Jennifer Willging
Contact Information
Associate Professor of French & Francophone Studies & Director of Undergraduate Studies
she/her/hers
Office Hours
Autumn 2025: Tuesdays 11:30-12:30 and Thursdays 2:15-3:15 in person in Hagerty 213; or by appointment either in person or in Zoom (please e-mail me to make an appointment).
Areas of Expertise
- 20th- & 21st-century French literature and culture
- France and the Second World War
- Theories of everyday life
- French-American cultural relations
- Marguerite Duras
- Michel Houellebecq
Education
- PhD in French, Northwestern University, 2000
- BA in History, Washington University in St. Louis, 1991
Jennifer Willging is Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of French and Italian. She specializes in 20th- and 21st-century French literature and culture with particular interests in Second World War France, postwar narrative, theories of everyday life, and contemporary French-American cultural relations. She has published a book on anxiety in postwar women's writing in French (Telling Anxiety, University of Toronto Press) and numerous essays on topics such as narrative voice in the work of Duras, Hébert and Ernaux; on intertextuality in the work of Duras, Céline, Sarraute, and Sartre; on leisure and alienation in Houellebecq's novels; and on representations of neoliberalism in the contemporary novel. She has recently co-edited a special double issue of Romance Studies on contemporary French writer Michel Houellebecq.
Zoom link for virtual office hours.
Pronouns
She/her/hers