Noah C. Goodwin
9 Pleasant St SE
Minneapolis,
MN
55455
Noah C. Goodwin is a Ph.D. Candidate in the department of French and Italian whose dissertation research focuses on contemporary French and Francophone literature and film. His dissertation is entitled 'Politics and Aesthetics of Martyrdom.' Noah's dissertation research focuses on French and Francophone writers and filmmakers in the 'contemporary' era, from 1950 to the present moment. His dissertation considers representations of political martyrdom from two perspectives: the politics of production and the aesthetics of their representation. He focuses in particular on stories or representations of political martyrdom(s) that have been transcribed, translated, or repurposed for different audiences. His research is broadly animated by questions of violence, culpability, rupture, and trauma. In particular, to consider martyrdom, he thinks about the way that the martyr (who has died) is still 'present' in some ways and how that 'presence' affects political discourses or representations of politics. Some animating questions for Noah's research are: what politics do the dead offer the living? What role do the living play in mediating the political lives dead? And, how do things such as cultural objects, time, memory, space, and place mediate or activate in the relationship between life and death? In order to do this, Noah uses an interdisciplinary approach, combining critical, political, and literary theory with techniques of close reading alongside archival research in order to think about the difficult and contested place of martyrs and martyrdom in the contemporary era.
In addition to his dissertation research, Noah is also passionate about contemporary cinema, especially horror cinema. His work is published in the journal TROPOS and the edited volume The Art of Directing and is forthcoming in the journal Mortality.
Educational Background
- BA: French Language & Literature, University of Mary Washington, 2018
- MA: French & Francophone Studies, University of Minnesota, 2020
Specialties
- Contemporary literature
- Critical theory
- Violence and Extremism
- Psychoanalysis
- Genre/Horror Cinema