In this presentation, Dr. Ryan Schroth will discuss his current manuscript project, tentatively titled Queer Feelings: Affect, Migration, and the Body in Contemporary Francophone Literature. He will present three case studies from his work, each drawing upon the work of one queer author with ties to Francophone North Africa: Nina Bouraoui, Rachid O., and Abdellah Taïa. Focusing on the affective registers of queer fear, shame, and melancholy in their work, Dr. Schroth examines the ways in which the body, aligned as it is with both affect and migration, negotiates the local and the global in ways that produce new forms of queer desire, belonging, and kinship. He employs Jack Halberstam’s theories of queer time and place, as well as Gayatri Gopinath’s notion of queer diasporic identity, in order to trace the ways in which these queer affects challenge more normative forms of nationality, narration, and temporality. Dr. Schroth’s readings ultimately catalog the visceral and physical effects of migration, integration, and racialization, while demonstrating the ways in which these narratives express alternative understandings of queer (post)colonial existence.
Ryan K. Schroth, PhD, is Assistant Professor of French Studies at Wake Forest University. He specializes in queer Francophone cultural production, especially the work of Abdellah Taïa. His research employs affect theory and ideas of migration in order to better understand queer positionalities in post- and neo-colonial contexts. He is currently co-editing a volume called Queer Realms of Memory: Archiving LGBTQ Sites and Symbols in the French National Narrative, which will be published in 2024 by Liverpool University Press. He is also at work on his first manuscript, tentatively titled Queer Feelings: Affect, Migration, and the Body in Contemporary Francophone Literature. Dr. Schroth received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2016.