Abstract

Please note: Prof. Ungar’s lecture will be preceded by a screening of Alain Resnais’ short film, ‘Toute la mémoire du monde’ (1956)

Steven Ungar has taught French literature, thought, and film at The University of Iowa since 1976. His book-length publications include Roland Barthes: The Professor of Desire (1983), Scandal and Aftereffect: Blanchot and France Since 1930 (1995), Popular Front Paris and the Poetics of Culture (2005, with Dudley Andrew), and Cléo de 5 à 7 (2008). His articles and reviews on literary topics include studies of writings by Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis-René Des Forêts, Patrick Modiano, Frantz Fanon, W.G. Sebald, and Milan Kundera. Recent publications on visual culture include an article on Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante and a book chapter Jean Rouch’s Moi, un noir. Ungar’s current research project, Making Waves, is a study of postwar French documentaries and the model of social cinema. Forthcoming publications include an article on the perpetrator portrait in Jonathan Littell’s Le Sec et l’humide, a book chapter on the Groupe des 30 collective, and a review essay in The Journal of Modern History on two studies of artists and writers during Vichy France.