Research areas
Research expertise of staff covers areas from 12th-century French and Anglo-Norman narrative to post-colonial francophone literature. We currently have four thematic research clusters which bring together colleagues working on different chronological and geographical strands of French Studies.
The clusters hold informal lunchtime seminars and discussions, organise reading groups, and invite external speakers to departmental research seminars. We encourage all our postgraduate research students to get involved in the cluster(s) that match their interests.
The Literary Text and its Context
The department has a thriving literary studies group with a very wide chronological range. It has been home to one of the most important groups of medieval French specialists in the UK, and has a long tradition of excellence in the study of 18th- to 20th-century literature. Current members of this cluster and their interests include:
- Dr Amanda Crawley-Jackson (existentialist thought and fiction, autobiography, prison narratives)
- Dr Renate Günther (the works of Marguerite Duras and Monique Wittig)
- Dr David McCallam (late eighteenth-century literature, aphoristic forms of French prose)
- Dr Penny Simons (Partonopeus de Blois, non-Arthurian romance)
- Dr Audrey Small (francophone African literature, the literature surrounding the Rwandan genocide)
- Professor David Walker (André Gide, modern French literature and society)
Manuscript studies and editing
The department has an international reputation for scholarship leading to the production of major research resources, notably innovative electronic editions. We lead the field in creating resources relating to André Gide, and have published volumes of correspondence between leading 20th-century figures. The department's medievalists have produced important web-based editions of medieval texts. Current members of this cluster and their interests include:
- Dr Penny Simons (Partonopeus de Blois Electronic Edition project, edition of Joufroi de Poitiers)
- Professor David Walker (Les Caves du Vatican on CD-ROM, Gide's correspondence, editions of Genet, Camus, Robbe-Grillet)
Sociology and Cultural History
Members of the department have an international reputation for work on the informal economy in France and Europe (including questions of gender equality and the reduction of social exclusion), on feminist theory and psychoanalysis, and on the interface of literature, politics and cultural history in the 18th century.
The Department also has expertise on popular culture, women's sport in France, post-colonial discourses of identity, and the politics and economics of publishing in former French colonies. Current members of this cluster and their interests include:
- Dr Julia Dobson (popular culture)
- Dr Renate Günther (feminist theory and psychoanalyis, gender studies)
- Dr David McCallam (18th-century politica and cultural history)
- Dr Wendy Michallat (political and social history of women´s football in France, popular culture)
- Dr Audrey Small (post-colonial studies, publishing in West Africa)
- Professor Jan Windebank (the informal economy, women's unpaid domestic labour in France and Britain, gender and social exclusion)
Film, Visual Cultures and Performance
The importance of a shifting and expanded notion of the text is evident in the exciting and expanding presence of film, visual cultures and performance in our current research profile.
Research in Film Studies currently includes explorations of new articulations of the personal and the political in contemporary French film and the boom in contemporary documentary practices (Dr Julia Dobson). The filmic oeuvre of Marguerite Duras provides a fascinating focus for analysis of the constructions of gender, identity and alterity (Dr Renate Gunther).
Engagements with contemporary visual art in France maintain a dual emphasis on interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks and emerging patterns of practice and cultural policy (Dr Amanda Crawley-Jackson). Current projects in this area include research on historical and contemporary prison photography and the representation of city and post-city in contemporary visual arts from France and North Africa. Analysis of the provocation and reflection of socio-cultural change is at the forefront of research on popular culture in 1950s France and the bande dessinée (Dr Wendy Michallat).
Performance is represented by work on the plays of Hélène Cixous and the Théâtre du Soleil, and an investigation of the parameters of `performing objects´ in relation to contemporary puppet theatre in France (Dr Julia Dobson).
Further details can be found on individual staff webpages.