Honorine Rouiller

Senior Lecturer in French & Italian

Born and raised in France, Honorine Rouiller is a Senior Lecturer at Vanderbilt University. Examining graphic narratives, her comparative approach explores the ways in which discrepancies between official historical accounts and family memories inform identity construction in contemporary France. Her dissertation entitled “The Different Legacies of the Algerian War in French Transgenerational (Auto)Biographical Graphic Narratives,” examines (auto)biographical graphic narratives published between 2011 and 2017 to unpack how the Algerian War (1954-1962) is, in France, at the heart of the social fracture, separating the majority ethnic population with immigrant minorities and victims of social exclusion. In her corpus, she examines three groups—French soldiers, pieds noirs and North African (im)migrants—analyzing life writing that combat the silences of the French government and the official memory that it promoted since the colonization of Algeria. By sharing the personal experiences of their elders, each author supports a more pluralistic French society, challenges existing definitions of “Frenchness,” and advocates for more transparency in France regarding the events and the aftermath of the Algerian War by breaking the silences encouraged by the French government.