Julie Vatain-Corfdir

Theatre

Julie Vatai-Corfdir is Associate Professor of English at Sorbonne Université and a Junior Fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France. Her research project, called ESTHER, examines contemporary theatre’s engagement with resilience, questioning the formal, ethical and embodied implications of our fascination with, or resistance to, ideas of human shock absorption and persistence. She queries what resilience does to dramatic form and investigates the ambiguous, labile possibilities of a theatre for repair. Her semester at the MFO will be devoted to finishing Sidelong Resilience, a monograph that explores how female playwrights in the United States respond to anxieties about the continuity of self and community beyond trauma, in subdued or explosive ways (Sarah Ruhl, Aleshea Harris, Annie Baker, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Young Jean Lee). As a scientific coordinator of the ACTiF research program funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche, Julie is also keenly interested in the translation and circulation of contemporary American theatre in Europe. Her stay in Oxford will allow her to interact and organize workshops with colleagues in theatre studies and American studies, specifically through further invitations to be a Visiting Fellow at St Catherine’s College (Hilary) and a Fellow-in-Residence at the Rothermere American Institute (Trinity).

She is particularly thrilled to be back at the MFO, where she was once a doctoral student.

CV and publications: https://cv.hal.science/julie-vatain-corfdir