Clémence Boulouque

Clémence Boulouque was born in Paris, France. Her father Gilles Boulouque, a magistrate, was appointed an anti-terrorism judge in the aftermath of a wave of terrorist attacks in Paris in 1985-1986. When she was 13, in 1990, her father, confronted with overwhelming political-media pressure, took his own life. She graduated from the Institut d'études politiques de Paris and the ESSEC (Ecole supérieure des sciences economiques et commerciales). She spent some time in a recruiting firm before moving to New York City for the first time in order to earn a master's degree at the School of International Affairs at Columbia University in 2001–2002.

Returning to France, she devoted herself to writing, journalism, and literary criticism.

In 2003, she published her first book, Mort d'un silence, describing the long ordeal that she and her family lived through when her father committed suicide; the book won the Prix Fénéon. In 2005, she participated in the documentary film La Fille du juge (The Judge's Daughter), based on the book, directed by William Karel.

She has contributed articles to Le Figaro littéraire, Transfuge, and Lire. She regularly participated in the television program Tout arrive hosted by Arnaud Laporte on France Culture and was the producer of a series of programs with writers such as Toni Morrison and Amos Oz, as well as a summer series about Marguerite Yourcenar.

She returned to the USA in 2008 and received a PhD in Jewish Studies and History from New York University in 2014. Boulouque completed her postdoctoral training at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She teaches in the Department of Religion at Columbia University as Carl and Bernice Witten Assistant Professor of Jewish and Israel Studies. Further published works include the novels Sujets libres (2004), Chasse à courre (2005), Nuit ouverte (2008), and L’Amour et des poussières (2013); nonfiction works such as Juives d'Afrique du Nord, with Nicole Serfaty, (2005); Survivre et vivre: entretiens (interviews with Denise Epstein, the daughter of Irène Némirovsky, 2008); and Another Modernity: Elia Benamozegh's Jewish Universalism. She is the co-editor of the Stanford Studies in Jewish Mysticism series.