Introducing the FUS Faculty: Patrick Saveau

Professor, French

Ph.D. New York University, USA
M.A. University of Oregon, USA
Maîtrise d’anglais Université Jean Moulin, Lyon, France

Office: Lowerre Academic Center, Office 3
Phone: +41 91 986 36 33
Email: psaveau@fus.edu

Dr. Saveau is a specialist of Serge Doubrovsky, the first open practitioner of autofiction. In Serge Doubrovsky ou l'écriture d'une survie (Editions universitaires de Dijon, 2011), first monography published on this author, he explores autofiction as a genre, Judeity, memory and trauma, masculinity and sexuality. He has since then become an avid critic of Franco-Maghrebi literature and edited with Véronique Machelidon Reimagining North African Immigration. Identities in Flux in French Literature, Television, and Film (Manchester University Press, 2018). He is presently working on his first fiction book, entitled L'incompréhension.

2024-2025 Courses

CLCS 300	Masculinities in Literature and Film	FALL 2024
This course offers an overview of different masculinities as they have been represented in literature and film for the past couple decades. Students will first explore the recent developments in masculinity studies, particularly focusing on masculinity along intersectional lines. They will reflect upon the intricate ways of defining, theorizing and conceptualizing masculinity in an age that Zygmunt Bauman has defined as liquid. They will read novels such as Tomboy by French writer Nina Bouraoui, Salvation Army by Moroccan writer Abdellah Taïa and watch films such as Death Proof by American film director Quentin Tarentino, Facing Mirrors by Iranian film director Negar Azarbayjani, Boys Don't Cry by American film director Kimberly Peirce.
CLCS 316T	Transatlantic Slave Trade: Ghana	FALL 2024
Dozens of castles and forts built by Europeans as trading posts between 1481 and 1786 dot the Western coast of Ghana. They were used to hold enslaved Africans before they were shipped to the Caribbean or the Southern United States in what is known today as the transatlantic slave trade, or the triangular trade. The triangular trade describes different configurations of three-way Atlantic trading systems between the Americas, Africa and Europe that allowed traders to exchange their goods from Europe or the Americas for human cargo in Africa before embarking on the so-called Middle Passage and slave markets in the new world. Under British colonial rule, Ghana evolved into the center of the transatlantic slave trade and remnants of it remain in architectural structures such as the castles and forts, different forms of physical resistance built by villages to defend against the slavers and in artefacts, literary accounts, music, and art. In the pre-travel portion of this course, we will explore the history, economics and global impact of the transatlantic slave trade alongside the rise of a pervasive and racialist ideology that legitimized the transformation of humans into commodities. In Ghana, we will trace the legacy of the slave trade and its memorialization in the architectural remnants of the castles, in museum exhibits, cultural narratives and global initiatives such as the UNESCO Slave Route Project. In the final part, we will grapple with questions of memory and memorialization, cross-cultural conceptions of enslavement, systemic economic inequalities, and the current debate around reparations. NOTE: This Academic Travel course carries a supplemental fee: CHF 350 (for students invoiced in CHF) or USD 415 (for students invoiced in USD)
FRE 200	Intermediate French, Part I	FALL 2024
This course is designed for students who have completed one year of French language study. It reviews and expands on grammar, vocabulary, and culture acquired in FRE 100 and FRE 101. The acquisition of aural/oral skills are stressed, and as such, the predominant language of instruction is French. By the end of the course, students are expected to be proficient in the written and spoken usage of intermediate linguistic structures. Further, students are introduced to short literary texts, inviting conversation and some initial literary analysis.
FRE 353	Representations of Immigration in Francophone Literature and Film	FALL 2024
This course examines literary and cinematic representations of migrants and migration from former French colonies to countries that border the Mediterranean in the 21st century. It focuses on the realities and cultural representations of both emigration and immigration from historical, political, economic, and sociocultural perspectives. Novels, films and documentaries will allow students to understand and conceptualize different views on migrations, whether it be Francophilic, ex-centric, clandestine migrations, or its remedy, disimmigration.
CLCS 251T	Reading Moroccan Culture	SPRING 2025
This course examines gender, ethnic, class, family, age, religious relationships within contemporary Morocco. It first provides students with a historical overview of Morocco since its independence in 1956, focusing on the monarchies of Hassan II and Mohammed VI the current king. It explores the power dynamics that exist in a society that is predominantly patrilinear and where gender roles are mostly divided along a binary system; it studies the place of the individual in a society where the collective ego prevails; it considers the place of Berber identity within Moroccan society and finally it explores Sufism as a counter-power to any form of Islamic rigorism. All the themes studied are substantiated with presentations by Moroccan scholars working in the fields of sociology, gender, ethnic, religious, and music studies. (Knowledge of French recommended.) This Academic Travel course carries a supplemental fee: CHF 450 (for students invoiced in CHF) or USD 550 (for students invoiced in USD).
FRE 201	Intermediate French, Part II	SPRING 2025
This course is designed for students who have completed three semesters of French language study. It reviews and expands on grammar, vocabulary, and culture acquired over the previous semesters of language study. The acquisition of aural/oral skills are stressed, and as such, the predominant language of instruction is French. By the end of the course, students are expected to be proficient in the written and spoken usage of intermediate linguistic structures. Further, students are introduced to literary texts, inviting conversation and some initial literary analysis.
FRE 372	Distinction in French Literature: From the 17th to the 21st Century	SPRING 2025
Throughout the centuries, writers have imagined and created characters who strive to distinguish themselves. Origins, education, social milieu, gender, and ability are just some of the ways that literary characters determine how they establish, assert, and distinguish themselves from others. Starting with Molière in the 17th century and ending with Philippe Vilain in the 21st century, this course will examine how distinction is expressed and represented in different literary genres including comedy, the philosophical tale, novels, and autofiction. This course offers a critical perspective on the notion of distinction in modern French literature through the exploration of primary texts. Taught in French.

