
Interview with Pierre Anctil for the radio program "Notre histoire en tête"


ABOUT
A specialist of the links between literature, politics and testimony, I am a researcher affiliated to the Canada Research Chair in Music and Politics at the University of Montreal. I am a Quebec-born native French speaker, holding a Ph.D. in French and Francophone literature from the University of Montreal. I was a Fellow at the Summer Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization of the Holocaust Educational Foundation at Northwestern University, and a Postdoctoral Fellow in comparative literature at the Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris 3) with a fellowship from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC).
My research addresses mainly twentieth-century comparative literature, with a strong focus on interdisciplinarity (history, cinema, music), Holocaust Studies and environmental humanities. I am particularly interested in the writings of survivors of genocide and other political and ecological violence, studying the various ways extreme experiences are conveyed through literature. A first project, which led to the publication of my book La Littérature inouïe (PUR, 2022), delves into the first testimonies authored by Nazi camp survivors that were published in France and Italy. My current project examines the links between genocide and ecocide in the literature of the long 20th century.