Research specialisations
Research in French at Queen Mary covers the language,
literature and culture of France and the French-speaking
world and spans a wide range of topics within the historical,
geographical and linguistic areas of French culture: film,
visual arts, philosophy, psychoanalysis, theories of violence,
and theories of modernity.
The members of the department holding research posts
are:
- Elza Adamowicz
Dada and Surrealist art, literature and film; word and
image relations in 20th century French literature/art;
translation
- Marian
Hobson-Jeanneret (Emeritus Professor)
The individual and the species in French thought at
the time of the Revolution; sculpture in 1800; the philosophy
of Jacques Derrida
- Edward Hughes
Twentieth-century French literature. French colonial
culture. Exoticism. Francophone literature of the Maghreb
- Ann Lewis (Leverhulme
Early Career Fellow from April 2007)
The eighteenth-century French novel; Marivaux; Graffigny;
Rousseau; the topic of sensibility, reception and reader-response
theory; word and image relations
- Will McMorran
The European novel from the 17th to the nineteenth centuries;
theories of the novel and narrative theory; the afterlife
of Don Quijote; Sade
- Michael Moriarty
French thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries;
Roland Barthes
- Leigh Oakes
Language and national identity in France, Québec,
and Sweden; language policy in the European Union; language
attitudes; language and globalisation
- Agnieszka Steczowicz
French and European Renaissance literature; Rabelais
and Montaigne; Renaissance cultural and intellectual
history; early modern enclyclopaedias; word history;
theory of genre
- Kiera Vaclavik
Anglophone and Francophone children's literature; comparative
literature; nineteenth-century fiction; theories of
intertextuality
The following research is conducted within the Centre
for Film Studies
- Libby Saxton
Post-war French cinema; ethics, testimony and trauma
in film; Claude Lanzmann; Jean-Luc Godard; film theory
- Sue Harris
Contemporary French cinema; set design in the 1930s
European studio system; Bertrand Blier; spectatorship,
performance theory
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French research seminar series
The French department runs a series of research seminars.
The programme for the current year can be accessed here.
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Current and recent research grants
Several members of the unit have obtained funding under
the AHRC Matching Leave Scheme:
Harris: January-April
2005 (£15,301)
Jordan: October-December
2001 (£9,126); September 2006-January 2007 (£14,013)
Moriarty: January-April,
2001 (£18,780); January-April 2005: (£15,301)
Oakes: September-December
2005 (£15,301)
Saxton: January-March
2006 (£11,476)
Research grants have been obtained by:
Harris: October
2002-October 2005, AHRB Research Grant for the project
‘Set Design and the City: European Cinema in the 1930s’,
in collaboration with Prof. Sarah Street, University of
Bristol (£50,212)
Oakes: July 2002
- January 2006, AHRC Research Grant for project 'Language
and Identity in Quebec' (£16,428)
Saxton: August 2005
–July 2006, British Academy Small Research Grant to archive,
in the form of audio-visual digital recordings and print
transcripts, the proceedings of a conference in March
2000 and a seminar in July 2004 in which Jacques Derrida
responded to papers on his work by English and American
philosophers (£5,466)
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Current and recent graduate research
Current and recent theses supervised by members of the
French department include:
- Problems of reading and communication in eighteenth
century French fiction
- Theories of feminine consciousness on screen
- The reception of Katherine Mansfield in France
- Late-twentieth-century women's writing
- The relationship between the French and American film
industries
- Transnational Stars in 1950s Cinema: France and the
USA
- The Cinema of Claude Sautet
- Multilingualism and nation-building in South Africa
- Language attitudes in Québec
- Language policy in Georgia
A list of current PhD students in the School is available
at here.
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Cultural Transfers research network
The School of Languages, Linguistics and Film hosts the
website for Cultural Transfers, a research network dedicated
to bringing together research by British and European
scholars on the implications (ideological and other) of
movements of people, goods, and texts across national,
linguistic, and cultural frontiers, from the late 17th
to the early 19th century. Marian Hobson, Emeritus Professor
of French, is one of the key members of this research
network. More information on the Cultural Transfers is
available on its website.
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Réseau-F
Queen Mary is a member of Réseau-F, an inter-institutional community of postgraduate students in French and Francophone Studies at masters and doctoral level. The network offers subject-specific training, to complement existing institution-based generic skills training, and hosts events across participating institutions. These include regular work-in-progress seminars and one-day workshops; there is a dual focus on skills development and identifying emerging trends in the discipline, with input from both peers and experts. More information is available on the network's website. website.
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