Brianna Mullin

Brianna Mullin is currently completing her PhD in French literature at the University of Toronto. Her research aims to contribute to a feminist revision of the history of French surrealism through the exploration and valorization of the forgotten or discredited works of women writers and artists associated with the Parisian group, especially in the postwar period. Located at the intersection of feminism and queer studies, her research explores the ways in which women writers and artists utilize surrealism to create experimental and transgressive forms of agency wherein identity, sexuality, and gendered power dynamics are simultaneously explored and challenged. During her doctoral studies, she has served as Chair of the Graduate Student Caucus and as an active member of the Communications Committee for the International Society for the Study of Surrealism (2022-2024).

Dissertation

Title: "Réécrire Éros : désir et féminité dans la création d’un surréalisme féministe chez Bona et Belen"

Committee:

• Pascal Michelucci (supervisor)
• James Cahill
• Elizabeth Legge

Brianna’s thesis examines the creation of a feminist surrealism in the works of Bona de Mandiargues (1926-2000) and Nelly Kaplan (1931-2020), alias ‘Belen.’ Rooted in an interdisciplinary approach, it encompasses art history, literature, cinema, and text-image studies. She is interested in how these different mediums contribute to a feminist conceptualization of the postwar surrealist objective of inventing ‘new myths.’ She explores how Bona and Belen/Kaplan’s ‘feminist surrealist’ myths provide expression for women’s agency and desire, while also revealing the queer potential of the ecological. Her thesis illuminates the defining characteristics of Bona and Belen/Kaplan’s feminist surrealism and the ways in which, through its rewriting of Eros, it engenders subversive modes of thought and expression that demand the collective reevaluation of identity (‘Woman’) and relationality (desire, love).

Publications

• “Bona’s Snailography” in Surrealism and Ecology. Butler, Anne Marie, Donna Roberts and Iveta Slavkova (eds.). Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, forthcoming 2025.
• “L’autoportrait épistolaire de Leonor Fini, réflexions d’une artiste en devenir,” in Lettres de femmes, contextes et enjeux. Badescu, Sanda and Corina Sandu (eds.). Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2025, pp. 203-219. [Online]
• “Le plan noir de la mélancolie dans L’Homme atlantique (1981) de Marguerite Duras,” Women in French Studies, 2021, 29: 123-135. [Online]
• “‘Est-ce que c’est ça, l’amour ?’ : Le palimpseste amoureux dans L’amour, roman (2003) de Camille Laurens,” Voix plurielles, 2021, 18.1: 52-61. [Online]