Ana Oancea

Biography

Ana Oancea is an Assistant Professor of French in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Her specialization is in the literature and culture of 19th century France, with the intersections of science and literature as a primary field. Her research and teaching also draw connections with the cultural production of the 20th century and the contemporary period. Recent publications and courses engage with adaptation and visual studies, particularly relating to French film, bande dessinée and video games.

Dr. Oancea’s first book, Dangerous Creations: The Inventor Novel in Fin-de-siècle France (forthcoming spring 2025, U. Toronto Press) looks at how 19th-century French popular literature constructed a new avatar of scientific progress in the figure of the inventor. It analyzes works of 19th-century anticipation by Jules Verne, Albert Robida, Emile Zola and Villiers de l'Isle-Adam to explain the recurrence of the inventor figure. He – the character is universally male in these narratives – is a negative exemplar of national heroism in the Age of Empire, a period when France suffered grave external threats and internal divisions, but the inventor also stands for unbridled creativity. The book argues that the inventor novel is a product of broader French anxieties about scientific progress and international competition. These works critically examine the place of science in fin-de-siècle French national identity and seek to alter French understanding of science and technology. Dangerous Creations also sketches out the transmedia and transnational legacy of the fin-de-siècle inventor novel by placing its various iterations in conversation with similarly-themed films, television series, graphic narratives, and video games.

She regularly teaches courses on composition and conversation, visual narratives, French science fiction, French cooking, literature and film, and the representation of French education on film. For more information, please visit her website.
 

Publications

Book

Dangerous Creations: The Inventor Novel in Fin-de-siècle France (forthcoming, U. Toronto Press)

Peer-reviewed Articles

• “Contemporary Values Encounter Classic Illustrations in Rebecca Solnit’s Cinderella Liberator (2019).” Forum for Modern Language Studies 58.4 (2022): 413–431.
• “Mind the Knowledge Gap: Ex Machina’s Reinterpretation of the Female Android.” Science Fiction Film and Television 13.2 (2020): 221–245.
• “Salammbô in the Third Degree: From Novel to BD to Video Game.” Etudes francophones 32 (2020): 110-128.
• “Black Skin, Black Mask: the Subaltern’s Quest for Transformation in Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s Mon Amie Victoria.” French Screen Studies (formerly Studies in French Cinema) 20.1 (2020): 67-86.
• “Literature and Vivisection: Reevaluating Emile Zola’s Interpretation of Claude Bernard.” Neohelicon 45.2 (2018): 671-687.
• “Heredity Beyond the Rougon-Macquart: The Case of Travail.” French Forum 42.2 (2017): 233-248.
• “The Temptation of the Material in Jean Lorrain’s Fairy Tales.” Dix-Neuf 21.2-3 (2017): 178-191.
• “Verne at Lyon's Fête des Lumières: New Media, Old Dystopia.” Romance Notes 57.3 (2017): 497-511.