Core Faculty Member

Anaïs Maurer is Assistant Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. Her research explores Indigenous decolonial ecologies, with a focus on nuclear imperialism and climate justice. Raised in Tahiti, she conversant in colonial and Indigenous languages alike. For the past decade, she has conducted extensive fieldwork (or home-work) in the Pacific, compiling a unique corpus of Indigenous ecocritical stories in French, English, Spanish, Tahitian, Mangarevian, and Uvean, encompassing a wide variety of artistic genres from print literature to dances and graphic arts. Her first monograph, The Ocean on Fire: Pacific Stories from Nuclear Survivors to Climate Activists (Duke University Press, 2024), analyzes Pacific artists' transgenerational fight against the nuclear arms race and climate change, by underscoring the environmental racism at the roots of both existential threats. Anaïs Maurer strives to facilitate decolonial dialogue across cultures and languages and is involved in various translation projects to bring the literature of the French-occupied Pacific to a global anglophone audience. She also collaborates with nuclear physicists to add her cultural and historical expertise to studies of nuclear contamination in French-occupied Polynesia. Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals as well as public-facing media such as the BBC, CNN, and NesiaDaily, and has been supported by various grants, including, most recently, the international CAPAS fellowship for her second monograph project, ’Aita Atomi: Les artistes mā’ohi contre le colonialisme nucléaire. In addition to her academic work, she campaigns for nuclear reparations and for the abolition of nuclear weapons. 

Books (click on image for details):

Journal Articles

• “Plaidoyer pour la colère antinucléaire : Le droit à l’émotion dans l’écriture de l’histoire du CEP.Australian Journal of French Studies 61:1 (2024).
• “Bonded by the Bomb: Asian-Oceanian Alliances against French Nuclear Colonialism,” in Center-to-Center Relationalities: At the Nexus of Pacific Islands Studies and Trans-Pacific Studies, special issue of Critical Ethnic Studies 7:2 (2022)
• “Pacific Women Antinuclear Poetry: Centering Indigenous Knowledges,” in Feminist Interrogations of Global Nuclear Politics, special issue of International Affairs 98:4 (2022) [co-authored with Rebecca H. Hogue]
• “Snaring the Nuclear Sun: Decolonial Ecologies in Titaua Peu’s Mutismes: E ’ore te vāvā,” The Contemporary Pacific, 31:2 (2020)
• “Océanitude: repenser le tribalisme occidental au prisme des nationalismes océaniens,” Francosphères, 8:2 (2019)
• “Nukes and Nudes: Counter-Hegemonic Identities in the Nuclearized Pacific,” French Studies, 72:3 (2018)

Edited Special Issue of Journal

• New Directions in Contemporary Mā’ohi Literature, in the Australian Journal of French Studies, 61:1 (2024). [Co-edited with Julia Frengs and Jeffrey Zuckerman]
• Transnational Nuclear Imperialisms, Journal of Transnational American Studies, 11:2 (2020) [Co-edited with Rebecca Hogue] 

Book Chapters

• “Mā’ohi Lives Matter: A Call for Environmental Justice in the Nuclearized Pacific,” In Michelle Beauclair (Ed.), The Francophone World: Cultural Issues and Perspectives, New York: Peter Lang, Second Edition. Forthcoming.
• “‘Qui ne mourrait pas de cancer dans nos îles?’ L’imaginaire poétique des océaniens antinucléaires," in Renaud Meltz and Alexis Vrignon, Des Bombes en Polynésie : Les essais nucléaires français dans le Pacifique, Paris: Vandémiaire, 2022.
• “Kakadu – Kwajalein – Ka Pae ’Āina: les nouvelles routes de l’impérialisme nucléaire,” in Sémir Al Wardi, Jean-Marc Régnault (Eds.), Indo-Pacifique et routes de la soie. Les nouvelles stratégies mondiales,Pape’ete : Api Tahiti Éditions, 2021.

Public Outreach

Chatter podcast: Oceania's Nuclear and Climate Storytelling with Anaïs Maurer, 2024.

New Books Network podcast: The Ocean on Fire by Anaïs Maurer, 2024.

Nesia Daily Radio, Hear from the academic researching how communities are resisting environmental racism in Oceania, 2023.

The Conversation, En Polynésie, des oeuvres d'art pour défier le colonialisme nucléaire, 2022.

BBC TV Word News, “France’s Nuclear Debt towards Mā’ohi Nui,” 2021.