Valentin Duquet is a generalist of French and Francophone Studies, working across 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century literatures and cultures.
He currently teaches and conducts research as a Lecturer at Rice University in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Cultures. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin in December 2023.
Combining cultural history and political geography, his research focuses on the fin-de-siècle period (with a particular interest in Émile Zola) and the colonial literature of early-20th-century Algeria through a postcolonial lens.
His dissertation, titled “Reversed Assimilation in French Algeria: The Geographical and Religious Anti-Colonialism of Eberhardt, Amrouche, Sénac, and Haddad,” looks at the construction of spaces of resistance based in the Sahara, Kabylia, and Al-Andalus.
During his coursework, he worked closely with the Middle Eastern Studies department, completing a Graduate Portfolio in Middle Eastern Studies and two years of the intensive Arabic language track.
His peer-reviewed research has been published in French Forum, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, and earned the 2019 “Recherche au Présent” prize at the 20th- and 21st-Century French and Francophone Studies Colloquium.
He was born in Montbéliard in eastern France and holds MAs from Syracuse University and the Université de Strasbourg.
Valentin Duquet 