On May 24^th, 2022, Comparative Literature doctoral candidate Robin Okumu successfully defended her dissertation, “Utopian Relationality: Intercorporeal Subjectivity in French Feminist Fiction” (Prof. Natalie Hester, director). “Utopian Relationality,” a term of Okumu’s invention, provides for a flexible interpretative tool for reading the work of two writers often thought to be antithetical—Monique Wittig and Hélène Cixous—and considering their influence upon the contemporary fiction of Marie Darrieussecq.

Okumu is also the author of two articles: “1973: Memories of a Lesbian Body—Reading Monique Wittig’s Le Corps lesbien through Deleuze and Guattari’s le corps sans organes” in Deleuze and Guattari Studies; “Rewriting Patriarchal Ventriloquism: The Sibyl’s words-made-leaves in Monique Wittig’s Virgile, Non” in Women in French Studies.