#  Annabel Kim 

Department Chair & Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures (French)

French Section Leader

 

 

 



   ![Annabel with cat](/sites/g/files/omnuum8296/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/2026-06/annabel%20zazie.jpg?itok=f61SMkse) 

 



 

 location\_on Boylston 418 

 smartphone [(617) 384-7511](<tel:(617) 384-7511>) 

 email [annabel\_kim@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:annabel_kim@fas.harvard.edu) 

 laptop\_windows [Click Here to See Personal Website](https://sites.harvard.edu/annabel-kim) 

 

[Sign up](https://annabelkim.youcanbook.me) for Office Hours:

Wednesdays (in-person), from 2-3 pm, and Thursdays (Zoom), from 2-3 pm.

 

 



 

**Research Interests:** 20th- and 21st-century French Literature; Feminism; Contemporary Novel; Literature and Politics.

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I received a B.A. in French and Art History from Williams College in 2007 and a Ph.D in French from Yale University in 2014.

I am interested in feminist writing and theory, the novel (in particular, the contemporary novel), and, more broadly, the ethical and political implications of writing and reading fiction. While I specialize in 20th- and 21st-century French literature, I have a soft spot for literature from the 18th and 19th centuries, despite the myriad ways it has of killing off its women.

My first book, [*Unbecoming Language: Anti-Identitarian French Feminist Fictions*](https://ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/9780814213841.html) (Ohio State University Press, 2018), uses the collective corpus of Nathalie Sarraute, Monique Wittig, and Anne Garréta to theorize a feminist poetics that hollows out difference and reworks our subjectivities so that we can break free of identity and exist as subjectivities without subjecthood. My second book, [*Cacaphonies: The Excremental Canon of French Literature*](https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517910884/cacaphonies/) (University of Minnesota Press, 2022), works to combat the deodorization of the French literary imaginary and argues that the persistent excrementality of the modern French canon puts forth fecality as a corporeal, concrete corrective to abstract universalism as a site of exclusion and violence. My current book project, *Ought to Fiction*, is a critique of contemporary French literature's domination by autofiction and exofiction and its unquenchable thirst for the real.

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**Fifteen Minutes Interview with the Crimson**  
["Annabel L. Kim on Subjectivity, Scatology, and Garfield"](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/9/19/annabel-kim-fifteen-questions/)



 

 

 



##  Courses Taught 

 



### Spring, 2026

  [### FRENCH 077 - The Bad Place: Dystopia à la Française

 ](/class/french-077-bad-place-dystopia-la-francaise) 

 **Semester:**   Spring 

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 **Year offered:**  2026 

 

  



 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

- ## Department Role
    
     [Chair](/people/role/chair) [Faculty](/people/role/faculty) [French Faculty](/people/role/french-faculty) [Section Head](/people/role/section-head) [Undergraduate Advisor](/people/role/undergraduate-advisor)
- ## Language
    
     [French](/language/french)
- ## Research Interest
    
     [20th Century](/research-interest/20th-century) [21st Century](/research-interest/21st-century) [Literature](/research-interest/literature) [Translation](/research-interest/translation) [French](/research-interest/french) [Environmental Humanities](/research-interest/environmental-humanities) [Gender and Sexuality](/research-interest/gender-and-sexuality)