Dr. Audrey Brunetaux

Dr. Audrey Brunetaux is Assistant Professor of French at Colby College (USA). She received a PhD in French literature and culture as well as a master’s degree in French studies from Michigan State University (USA). She also received a master’s degree in English language and literature from the University of Poitiers (France). For her Pearl Resnick Postdoctoral Fellowship, she conducted research for her project “Vichy France and the Shoah: The Vél d’Hiv in French Literature and Cinema.”

Dr. Brunetaux’s research focuses on twentieth-century French literature, culture, and cinema, with an emphasis on Holocaust narratives and films, and her publications cover a wide range of topics related to Vichy France and the Shoah. She has focused extensively on Holocaust survivor and writer Charlotte Delbo and written articles on the Holocaust-related films The Reader, La Rafle, and Elle s’appelait Sarah.

Her articles include “Mise-en-scène, Aesthetics, and the Shoah: The Ambiguous Portrayal of a Female Perpetrator in ‘The Reader’” in Holocaust Studies: Journal of Culture and History (2012) ; “Pouvoir, langage et silence: l’ordre du discours dans ‘Aucun de nous ne reviendra’ de Charlotte Delbo” in New Zealand Journal of French Studies (2012); “L’Humour face à la tragédie: (Re)présenter et gérer la tragédie dans ‘Ce soir, après la guerre’ de Viviane Forrester” in Women in French Studies (2011); “Ecrire la Shoah: ‘Auschwitz et Après’, genèse d’un traumatisme” in French Review (2011); and “La présence de l’absence: la valeur herméneutique et esthétique du silence, la Shoah revisitée” in Absence, présence dans le roman d’expression française, edited by Patricia Bissa Enama and Alice Tang (2010). She also contributed the essay “Childhood, Photography and Comics: Narrating the Shoah in ‘Paroles D’étoiles’” to a volume on World War II and the Holocaust and is currently co-editing a volume of essays titled Seeing Charlotte Delbo/Seeing the Shoah.

Dr. Brunetaux has received several fellowships and grants to participate in Holocaust studies seminars, including the Museum's 2011 Silberman Follow-Up Grant, the Museum's 2009 Curt C. and Else Silberman Seminar for Faculty, and the 2007 Holocaust Educational Foundation Summer Institute at Northwestern University. She was also selected as an NYU-CNRS Memory Fellow for the 2011–12 academic year for her project “Memory, Trauma and the Shoah: Representing the Vél d’Hiv in Visual Arts and the Media.”

During her tenure at the Center, Dr. Brunetaux researched the Museum's film and video archives to study and explore the visual and artistic representations of the Vél d’Hiv roundup of 1942 that involved the French police and the French state.

Dr. Brunetaux was in residence at the Mandel Center from June 1 to August 30, 2012.