Renate Mattar, a PhD candidate in the Department of French with a certificate in Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University, has been awarded the Contemporary Thought Archival Research Grant, a joint fellowship between the Columbia Global Paris Center and the Institut Mémoires de l’Édition Contemporaine (IMEC). She is the first recipient of this fellowship, part of the Jean Baudrillard Program.
Her project brings the archives of Marguerite Duras and Jean Baudrillard into dialogue, examining their approaches to writing, memory, and the representation of reality. By studying Cool Memories alongside Baudrillard’s handwritten notebooks, she will analyze the interplay of fragmentation, simulacra, and testimony in a world saturated with signs. One central question is how Baudrillard’s theory might illuminate Duras’s autobiographical writing.
As Mattar explains, for Duras, the problematic of the real is rooted in trauma and testimony (war, colonization), while for Baudrillard, it lies in political ambiguity and the expansion of popular culture. These concerns resonate strongly today, in an era overwhelmed by images and representations.
The fellowship includes a research residency at the IMEC’s Abbaye d’Ardenne and at Reid Hall in Paris during the summer of 2026, culminating in a publication and a public lecture at the Columbia Global Paris Center. The archives of Duras and Baudrillard are housed at the IMEC, while Baudrillard’s personal library is preserved at the Columbia Global Paris Center.
