Metka Zupancic

Emerita Professor of French and Modern Languages

Research Areas

  • PhD, Romance Philology, University of Zagreb, Croatia, 1988
  • Doctorat de 3e cycle, University of Strasbourg, France, 1977
  • Habilitation to direct research, Poitiers, France, 2005

Bio

Metka Zupancic is a Professor of French/Modern Languages and a Blount Scholar. Originally from Slovenia, she holds a Doctorate in Romance Philology from the University of Zagreb (Croatia; 1988) and a Doctorat de 3e cycle from the University of Strasbourg (France; 1977), as well as the Habilitation to direct research (Poitiers, France, 2005).

In her essays, Dr. Zupancic explores myth and spirituality in contemporary novels, in particular in the writing of Claude Simon and Hélène Cixous. Her interest in French Canadian literature resulted in a number of articles on Quebec and Franco-Ontarian feminist writers, such as Louise Dupré, Madeleine Monette, Francine D’Amour, France Théoret, Andrée Christensen, Marie-Sissi Labrèche and Monique LaRue. She is also involved in translation studies (for texts between Slovene and French or English), and has explored connections between East and West in her studies of Ananda Devi and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

Dr. Zupancic teaches a variety of courses. At the undergraduate level, she teaches courses in French studies, French phonetics and English-French translation, French civilization, as well as courses in contemporary French and Francophone literature. Her graduate courses include the 20th and 21st century French and Francophone novel, Critical Theory, Feminism, Myth and Literature, and Film and Literature. At the Blount Undergraduate Initiative, she teaches the seminar “Yoga: East and West.”

Selected Publications

Dr. Zupancic has published a monograph with her essays on contemporary French and Francophone women writers, titled Les écrivaines contemporaines et les mythes (Paris: Karthala, 2013), and also a collection of her essays, Helene Cixous: texture mythique et alchimique (SUMMA, 2007). Dr. Zupancic has edited several volumes including Death, Language, Thought: On Gérard Bucher’s L’imagination de l’origine (SUMMA, 2005) and Hermes and Aphrodite Encounters (SUMMA, 2004), the latter containing international contributions from scholars in the field of myth studies. She has authored a book on the novels of the late French Nobel Prize winner Claude Simon (GREF, 2001). She has also edited or coedited a number of collective publications on myth in contemporary French and Francophone fiction, the latest being La mythocritique contemporaine au féminin. Dialogue entre théorie et pratique (Paris: Karthala, 2016).