Zeina Hakim

Research Interests

Eighteenth-Century French Literature; French Literature Pedagogy

Zeina Hakim received her Ph.D. in French Literature from Columbia University and a doctorate in French Literature from the University of Geneva and Paris-Sorbonne, after completing an M.A. in French Literature at Yale University. She is currently a Lecturer in French at Columbia University.

Her work on eighteenth-century French literature focuses on narrative theory, women writers, and the works of Diderot, Rousseau, and Marivaux. Her first book, Fictions déjouées. Le récit en trompe-l’œil au XVIIIe siècle (Droz, 2012), examines the paradoxical claims to authenticity in eighteenth-century fiction, showing how novelists simultaneously seek to make fiction “look true” while exposing its artifice and inviting the reader’s active participation. She has also co-edited Mémoires et roman. Les rapports de vérité et de fiction au XVIIIe siècle (Hermann, 2023) and Diderot et l’archéologie (Classiques Garnier, 2024) and is co-director of Diderot Studies since 2020.

Her current research project, Francophone Literatures in Secondary Education: Teaching, Curriculum, and Comparative Perspectives in Switzerland and the United States, examines how the diversification of literary canons is reshaping the teaching of literature in secondary education. Comparing Geneva and New York City, it investigates the inclusion and exclusion of Francophone literatures through curricula, teachers’ representations, and classroom practices, asking how the growing presence of these works challenges established literary canons and redefines what counts as literature worth teaching.