Lia Brozgal earned a B.A. in French from Chatham College and a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures. Before joining the faculty at UCLA in 2008, she was an appointed lecturer in History and Literature at Harvard University. Her research and teaching encompass a variety of topics in Francophone North African literature, culture and history, as well as contemporary France. She is the author of Against Autobiography: Albert Memmi and the Production of Theory (U Nebraska Press, 2013); co-editor of Being Contemporary: French Literature, Culture and Politics Today (Liverpool UP, 2015); co-editor of Ninette of Sin Street (the first English translation of the Tunisian novella Ninette de la rue du Péché by Vitalis Danon); and author of essays on North African literature and cinema, beur cultural productions, chronicles of the Holocaust in North Africa, and Judeo-Maghrebi literature and film.

En savoir plus

Fields of interest

• France and North Africa;
• 20th and 21st Century literature, film, memoir;
• History

Education

• Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University
• B.A. in French, Chatham College

Featured Works

• Memmi@100: A Centenary Celebration

• Absent the Archive: Cultural Traces of a Massacre in Paris, 17 October 1961

  Liverpool University Press, 2020

• Ninette of Sin Street

• Being Contemporary: French Literature, Culture and Politics Today

  Liverpool University Press, 2016

• Against Autobiography: Albert Memmi and the Production of Theory

  University of Nebraska Press, 2013

Selected Publications

Articles

• “Memmi, romancier, en pratique et en théorie.” In “Jean Amrouche et Albert Memmi: Portraits croisés.” Special issue of Apulée. Ed. Guy Dugas (2021): 386-388.
• “Seeing Through Race in French Cinema.” L’Esprit Créateur. Special issue: Race and The Aesthetic in French and Francophone Cultures. 59.2 (2019): 12–24.
• “Gros plan sur le 17 octobre 1961: Violence coloniale, cinéma documentaire et le sujet algérien.” In Représentations de le la guerre d’indépendance algérienne. Ed. Maya Boutaghou. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2019. 99-114.
• “The Ethics and Aesthetics of Restraint. Judeo-Tunisian Narratives of Occupation.” In The Holocaust and North Africa: New Research. Eds. Aomar Boum and Sarah Stein. Stanford UP, 2018. 168-184.
• “The Critical Pulse of the Contre-enquête: Kamel Daoud on the Maghrebi Novel In French.” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies. Special issue on the Contemporary Maghrebi Novel in French. 20.1 (2016) 37-46.
• “In the Absence of the Archive (Paris, October 17, 1961).” South Central Review 31.1 (Spring 2014) 34-54.
• “Are We Post-Francophone Yet? Coming to Terms with Dissatisfaction.” In Francophone Cultures and Geographies of Identity. Eds. Adlai Murdoch and Zuszsanna Fagyal. Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013.
• “Du jeu dans le texte: nouvelles pistes de lecture.” Littérature et jeu: des enjeux essentiels. Ed. Samir Marzouki. Series: Documents pour l’Histoire des Francophonies 28. Peter Lang, 2013. 81-86.
• “When Good Sentiments Make for ‘Bad’ Cinema: Reconsidering Allegory in Un été à la Goulette.” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 17.1 (Winter 2013) 28-37.
• “La Banlieue to the Moon: Rachid Djaïdani’s Displacement of Paris.” Contemporary French Civilization 35.2 (2011) 87-109.
• “Blindness, the Visual and Ekphrastic Impulses. Albert Memmi Colors in the Lines.” French Studies: New Ekphrastic Poetics (Special Issue). 64.3 (July 2010) 317-328.
• “Hostages of Authenticity: Paul Smaïl, Azouz Begag and the Invention of the Beur Author.” French Forum 34.2 (Spring 2009) 113-130.

