Professor Ève Morisi
Professor of Literatures in French and Political Humanities, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages
Ève Morisi is Professor of Literatures in French and Political Humanities. She has worked and published extensively on Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), the 19th century ‘cursed’ poet of modernity, and on Albert Camus (1913-1960), one of the most prominent writers and politically-committed intellectuals of the 20th century who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. Her research examines the intersections of modern and contemporary literature, politics and ethics more broadly with a particular focus on the representations of organised violence (capital punishment, terrorism) in the French context. Related to these areas of expertise is a keen interest in contemporary French politics and society.
About
Ève Morisi is Professor of Literatures in French and Political Humanities at Oxford University. Her scholarship considers the junction of poetics, politics and ethics in French and Francophone literature from the 19th to the 21st century.
Part of her research has focused on Algeria-born author Albert Camus (1913-1960). Among the four books she has published on the Nobel laureate is a volume collecting all of his writings on the death penalty: Albert Camus contre la peine de mort (Gallimard, 2011). Based on archival work and prefaced by Robert Badinter, who acted as the lawyer of several Frenchmen condemned to death in the 1970s before serving as the Minister of Justice who abolished the death penalty in France in 1981, the book comprises previously-unpublished material. It presents Camus’s defence of numerous men condemned to death during Franco’s dictatorship, the purges that marked the Liberation in France, the Greek Civil War (1946-1949), the repression perpetrated in Eastern Europe under Stalinism and the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962).
Professor Morisi has also worked on such writers as poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) and Annie Ernaux (1940-), examining their representations of various forms of violence, their understanding of social injustice and their articulation of a political critique of French society.
Organised lethal violence features prominently among her objects of study. While several of her books have analysed the ways in which post-Revolutionary French literature has engaged with capital punishment, her more recent publications have turned to the portrayal of terrorism in contemporary French fiction and non-fiction.
Related to her areas of expertise is a keen interest in contemporary French politics and society.
Examples of public-facing activities:
Professor Morisi has curated exhibitions on Camus and Ernaux for the general public (Cité du Livre/Bibliothèque Méjanes, Aix-en-Provence; University of Oxford), co-ran the Oxford Modern French Research Seminar from 2017 to 2022, and is the founder of the 'Contemporains' Series, which organises conversations with contemporary French and Francophone writers at the Maison Française d'Oxford.
Collaborations with a range of public institutions have included: Amnesty International, the Red Cross, the Memorial Site of Les Milles Camp, the Centre Albert Camus-Cité du Livre in Aix-en-Provence, French national public radio and television France Inter and Public Sénat, and the BBC (The Forum, Newshour).
Expertise
- Albert Camus
- Charles Baudelaire
- French literature
- French literature and violence
- French literature and terrorism
- Contemporary French politics and society
- France
- Death penalty in France
Selected publications
- Le temps retrouvé ? Une minute quarante-neuf secondes de Riss, Revue des
sciences humaines, 359 (2025, 135-148) - Annie Ernaux: Writing, Politics. Special issue of French Cultural Studies (ed., vol.
35, issue 1, Feb. 2024) - Capital Letters: Hugo, Baudelaire, Camus and the Death Penalty (Northwestern UP,
2020) - Death Sentences: Literature and State Killing (co-ed. with Birte Christ, Legenda,
2019) - “Staging the limit: Albert Camus’s just assassins and the il/legitimacy of terrorism”
in Terrorism and Literature, ed. Peter Herman (Cambridge UP, 2018) - Camus et l'éthique (ed., Classiques Garnier, 2014)
- Albert Camus, le souci des autres (Classiques Garnier, 2013)
- Albert Camus contre la peine de mort (Gallimard, 2011, pref. by abolitionist lawyer
and former Minister of Justice Robert Badinter)
Media experience
Professor Ève Morisi has experience working with broadcast and online media, including with French national public radio France Inter and national public television Public Sénat, the BBC, The Conversation and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Recent media work
- Newshour: Trump threatens more strikes on Iran (BBC News, 2026)
- Série Albert Camus. Albert Camus et le terrorisme (France Inter radio, 2020)
- The Forum: Albert Camus: Embracing life’s absurdity (BBC News, 2019)
- Penser le terrorisme: le cas Albert Camus (The Conversation, 2019)
- Painting World War I, Not Quite by Number: Jean Echenoz brings World War I alive in his compact and chiseled 1914 (Los Angeles Review of Books, 2014)
- Bibliothèque Médicis: La peine de mort (Public Sénat, 2011)
Languages
French, English