Frédérique Aït-Touati

Thèmes de recherche 

• Histoire et théorie de la littérature, savoirs de la fiction

• Histoire des sciences (astronomie, optique)

• Performance studies

Recherches actuelles 

• Savoirs du théâtre, performance et philosophie

• Théâtre contemporain et écologie

Enseignement

• Directrice scientifique du programme d'expérimentation en arts politiques (SPEAP)

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The main focus of her research is early modern literature and science. She is interested in the poetics of the scientific genres and the relationship between fiction and knowledge, from historical as well as contemporary points of view. Her first book (Fictions of the Cosmos. Science and Literature in the Seventeenth Century, The University of Chicago Press, 2011, MLA Prize for comparative literary studies) offers an account of the ways in which astronomers made themselves trustworthy interpreters of the heavens in the great age of telescopic discovery. This material was also the source of an essay in French (Contes de la Lune. Essai sur la fiction et la science modernes, Gallimard, NRF Essais, 2011, Prix Gegner de l’Académie des sciences morales et politiques). Her recent publications include a co-edited book on science and narrative in the early modern period (with Anne Duprat, Histoires et savoirs, Peter Lang, 2012) and a book on ‘picturability’ and the limits of representation in the 17th century (with Stephen Gaukroger, Le Monde en images. Voir, représenter, savoir, de Descartes à Leibniz, Classiques Garnier, 2015). She is currently at work on an essay on theatre and the representation of space in the early modern and contemporary periods.

Before joining the CNRS, she was educated at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and Trinity College Cambridge, then taught at the Paris IV-Sorbonne (2004-2007) and the University of Oxford (2007-2014).