Graduate Essay Award 2019

Mélanie Maillot

« Réflexion métaphysique en lien aux représentations non-normatives du corps dans les poèmes d’Andrée Chedid et de Jeanne Benguigui »

Professor: Dr. Natalie Edwards

Mélanie Maillot holds a master's degree in comparative literature (Sorbonne) and a master's degree in sociolinguistics (University of Saint-Etienne). She is currently a PhD candidate and French tutor at the University of Adelaide.

Her thesis project is entitled: “Poetics of neutrality and the question of Being in the poetic work of Andrée Chedid and Jeanne Benguigui.” It is both a literary and philosophical work, since the study of the poems is complemented by an analytical reading of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot and Roland Barthes.

Her research focuses on French-speaking literature (particularly from Egypt, the Maghreb and the Middle East), poetry of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the links between philosophy and literature, as well as feminism and animal rights in literature. She published in Litera: Journal of Language, Literature and Culture Studies (University of Istanbul) and her latest article on ecofeminism in Jeanne Benguigui's poems will be published soon in the Australian Journal of French Studies.