Émilie Sermadiras is an ATER member of the Chair of Modern and Contemporary French Literature at the Collège de France, and a doctoral student at USR 3608 "République des Savoirs" (ENS/CNRS/Collège de France). Agrégée de lettres modernes, she is preparing a thesis on the links between "Religion and illness in fictional narrative in the second half of the 19th century". The aim is to show how the renewal of religious sentiment - whether from an apologetic or critical perspective - involves writing about the body and illness. This work, which combines epistemology, aesthetics and poetics, aims to cross disciplines, thinking of literature as a space for complex thought, nourished by several discourses. It reconciles the history of science, religion and literature with a reflection on the representation of the suffering body and on scientific and religious imaginaries.
Émilie Sermadiras's publications to date include a majority of articles devoted - among others - to Barbey d'Aurevilly, the Goncourt brothers and Émile Zola. With Pierre Glaudes, she also co-organized a seminar on "Les paradoxes d'Octave Mirbeau", which resulted in a collective work(Les Paradoxes d'Octave Mirbeau, forthcoming from Éditions Classiques Garnier).
