Research interests in French Studies
RAE 2008 Success for French Studies at the University of Manchester
French Studies at Manchester has achieved one of the best scores for its field in the latest Research Assessment Exercise. We are one of 7 departments in Manchester's School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures 50% or more of whose research has been judged to be in the top two categories of 4* (world leading) or 3* (internationally excellent).
In a ranking based on both quality and volume of research, we are in the highest tier of UK university French departments. Moreover, we form part of a School which RAE 2008 has clearly shown to be among the leading units of its kind in the country. The University of Manchester has emerged from this RAE as one of the UK's top four universities for research, and one which boasts a breadth of research achievement spread across more distinct discipline areas than any other UK institution.
Research in French Studies research is interdisciplinary and wide-ranging: from medieval manuscripts to twentieth-century women's writing; from culture and society to history of the book; from classical theatre to contemporary cinema and dance. We have a dynamic research environment, with a thriving postgraduate community, and have recently estabilshed a Centre for Research in the Visual Cultures of the French-Speaking World (CRIVCOF).
Research Projects
- Poetic Knowledge in Late Medieval France
- Post-Colonial Negotiations: Visualising the Franco-Algerian Relationship in the Post-War Period
- Watching Dance: Kinesthetic Empathy
Research Centres
- Centre for Research in the Visual Cultures of the French-Speaking World (CRIVCOF)
- Migration and Diaspora Cultural Studies Network (MDCSN)
- Centre for Translation and Cultural Studies (CTIS)
- Centre for Cultural Forms of Politics in Modern Europe
Previous Conferences
- Narrative Painting in France (University of Manchester, 5-6 January 2010)
- Technologies of the Visual (University of Manchester, 7-9 January 2008)
- 2008 Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France (ASMCF) annual conference 'Constructing French Identity/ Identities', to be held at the University of Manchester on 5- 6 September 2008.
- Writing the Event in Valois/Hapsburg Burgundy (1460-1540) (University of Manchester, 1 December 2006)
- Posters in French literature and culture from 1870 to the present day (University of Manchester, 26-28 June 2006)
- Issues in Popular Contemporary French Cinema (Manchester Metropolitan University, 12-13 January 2006)
- Elites, print media, and social control (University of Manchester, 24-25 April 2003)
- Popular Music Conference (The University of Manchester, 19-20 June 2003)
- Nineteenth-Century History Painting (University of Manchester, 20-22 September, 2002)
- Sex and the Sacred (University of Manchester, 25 March, 2002)
- Engaging with Simone de Beauvoir (St John's College, Oxford, UK, 20-22 July, 2001)
French Studies Research Profiles
David Adams: French Enlightenment thought; illustrated books to 1800; material bibliography.
Penelope Brown: European children's literature; illustrations in children's books; French and English women writers of the 19th Century; George Sand. Currently writing a two-volume critical history of French children's literature.
Daron Burrows: Old French literature, especially comic narrative; Early Medieval French culture and society; text editing.
Peter Cooke: 19th- Century French painting and literature; Gustave Moreau; poetry; post-Romanticism.
Barbara Lebrun: Contemporary French popular music; national identity, multiculturalism and public discourse in popular culture; audience research in French cultural studies.
Joseph McGonagle: Ethnicity in French and francophone visual culture; French photography and film; cultural relations between France and Algeria.
Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen: Synchronic and Diachronic Semantics and Pragmatics, Verbal Interaction, Functional and Cognitive Linguistics, Spoken vs Written French, Peircean Semiotics
Thanh Nyan: Discourse markers, argumentation theory, theories of common grounds, co-evolutionary approach to meanings at the text level.
Floriane Place-Verghnes: Popular literature and culture; 19th Century French literature and culture (with a particular interest in the relation between the press and short fiction); literary theory (especially reader-response criticism); media studies (film and cartoon).
Dee Reynolds: Modern and post modern dance; audience research; comparative aesthetics; poststructuralist and feminist theory.
Ursula Tidd: Simone de Beauvoir; 20th century French women's writing, feminist theory, modern French literature, especially autobiography; Holocaust writing.
Darren Waldron: Contemporary French cinema and popular culture; queer theory; qualitative audience study.