Publications:

Books

Reimagining North African immigration. Identities in flux in French literature, television, and film. Ed. Véronique Machelidon and Patrick Saveau. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018.

Serge Doubrovsky ou l’écriture d’une survie. Dijon : Editions universitaires de Dijon. 2011

Articles

“Vivre à ta lumière d’Abdellah Taïa : un récit de filiation.” La littérature africaine à l’épreuve des récits de filiation. L’autofiction et le récit transpersonnel. Ed. Babou Diène, Modou Fatah Thiam et Mamadou Hady Ba. Paris : L’Harmattan, 2024 : 35-47.

“Nicolas Boukhrief’s Made in France : Nuancing the Mediatized Approach to Islamic Terrorism.” Ed. Ramona Mielusel. Artistic (Self)-Representations of Islam and Muslim. Perpectives Across France and the Maghreb. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021 : 79-92.

“Se sentir étranger dans son propre pays dans L’année de tous les apprentissages de Najib Redouane.” Najib Redouane. Voix marocaine en Amérique du nord. Ed. Bouchra Benbella. Paris : L’Harmattan, 2021 :101-10.

"Traveling in Morocco from Front to Back Spaces as a Way to Deflect the Tourist Gaze." Ed. Fabio Ferrari and Kate Roy. Intervalla 8 (2020): 83-95.

“Les coulisses de la condition de l’étranger dans Partir de Tahar ben Jelloun,” Revue Dama Ninao 2 (2019) : 288-302.

"Breaking the Chains of Ethnic Identity: Faïza Guène, Saphia Azzeddine, and Nadia Bouzid, or the Birth of a New Maghrebi-French Women's Literature." Reimagining North African immigration. Identities in flux in French literature, television, and film. Ed. Véronique Machelidon and Patrick Saveau. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018: 31-48.

“Vouloir ‘Être quelqu’un’ pour finir par n’être personne.” Fouad Laroui. Ed. Najib Redouane, Yvette Bénayoun-Szmidt, et Bernadette Rey Mimoso-Ruiz. Paris : L’Harmattan, 2018 : 201-10.

“Vous devez bon gré mal gré vous y mettre scrogneugneu” Pourquoi Doubrovsky ? Ed. Isabelle Grell. Louannec : Editions Le bateau ivre, 2018 : 153-60.

“Masculinité, perversion, domination dans trois romans de Philippe Vilain.” Philippe Vilain ou la dialectique des genres. Ed. Arnaud Schmitt et Philippe Weigel. Paris : Orizons, 2015 : 89-102.

“Quand Beretta est morte de Nadia Bouzid ou le refus d’une appellation d’origine contrôlée.” Les Franco-Maghrébines: autres voix / écritures autres. Ed. Najib Redouane and Yvette Bénayoun-Szmidt. Paris : L’Harmattan, 2014 : 209-21.

“Topographie d’une identité désirante dans Confidences à Allah de Saphia Azzeddine.” Les Espaces intimes féminins dans la littérature maghrébine d’expression française. Ed. Robert Elbaz et Françoise Saquer-Sabin. Paris : L’Harmattan, 2014 : 159-65.

“Confidences à Allah de Saphia Azzedine ou le rejet d’un Islam patriarcal.” Les Écrivains maghrébins francophones et l’Islam. Constance dans la diversité. Ed. Najib Redouane. Paris : L’Harmattan, 2013 : 49-58.

“Ageing, Masculinity and Sexuality in Serge Doubrovsky’s L’Après-vivre and Un homme de passage.” As Time Goes By : Portraits of Age. Ed. Joy Charnley and Caroline Verdier. Newcastle upon Tyne : Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013 : 229-41.

Saveau, Patrick. 2011. Serge Doubrovsky ou l'écriture d'une survie. PU Dijon.

“La non reconnaissance de l’autre dans la réalisation du moi doubrovskyen”. Perceptions et réalisations du moi. Ed. Mounir Laouyen. Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal. 241-52.

"L'épisode de Madame de La Pommeraye et Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne à la lumière de la Dialectique du Maître et de l'Esclave de Hegel," Les Lettres Romanes, 49.1-2: 49-55.

"The Place of the Intellectual in the Twenty First Century." PMLA 112: 1127.

"Autofiction n'est pas invention: le cas Doubrovsky," Dalhousie French Studies, 48: 131-37.

“Doubrovsky’s Autofictions and the Holocaust: An Oxymoron?” Rendezvous 34.1: 25-36.

“Empreinte de L’Ecole des femmes dans Un amour de soi.” Ecriture de soi et lecture de l’autre. Ed. Jacques Poirier. Dijon: Editions Universitaires de Dijon : 95-103.

“Serge Doubrovsky.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Ed. Efraim Sicher. Vol. 299. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 70-76.

And Katharina Weiss. “A Prospective Student’s Outlook on Foreign Language Areas at Two AAICU Institutions.” Association of American International Colleges and Universities Journal 3 (2004): 30-38.

“Le Livre brisé ou le recours à l’autre.” De soi à soi: l’écriture comme autohospitalité. Ed. Alain Montandon. Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2004. 161-72.

“Serge Doubrovsky: une sexualité fichée à l’an 40.” Australian Journal of French Studies 42.1 (2005): 110-21.