Karl Britto

Karl Britto is an Associate Professor of French & Comparative Literature and Associate Dean of the College of Arts & Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley. He holds a Ph.D. from Yale University and specializes in French literature, postcolonial studies, and Vietnamese diasporic fiction. His work interrogates colonial legacies, intercultural dynamics, and memory in literature.

Britto has published extensively on topics such as Graham Greene’s colonial narratives, Vietnamese diasporic identity, and the cultural role of Paris in postcolonial frameworks. His book Disorientation: France, Vietnam, and the Ambivalence of Interculturality (2004) remains a seminal text in postcolonial theory. Recent articles explore intersections between memory, narrative, and historical reclamation in works by authors like Viet Thanh Nguyen and Phạm Duy Khiêm.

• Education: Ph.D., Yale University
• Awards: Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award

Britto’s research bridges French literary traditions with global postcolonial contexts, emphasizing marginalized voices and transnational narratives. He has also contributed prefaces to reissues of colonial-era texts like Nguyen Phan Long’s Le Roman de Mademoiselle Lys. His current role as Associate Dean reflects his commitment to fostering interdisciplinary humanities scholarship.