Comparative Literature Lecture Series

"Anonymity as the Immemorial Exile: A Shared Space in Iranian, French & American Texts"

Presenter: Negar Basiri

April 13, 2023, 12:30-1:30 PM.

Dean's Office, Hodges 155.

Negar Basiri is a PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature at Louisiana State University. She received her MA and BA in English Literature in Iran. She works on English, Persian and French languages and literatures. She is interested in theories of phenomenological ethics and philosophy particularly the theories of Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Blanchot and Jean Luke Nancy. Her current research concentrates on the representation of 'il y a', a phenomenological term for the void, and anonymity in the aesthetic realm and its relation to disaster, trauma and the event in general. Major areas through which she examines this phenomenological concept of 'il y a' are memory, exile and temporalization. Her recent research focuses on a new rendition of cosmopolitanism from an ethical-phenomenological perspective by arguing that the shared authentic space of communication is possible through fleeting temporary moments of rupture in identity as temporal/spatial anonymity. She addresses communication between the self and the world in the context of prominent modern Iranian, French, and American literary texts.