CEFRES Team

Michaela Rumpíková – Research & CV

“Young Women in Transition: A Phenomenological Reading of First-Person Coming of Age Stories”

Contact : michaela.rumpikova@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr

Research Area 2 – Norms & Transgressions

My doctoral research proposes a phenomenological reading of contemporary French coming-of-age fiction centred around the figure of the young girl. By perceiving the young girl as a body in the state of becoming, I take up the concept of “becoming a woman” (Beauvoir, then Deleuze and Guattari) in order to extend it to a broader understanding of becoming as a directed process, that is, one influenced by gender, class, race, and sexuality norms. In 2001, Tiqqun wrote “Like so many of our unfortunate contemporaries, the Young Girl took Western metaphysics at the foot of its aporias”. Integrated into late capitalism, feminine subjectivity is formed through the norms of seduction, performance and consumption, and their internal contradictions. Nevertheless, it cannot be reduced to a simple embodiment of this ideology. Far from being a passive symptom, it also constitutes a reaction to the impasses of the system: it is a question of adapting to it, negotiating a space within it, and of becoming in a world which has already frozen into an artificial image of it. All while attempting to break free from the narrow confines of this representation, her story attempts to sketch the outlines of her own subjectivity.

In terms of methodology, I draw on the triad of orientations-objects-others (Sara Ahmed) to examine how formative trajectories are shaped by external forces that determine accessible and desirable directions and shape our relationship to the world, objects, and others. This allows me to rethink coming-of-age not as a linear or teleological route, but as an active movement, a form of navigation within a relational and dialogical field, where the body is affected without end, moved, and reconfigured in its way of being in the world. I thus reinterpret the Bildungsroman as a narrative journey, a dialectic movement of experience: a space of disadjustment, of friction, and sometimes even failure, understood not as an individual fault, but as a symptom of the norms which organise the social space.

This research draws on a corpus of coming-of-age fiction in the first person which I refer to as the ‘fourth generation’, characterised by social mobility, post-identity and the porosity of belonging (i.e. Nina Bourauoi, Faiza Guène, Wendy Delorme, Lolita Pille, Emmanuelle Richard, Blandine Rinkel, Fatima Daas). By examining the ways in which young girls negotiate their place in a world that guides them before they even have the opportunity to choose their own direction, I explore what becoming (a woman) means today, and what narrative forms and textual strategies enable us to express, reshape or invent this becoming.

CV

Education

  • 2022 – present: PhD. candidate jointly supervised by Charles University and Sorbonne Nouvelle University (programme: French and comparative literatures); Thesis: Young Women in Transition: A Phenomenological Reading of First-Person Coming of Age Stories, under the supervision of Eva Voldřichová Beránková and Alain Schaffner
  • 2019 – 2021: Master’s at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University (programme: French philology); Specialities: sexual identities and their representation in francophone literature, self-narrative, illness and auto-fiction; Dissertation: Hervé Guibert: the resurrection of the Author, under the supervision of Eva Voldřichová Beránková; Grade: excellent
  • 2015 – 2019: Bachelor’s at the Faculty of Education at Charles University (programme: French and English); Specialities: literary engagement, the literature of the Enlightenment and its emancipatory limits; Undergraduate dissertation: The emancipation of women in Les Liaisons dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, under the supervision of Milena Fučíková; Grade: excellent

Exchange programmes

  • (2024) Vassar College (Department of modern literature)
  • (2022 – 2023) École Normale Supérieure (Department of literatures and language)
  • (2020 – 2021) Sorbonne Nouvelle University (Department of languages and literatures)
  • (2017 – 2018) Institut Catholique de Paris (Department of literature and language)

