Laura Loth joined the faculty of the Modern Languages and Literatures Department at Rhodes College in 2009. Her current research and teaching interests are in contemporary Francophone literature, particularly Caribbean literatures and their intersection with postcolonial environmental studies and questions of environmental justice. Her other areas of interest and expertise are 19th-century French colonial studies, gender studies, visual studies, North African Literature, and immigration literature in the Francophone world. An avid student of French Cinema, she received a grant from the Ministry of French Culture’s French American Cultural Exchange Program to bring the Tournées French Film festival to Memphis from 2012-2016. She is a strong supporter of study abroad and has led study abroad programs to France, Morocco, and Martinique.
Professor Loth contributes courses to the Search, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Film Studies, Environmental Studies, and Africana Studies programs at Rhodes. She is a co-director of the Global Rhodes Internationalization Steering Committee.
Prof. Loth is an avid fan of podcasts in English and in French, and you can catch her on WKNO 91.1 FM every Monday for her own very short podcast, “Spotlight on Lifelong Learning.”
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
“Gisele Pineau’s Poetics of Disaster: Trauma and Disability in Folie, Aller simple.” Special Issue on Disability, Mental Health, and Disablement. Caribbean Review of Gender Studies, 2020
“’The Natural Elements Unchained’: Trauma, Disability, and Gisèle Pineau’s Poetics of Disaster.” Special Dossier: Women Writing Disaster in the French-speaking World. Women in French Studies 27 (2019)
“Writing and Traveling in Colonial Algeria after Isabelle Eberhardt: Henriette Celarié’s French (Cross) Dressing.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature. 36.1 (Spring 2017).
“Traumatic Landscapes: Earthquakes and Identity in Franco-Algerian Fiction by Maissa Bey and Nina Bouraoui,” Research in African Literatures. 43.1 (Spring 2016).
“(Re)Writing the Ruins: Yanick Lahens’s Post-Earthquake Narrative Revisions,” Women in French. (Nov/Dec 2015).
“The Dynamics of Natural Disasters in Two Novels by Gisèle Pineau: Re-thinking Caribbean Communities.” Contemporary Caribbean Dynamics: Re-configuring Caribbean Culture. Eds. Savrina Chinien and Beatrice Boufoy-Bastick. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2015.
“Journeying Identities: Nineteenth-Century Women’s Travel Writing in French Colonial Algeria.” Symposium 63.2 (Summer 2009): 107-126.
"Epigraph-Effect/Eberhardt-Effect: The Death of Legend in Malika Mokeddem’s Le siècle des sauterelles.” Expressions maghrébines 4.1 (Summer 2005): 125-141.
SELECTED SCHOLARLY LECTURES
“Past Disasters and Future Survivors: Narratives of Saint-Pierre in the face of Climate Change,” Winthop King Institute, Tallahassee, FL, February 2020
“The Myth of Cyparis: 21st-Century Tales of Embodied Resistance from the 1902 Eruption of Martinique’s Montagne Pelée,” Twentieth and Twenty first Century French and Francophone Studies, March 2019
“’Les éléments naturels déchaînés’ : Gisèle Pineau et la poétique du désastre," Conseil International des Etudes Francophones (CIEF), Fort de France, Martinique, June 2017
“Dressing French: Writing and Traveling in Colonial Algeria after Isabelle Eberhardt,” Western Society for French History (WSFH), Chicago, IL, November 2015
“(Re)Writing the Ruins: Dany Laferrière’s Post-Earthquake Narrative Revisions,” Caribbean Studies Association (CSA), New Orleans, LA, 2015
“Writing the Disaster: Yanick Lahens’s Failles and Haiti’s Post-Earthquake Literature,” South Central Modern Languages Association (SCMLA), Austin, TX, 2014
Education
