Martine Guyot-Bender
Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Award Professor of French and Francophone Studies
Martine Guyot-Bender is a French and Francophone literary and film scholar with a career that spans over thirty years. She did her undergraduate studies in Metz, France, and holds a Ph.D. in French literature from the University of Oregon. In 1991, she completed her dissertation on Patrick Modiano’s second generation memory of the Nazi Occupation in France; this was first full dissertation on Modiano who, in 2014, received the Nobel Prize of literature. She has also worked on various contemporary popular writers such as Amélie Nothomb. Her current research has shifted to social film documentary in France since 1967, and, more recently, in post-Genocide Cambodia. Guyot-Bender integrates a lot of her scholarship findings in her upper-level courses. She also teaches all levels of French language. She has directed the Hamilton in France Program in Paris nine times (last 2021-22).
Recent Courses Taught
Upper level
Representation of Modern French War: Poetics and Politics
Cinematographic Memory
The History of French Cinema Through Labor
French Slow Filming: Life on Reels
History and the Significance of French Railroad
Language
All levels of language and introductory courses in literature and culture integrating new technologies
Research Interests
- Twentieth/21st-century French literatures, cultures (discourse analysis/narratology)
- Film studies (documentary)
- Historical/war narratives, cultural and popular studies, contemporary France, memory
- Second-language acquisition (multimedia and technology assisted)
Distinctions
- Center for Khmer Studies, Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Senior Fellow, Spring 2023
- Margaret Bundy Scott Professor of French, 2016-20
- Brochard Foundation subsidized seminar on contemporary French cinema, 2012
- Camargo Foundation subsidized scholar and artist residency, 2010
- Class of 1963 Research Grant: 2003, 2006, 2010
- Class of 1963 Excellence in Teaching Award, 2003
Selected Publications
Guyot-Bender has two articles in preparation on her spring 2023 research on Cambodian contemporary cinema, in Phnom Penh. These include the Bophana Audiovisual Center and emerging independent filmmakers (i.e. Anti-Archives group)
- Slon/Iskra Citizen Documentary in the Lense of Jean-Louis Comolli’s Militant Cinemaphilie”. French Cinema Studies. (Summer 2018)
- “Retour sur Image/Zoom Arrière; Fondu au Noir dans le Cinéma de Rithy Panh”. Sites: Contemporary French and Francophone Studies (Fall 2017)
- “Staging the Global through the Local. Iskra Films of Displacement.” Special issue on Contemporary French Cinema and the Crisis of Globalization, SubStance (Spring 2014)
- Mémoire en dérive. Poétique et politique de l'ambiguïté chez Patrick Modiano. Paris: Lettres Modernes, Archive 276, 1999.
- Paradigms of Memory. The Occupation and Other Hi/Stories in Patrick Modiano's Fiction. Co-edited with William VanderWolk. New York: Peter Lang, 1998.
- "Grandeur et Misères de la lecture : Les Belles Images de Simone de Beauvoir." Les femmes et la lecture. Ed. Catherine R. Montfort. Special issue of Women in French Studies, spring 2013.
- “‘Sottisier des années Soixante’ ou roman universaliste: Les belles images de Simone de Beauvoir, revu et corrigé.” Revue Lendemains, special issue on Simone de Beauvoir lesser known works, December 2008.
- "Canon in Mutation: Nothomb, Houellebeq and Co. on the Net," Sites. Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 10. 2-3 (winter 2006).
- “Amélie Nothomb’s Dialectic of the Sublime and the Grotesque,” in The Contemporary Literary Extreme. Eds. Alain Philippe Durand and Naomie Mandel. London: Continuum (2006).
- “Coding Japan. Amélie Nothomb and Alain Corneau’s Stupeur et tremblements,” Sites. Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 9.4, fall 2005 (367-376).
- “‘Un Air de famille’. Tragi-comédie des sexes et androgynie”. Women in French Studies (spring 2004).
- “Bibliographie critique. Romancières aujourd’hui, 1990-2004”. Women in French Newsletter (fall 2004).
- “Popular Fiction”. In Popular Culture in France from 1950 to the Present. Ed. Hugh Dauncey. London: Arnold Publishers, 2003.
- “Harmony and Resistance in Algerian Women's Communities. Assia Djebar's ‘L'Amour, la fantasia’”. Reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 182 (December 2003).
- “Fiction at Twenty Thousand Leagues Above the Sea. Hemispheres’ Fantasies of France,” Sites/Sites (summer 2001).
- “Introduction” (1-17) and “Making Sense of Ambiguity” (17-36). In Paradigms of Memory. The Occupation and Other Hi/Stories in Patrick Modiano's Fiction. Guyot-Bender and William VanderWolk eds. New York: Peter Lang, 1998.
College Service
- Rotating French Department Chair.
- General Director, Hamilton in France: 1996-97; 2000-01; 2005-06; 2010-11; 2013-14; 2017-18; 2022-24.
- Director-in-Residence, Hamilton in France: 1992-93; 1997-98; 2001-02; 2006-07; 2007-08; 2011-2012; 2014-15; 2018-19; 2021-22.
- Co-founder of Cinema and New Media Studies Major, Cinema and New Media Studies Program, 2012-present.
- Committee on Academic Policy: 1994-96; 1998-99; 2003-06; 2017-18.
- Committee on Appointment: 2008-11; 2019-20.
- Harassment and Sexual Misconduct: 2008-10
- Humanities at Hamilton, Executive Committee, 2017-20. Member 2020-22.
- Diversity and Social Justice, Executive Committee, 2008-15
Professional Experience
- Professor of French, Hamilton College, 2006-present
- Associate professor of French, Hamilton College, 1997-2006
- Visiting associate professor, University of Oregon, Fall 2004
- Assistant professor of French, Hamilton College, 1991-1997
- Hamilton-Middlebury-Smith of Social Science Consortium in Paris, president, 2001-02, 2006-08
- Assistant director-in-residence, Oregon State of Higher Education, Lyon, 1987-88
Appointed to the Faculty
1991Educational Background
Ph.D., University of Oregon
M.A., University of Oregon
Diplôme Universitaire d’Études Audiovisuelles, Université de Metz, France
Licence d’Anglais (B.A. in English), Université de Metz, France