Publications

  • „Holky s bouchačkou: Odysea revolučního násilí v podání Virginie Despentes“, in: A2, 2025.
  • „Angažovat se od stolu“, in: Re:vize, 2025.
  • « Le chronotope de devenir-queer dans Arcadie (2018) d’Emmanuelle Bayamack-Tam : le corps en Bildung », in : Silène, 2025. (publication to come)
  • « La vengeance au féminin : Civico et Burnier sous la tutelle de Despentes », collective volume under the supervision of Katarzyna Gadomska and Tomasz Kaczmarek, Lausanne : Peter Lang, 2024.
  • “Failing as a Literary Form of Queering”, collective volume codirected by Stefanie Mayer and Alex Lachkar, Vienna: Transcript, 2024.
  • « Floutage des frontières de genre : écrire le corps queer », collective volume under the supervision of Robert Karul and Andrea Turekova, Prague : Svet literatury 2024.
  • „Corporealita: tělo pod kapitálem“, in: Glosolalia, vol. 6, 2024.
  • „Co nenapíšu, to se nezavrší“, in: A2, 2024.
  • „Michel Houellebecq: islamofob a pornohvězda na poloviční úvazek“, in : Alarm, 2023.
  • « Hors centre et périphérie : La convergence littéraire dans l’univers de Vernon Subutex (2015 – 2017) de Virginie Despentes », in : Ostium, 2023.
  • „Marginalizace, patriarchát a emancipační boj u Virginie Despentes“, in : Alarm, 2023.
  • „Annie Ernaux: tělo a třídní boj”, in : Host, 2023.
  • „Marcel Proust a tajemství času”, in : Host, 2022.
  • „Emile Zola proti sociální slepotě“, in : H7O, 2022.

Conference(s), presentation(s), summer school(s)

  • (November 2025) International conference on the theme “Negotiating Safety. Literary and Cinematic Stagings of Tensions and Conflicts in Queer Spaces Since 1900” at the University of Vienna; Michaela RUMPIKOVA (2025), “Queers at the Family Table: Negotiating the Self and the Family Through Space”.
  • (September 2025) Interdisciplinary workshop on “Rethinking the Emotions from a Historical Perspective” organised by Charles University; Michaela RUMPIKOVA (2025), “Feelings of Class Shame in Contemporary Literature: Failing to Feel Right”.
  • (August 2025) Interdisciplinary summer school of the theme “Guerre-Conflit-Résilience” in Štěkeň, organised by par the Jan Hus Association; Michaela RUMPIKOVA (2025), « Refuser la résilience : le récit du mal-être comme échec à résister à la négativité ». (publication to come)
  • (June 2025) International conference on the theme “Esthétiques queer et enjeux sociaux : décentrement”, organised by Clermont Auvergne University; Michaela RUMPIKOVA (2025), « L’intimité éco-queer : « faire l’amour aux rochers, baiser les arbres ». (publication to come)
  • (May 2025) International conference on the theme “Colères féminines”, organised by the University of Amiens; Michaela RUMPIKOVA (2025), « On se lève et on se casse : le concept de la colère féministe chez Virginie Despentes et Wendy Delorme ». (publication to come)
  • (October 2024) International conference on the theme “Bildungsroman à l’épreuve des identités sexuelles” organised by Paris Nanterre University; Michaela RUMPIKOVA (2024), « Le chronotope de devenir-queer dans Arcadie (2018) d’Emmanuelle Bayamack-Tam : le corps en Bildung », 24th October, Paris.
  • (August 2024) Interdisciplinary summer school on the theme “Déchets et fragments” in Kosice (University of Kosice) organised by the Jan Hus Association; Michaela RUMPIKOVA (2024), « La poétique du fragment dans Le Corps lesbien de Monique Wittig », 5th July, Kosice.
  • (July 2024) Summer school in Poitiers (University of Poitiers), organised by OFFRES; Michaela RUMPIKOVA (2024), « Lecture phénoménologique queer de la jeune fille dans les récits de formation : devenir dans le monde », 5th July, Poitiers.
  • (April 2024) Presentation of a thesis chapter at Vassar College; Michaela RUMPIKOVA (2024), “The (Young) Girl as Contemporary Character: Becoming War Machine”, 22th April, New York.
  • (March 2024) Doctoral seminar on the theme “Écrire contre” organised by Sorbonne Nouvelle University; Michaela RUMPIKOVA (2024), “Virginie Despentes and Literary Queering”, International conference “Queer/Feminist Relations in Fiction”, 15th March, Paris (online).
  • (October 2023) International conference on the theme “Queer Feminist Relations in Fiction” at the University of Vienna; Michaela RUMPIKOVA (2023), “Virginie Despentes and Literary Queering”, International conference “Queer/Feminist Relations in Fiction”, 28th October, Vienna.
  • (August 2023) Interdisciplinary summer school on the theme “Le Flou” in Krahule organised by the Jan Hus Association.