University of Gothenburg
University of Gothenburg
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  4. Mette Ruiz

Mette Ruiz

EDUCATION OFFICER

Department of Languages &
Literatures
Telephone
+46 31-786 17 78
Mail
mette.tjell@sprak.gu.se
Visiting address
Renströmsgatan 6
41256 Göteborg
Room number
F420
Postal address
Box 200
40530 Göteborg

About Mette Ruiz

  • Development Manager for Education with overall responsibility for course syllabi, courses offered by the department, and duty lists for teaching staff
  • Director of studies for Arabic and English

Background

Following university studies in French and English in Gothenburg, Lyon, Brighton and Paris, I obtained a Master’s degree from the University of Gothenburg in 2007. Later in the same year, I was accepted to the PhD programme. In 2009, I completed a Licentiate degree after presenting a thesis project on the French-Canadian author Réjean Ducharme. From 2010 to 2015, I pursued a PhD within the framework of a Cotutelle agreement between the University of Gothenburg and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, where I spent 1.5 years. In spring 2015, I finished my PhD with a thesis titled Le manifeste littéraire revisité: explorations fictionnelles du genre dans la littérature française contemporaine [The Literary manifesto revisited. Fictional explorations of the genre in contemporary French literature]. I taught French courses alongside the work to complete my PhD thesis, and from autumn 2014 to autumn 2015 I was appointed coordinator of the International Language Programme at the Department of Languages and Literatures. In July 2016 I began my current position as education officer.

Research

My research is focused on contemporary French literature and the development of the literary manifesto. My PhD thesis Le manifeste littéraire revisité. Explorations fictionnelles du genre dans la littérature francaise contemporaine combines both areas, as I was interested in the use of the literary manifesto in contemporary French literature. I focused on three authors in particular – Éric Chevillard (France), Antoine Volodine (France) and Edouard Glissant (Martinique) – all of whom integrate the form and/or rhetoric of the manifesto in some of their novels. This fictive use of the manifesto has immediate consequences for the characterisation of the genre: the revolutionary impact of the manifesto’s discourse is weakened when the author gives the word to a fictitious character. Also, the collective dimension of the manifesto is reduced, as the author presents an aesthetic that refers to his own literary production. Following a socio-discursive analysis of the novels, I discuss whether they are symptomatic of our time where the golden age of avant-garde and the literary revolutions is long gone. The discussion is supported by statistics on the development of the manifesto genre collected in the research project MANART (Manifestes artistiques et littéraires au XXe siècle), which I initiated and have been involved in since 2012. Since 2014, the project is funded by the French research structure Laboratoire d’Excellence – Création Arts Patrimoines [Laboratory of Excellence – Creation, Arts and Heritage].