration chez Marie NDiaye.” Nouvelles Études Francophones, “Droit de Cité: L'Autre en démocratie ou la bataille pour l'égaliberté,” no. 37.2, 2022, p. 86-100.

• “Mourning the Loss of the Land in Le Clézio’s ‘Villa Aurore’ and ‘Orlamonde.’” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies: SITES, “Parler la terre/Speaking the Earth,” no. 25.4, 2021, p. 441-449.

• “Rethinking the Environmental Crisis through Marie Darrieussecq’s Fantastic Fiction.” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies: SITES, “Open Issue,” no. 24.5, 2020, p. 651-659.

• “Un discours ‘de majesté’ : Le sublime royal dans les expressions de l’absolutisme sous Louis XIV.” Romanic Review, no. 111.2, 2020, p. 227-248. (co-authored with Hall Bjørnstad)

• “The Fantastic Bestialization of the Biopolitical Subject in Marie Darrieussecq’s Truismes.” Romance Notes, no. 59.1, 2019, p. 163-172.

• “‘La Communication des âmes’ à travers l’art et l’amour dans La Prisonnière.” Bulletin Marcel Proust, no. 67, 2017, p. 79-84.