Reviews

• Lewis, Jonathan. The Algerian War in French/Algerian Writing. Literary Sites of Memory. In H-France Review 20.130 (July 2020).
• Gott, Michael and Thibault Schilt, eds. Cinéma-monde. Decentered Perspectives on Global Filmmaking in French. In Europe Now (Sept. 2019):  https://www.europenowjournal.org/2019/09/09/cinema-monde-decentered-perspectives-on-global-filmmaking-in-french-edited-by-michael-gott-and-thibault-schilt/
• Donadey, Anne. Approaches to Teaching the Works of Assia Djebar. In Research in African Literatures 50.2  (Summer 2019): 264-265.
• Memmi, Albert. Tunisie An I Tunisie, An I. Journal tunisien 1955-1956. Edited, prefaced, and with notes by Guy Dugas. In H-France Review 18.59 (March 2018).
• “My Algeria Hurts: A Review Essay of Denis Guénoun’s A Semite: A Memoir of Algeria.” Journal of the Society for Contemporary Thought and the Islamicate World. Online journal, pub date: January 13, 2015.
• The Desert or The Adventures of Jubaïr el-Mammi by Albert Memmi. Translated from the French by Judith Roumani. CELAAN Review. In production; forthcoming June 2017.
• Le Partage des mémoires: La guerre d’Algérie en littérature, au cinéma et sur le web by Djemaa Maazouzi, H-France 16.189 (Sept 2016). 3 pgs.
• Calypso Jews: Jewishness in the Caribbean Literary Imagination by Sarah Phillips Casteel, Contemporary Jewry 36.2 (Oct 2016): 271-273.
• Remembering French Algeria: Pieds-Noirs, Identity and Exile by Amy Hubbell, French Studies 70.4 (Oct 2016): 625-626.
• The Allure of the Archive by Arlette Farge, Francosphères 3.1 (2014) 115-116.
• Postcolonial Francophone Autobiographies: From Africa to the Antilles by Edgard Sankara and Postcolonial Poetics: Genre and Form, edited by Patrick Crowley and Jane Hiddleston, Journal of Postcolonial Writing 48.5 (Dec 2012): 566-568.
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Francophone World, edtied by Natalie Debrauwere-Miller, Contemporary French Civilization 35.2 (2011) 181-84.

Translations

• (French-English) Albert Memmi. “Autoportrait” in Souffles: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics. Eds. Olivia Harrison and Teresa Villa-Ignacio. Stanford UP, 2015.
• (French-English, co-translation with Olivia Harrison) Abraham Serfaty. “Moroccan Jewry and Zionism” in Souffles: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics. Eds. Olivia Harrison and Teresa Villa-Ignacio. Stanford UP, 2015.
• (French-English) Danielle Bohler. “Frontally and in Profile: The Identifying Gesture of the Late Medieval Author” in The Medieval Author in Medieval French Literature. Ed. Virginie Greene. Palgrave, 2006.
• (French-English) “Interviews with Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibé.” You Look Beautiful Like That: The Portrait Photographs of Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibé. Michelle Lamunière. Yale UP, 2002.

Courses commonly taught

• France and Its Others: Race, Ethnicity and Difference in French Cinema (FR 41)
• Revelations and Revolutions: French-language Autobiography and Self-Representation (FR 166)
• Being beur in France: littérature et cinéma de la génération beure (FR 121)
• Le 17 octobre 1961, lorsque la littérature raconte l’histoire (FR 120)
• Jewish North Africa in Literature and Film (FR 172/Cross listed with Jewish Studies 177)

Honors and Awards

• American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship (2015-16)
• Camargo Foundation Fellowship. Residency in Cassis, France. (Fall 2014)
• University of California President’s Faculty Fellowship in the Humanities. (2012-2013)

Professional Activities

• Editorial Board, Society for Francophone Postcolonial Studies (2016-2019)
• Member of Modern Language Association, LLC Francophone Forum (2016-2021)
• Area Editor, North African Francophone Literature, The Literary Encyclopedia (2012-2014)