Robyn Pront

Robyn Pront specializes in 20th-century French literature and history, with a focus on representations of war.  Her research investigates how literary and cultural texts shape historical memory.  Her interests in contemporary French and Francophone culture span a broad range of disciplines, including history, film, urban studies, and the digital humanities.

Her current book project, Liberation Fictions, examines the Liberation of France during World War II as an exemplary moment of transition that challenged the legitimacy of political regimes and continues to influence contemporary debates about French national identity. Analyzing autobiographical and fictional works from writers across the political spectrum—from résistants like Albert Camus, Marguerite Duras, and Édith Thomas to the fascist Robert Brasillach—she re-evaluates the criteria we use to determine the political weight of aesthetic choices.  This analysis is based on archival research and informed by memory studies, narratology, and theories of everyday life. 

She is also working on a project in conjunction with Yale University’s Digital Humanities Lab to develop a digitized corpus of French postwar newspapers and new tools to analyze them.   

At Connecticut College, she teaches elementary and intermediate French language and culture courses as well as upper-level courses in French and Francophone literature.  Prior to joining Connecticut College in 2019, Robyn Pront taught French courses at Alma College and Yale University and English at Université de Bourgogne in Dijon, France.

Visit the French department website. 

Majoring in French.