Rachel Gabara
Associate Professor of French

Contact Information

Email:
rgabara@uga.edu
Office:
210 Gilbert Hall
Office Hours:
Fall 2019: T Th 2-3 p.m. and by appointment
Personal Website:
http://faculty.franklin.uga.edu/rgabara/
Curriculum Vitae:
CV Gabara 20.pdf (125.92 KB)
Programs:
French
Research Areas:
Francophone Literatures and Cultures
African and African Diaspora Literatures and Culture
Film Studies

Rachel Gabara teaches French and Francophone literature and film. She is the author of From Split to Screened Selves: French and Francophone Autobiography in the Third Person (Stanford, 2006) and essays on African film in The Global Auteur: Politics and Philosophy in 21st Century Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2016), Global Art Cinema: New Theories And Histories (Oxford, 2010) and Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema (Wayne State, 2007). She is currently at work on "Reclaiming Realism: From Documentary Film in Africa to African Documentary Film," a book-length study of documentary film in West and Central Africa based on research supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, and the Fulbright Scholar Program. She has published two recent articles on this topic; "War by Documentary" appeared in Romance Notes (55.3, 2015), and "From Ethnography to Essay: Realism, Reflexivity, and African Documentary Film" is included in A Companion to African Cinema (Wiley-Blackwell, 2018).

Research Interests:

Twentieth and twenty-first century literature, film, and theory in French; African cinema; documentary film; postcolonial studies.

Grants:
  • National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, July 2020-June 2021.
  • UGA Willson Center for Humanities and Arts Faculty Research Grant in Humanities and Arts, Fall 2018.
  • National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, June-July 2018.
  • American Philosophical Society Franklin Research Grant, June-July 2018.
  • UGA Willson Center for Humanities and Arts Research Fellowship, 2013-14.
  • Princeton University Christian Gauss Fund University Preceptorship, 2003-05. 
  • Fulbright Scholar Program African Regional Research Grant, January-May 2003.
Selected Publications:
  • From Split to Screened Selves: French and Francophone Autobiography in the Third Person. Stanford University Press, 2006. 
  • “Paulin Soumanou Vieyra and the Emergence of West African Documentary Film.” Forthcoming in Black Camera 11.2 (Spring 2020).
  • “From Ethnography to Essay: Realism, Reflexivity, and African Documentary Film.” A Companion to African Cinema. Eds. Kenneth Harrow and Carmela Garritano. Wiley-Blackwell, 2018. 358-378.
  • “Abderrahmane Sissako: On the Politics of African Auteurs.” The Global Auteur: Politics and Philosophy in 21st Century Cinema. Eds. Jeremi Szaniawski and Seung-hoon Jeong. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. 43-60.
  • “Mixing Impossible Genres: David Achkar and African AutoBiographical Documentary.” Revised reprint. The Documentary Film Reader. Ed. Jonathan Kahana. Oxford University Press, 2016. 924-937.
  • “War by Documentary.” Romance Notes 55.3 (2015): 409-423.
  • “Interrogating Images: Lumumba: Death of the Prophet as Reflexive AutoBiographical Documentary.” Raoul Peck: Power, Politics, and the Cinematic Imagination. Eds. Toni Pressley-Sanon and Sophie Saint-Just. Lexington Books, 2015. 153-170.
  • “Abderrahmane Sissako: Second and Third Cinema in the First Person.” Global Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories. Eds. Karl Schoonover and Rosalind Galt. Oxford University Press, 2010. 320-333.
  • “‘A Poetics of Refusals’: Neorealism from Italy to Africa.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 23.3 (2006): 201-215. 
  • “Screening Autobiography: Cyril Collard’s Nuits Fauves.” French Cultural Studies 16.1 (2005): 55-72.
  • “Mixing Impossible Genres: David Achkar and African AutoBiographical Documentary.” New Literary History 34.2 (2003): 331-352.