Carole Edwards , Ph.D. Professor of French

Carole Edwards received her doctorate from Purdue University in French with an emphasis on Francophone Studies. At the undergraduate level, Dr. Edwards teaches French grammar; Commercial and Business French, Francophone Culture and Film, and literature survey classes. At the graduate level, she teaches Postcolonial literature and theory, and translation. As a 20th/21th Century scholar, her research interests include North African, Sub-Saharan and Caribbean Francophone literature. She published a monograph on Francophone women dramatists (L'Harmattan 2008), a volume on Sacrifice (Rodopi 2014), co-directed a volume with Françoise Cévaër on the Representation of the loser in French-speaking Film and literature (Presses Universitaires de Limoges, 2018), and a monograph on novelist Laurent Gaudé with Revue des Lettres  Modernes Minard (Classiques Garnier, 2021). She has also published articles ranging from literature, history to cultural studies (Expressions maghrébines, women in French Studies, Routledge, Nouvelles Etudes Francophones, The French Review etc). She is a Fulbright alumnus to Morocco. She is currently working on literary postures focusing on North African author Mohamed Nedali and contemporary women Moroccan authors.  

Books

• Les dramaturges antillaises (L'harmattan, 2008) redefines West Indian identity through the study of a sample of West Indian Francophone women dramatists. This study examines drama as a genre as it mainly uses body, music and dance. It also tackles geographical reconciliation, exile and lack of representation in a postcolonial context. From an analysis of the private sphere as a mirror of the public one, the emergence of a West Indian Identity is brought to light with a life of its own, one which is independent from peninsular French literature.
• Le sacrifice dans les littératures francophones (Rodopi, 2014) argues that pain, compromise or even invisibility are all notions linked to sacrifice, a recurrent theme in Francophone literature. This volume examines how various aesthetics in the following genres: drama, novella, or film (in Quebec, Africa or the West Indies) express sacrifice.
• La figure du loser: dans le film et la littérature d'expression française (Presses Universitaires de Limoges, 2018), co-edited with Dr. Françoise Cévaër explores the representation of the loser in narratives and film. 
• Laurent Gaudé : Conteur, Dramaturge, Écrivain-monde (Revue des Lettres Modernes Minard, Classiques Garnier, 2020) studies in-depth a selection of works by Laurent Gaudé through precise and varied theoretical approaches (postcolonial, novel, mythological and ecocritical) that apprehend Gaudean poetics in an imaginary redefined in the 21st century.
•  The ABCs of French Culture: An unconventional Guide to French Behavior with co-author Grace Stockton-Bliard  (Amazon 2024) offers. a practical guide to understanding French social customs, manners, and bureaucracy, helping visitors and expats navigate cultural differences. 
•  Special issue "L'extraordinaire de l'ordinaire” (Filigranes journal No 7,  2025) explores the extraordinary of the ordinary in a selection of narratives and film.