Additional Information / Informations supplémentaires

Office and Office Hour / Bureau et heure de réception

Aïcha holds a bachelor’s degree in English and German as well as a master’s degree in English, both from the University of Geneva. In her master’s thesis, which has earned the Marcel Compagnon prize in Western cultures and languages, she analyzed the indirect rhetorical revision of racist tropes about African ancestry in a selection of Harlem Renaissance poems, based on the literary theoretical framework of “Signifyin(g)” developed by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Her doctoral research focuses on the semantic and rhetorical functions of the concept of the “animal” (and its cognates) in North American slave narratives. Slave narratives and Abolitionist rhetoric at large often invalidate pro-slavery’s discursive animalization of African Americans by reversing the terms of the “animal” comparison, i.e., by depicting enslavers, and not the enslaved, as nonhuman. Nonetheless, in many slave narratives the rhetorical equation of slavery with animality co-exists with varied iterations of the “animal” (be it as a general concept or through instantiations of an individual or group of other-than-human animals). The thesis will explore the further ways in which the “animal” shapes the literary re-subjectification of (formerly) enslaved African Americans.

Aïcha’s general research interests include narratology and literary (counter-discursive) rhetoric, African American literary theory, Critical Race Theory, Critical Animal Studies, Black Veganism, Vegan Ecofeminism, Disability Studies, and Fat Studies.

Alongside her scholarly research, Aïcha teaches textual analysis in English and American literature at the undergraduate level.

PUBLICATIONS

Aïcha Bouchelaghem, Kimberly Frohreich, Deborah Madsen and Caroline Martin. “What Judges Your Story? Moral Deixis and Readerly Orientation.” Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature, vol. 43, 2023, pp. 139-158, https://doi.org/10.33675/SPELL/2023/42/12.

Deborah Madsen, Aïcha Bouchelaghem. “A Research Sneak Peek… with Deborah Madsen.” Newsletter of the English Department (NOTED), Spring 2023, pp. 20-27, https://www.unige.ch/lettres/angle/application/files/2316/8189/8917/Noted60pp.pdf

PRESENTATIONS AND CONFERENCE PAPERS

“The End of the Disembodied Human: Corporeality and Health in Two Slave Narratives,” C19 [Society of 19th-Century Americanists] Biennial Conference, Pasadena (California), March 2024

“Caveat Emptor: Consumer Ethics in Narrative Works by Hannah Crafts and Frederick Douglass,” BrANCA Biennial Symposium, online, December 2023

“Abolition beyond the Human-Animal Binary in African American Literature,” RIAS International PhD Seminar, Middleburg, December 2023

“Abolition beyond the Human-Animal Binary: Three Case Studies,” CUSO Modern and Contemporary Doctoral Workshop, University of Geneva, October 2023

“Paratext as Moral-Ethical Orientation in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861),” SANAS Biennial Conference, University of Fribourg, November 2022

“L’abolitionisme genevois durant le long dix-neuvième siècle: anglophilie et figures importantes,” Genève, ville de refuge: Conversations autour de Genève comme lieu de refuge et d’écriture à travers l’Histoire. Swiss Association of University Teachers of English (SAUTE), University of Geneva, October 2022

COMMUNITY SERVICE

Co-Editor/Board Member, Noted: Newsletter of the English Department, University of Geneva (2021-present)

Co-President/Secretary, Association des Étudiant-es en Langue et Littératures Anglaises (AELLA), University of Geneva (2019-2022)

Board Member, Association des Étudiant.e.x.s en Lettres (AEL), University of Geneva (2019-2022)