At USC, your dissertation can be genuinely interdisciplinary while retaining rigorous training in French and Francophone Studies. Our Current students work on projects from experimental film and photography to French Asian diasporas and racial capitalism.
Explore our current Graduate Students below and our Alumni & Placement to learn more about their research and career paths.
Alexandre Collomb
Research Interest:
Among Alexandre’s research interests is a focus on decadence in 20th century literature, especially in works by fascist authors.
Jérôme Gendrot
Research Interest:
Jérôme’s research interests center on French and Francophone footballers, football culture, and athlete authorship and subjectivities.
Chloé Luu
Research Interest:
Chloé’s research centers of French Asian diasporas and cultural histories. Her research has most recently appeared in a special issue of L’Esprit Créateur on racial capital. Her article is entitled “Jaune à l’extérieur et blanche à l’intérieur: French Asian ‘Post-Migratory’ Narratives, National Belonging and Capital Erasures.”
AJ Mata
Research Interest:
AJ is a first-year student in the program. He comes to us from UC Davis where he completed a MA in Comparative Literature (May 2026). Prior to that, he completed a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and International Studies from University of San Francisco (May 2024). His research interests center on the circulation of extra-textual and visual documents within French and Francophone cinema.
Elsa Vallot
Research Interest:
Elsa’s research focuses on martial arts and the banlieue, plasticity and the body, rap music and culture, and the Indian ocean cultural continuum. Her research has appeared in Journal of the Western Society for French History. She is author of the novel Le corps le sang la rage (Hors d’Atteinte, 2021). Elsa is currently conducting her research and dissertation writing in Thailand.
Lucy Whiteley
Lucy Whiteley is a Provost Fellow and PhD candidate in French and Francophone Studies, as well as a participant in the Visual Studies Graduate Student Certificate. She received her Bachelors in French and History from Cornell University with distinction in all subjects, and a Master of Studies with merit in History from the University of Oxford in 2019.
Her dissertation, “After la zone: The Poetics of Negative Space,” contends that the legacy of la zone – the peripheral ring that surrounded Paris from 1841 until 1944 – had a transformative effect on the way French filmmakers approached space in their work. Drawing upon theories of photography and photographic materiality, her work accesses peripheral filmic spaces through the substance of film itself.
She is currently a USC Second Century Oakley Fellow. Previously, she was the 2025 Walter J. Jensen Winner, a Chateaubriand Fall 2025 Fellow, and a Jeanne Marandon Bourse 2025-2026 Grantee. She has also received support from the USC Graduate School, the Department of French and Italian, and the Visual Studies Research Institute.
