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Research
French at Kent came 7th in the country in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise. The French Department operates within a broader constellation of researchers who work in French Studies. Strong institutional support has helped this group to make an assertive and original contribution to French Studies in the UK. Research collaboration, publications, conference papers and public lectures in mainland Europe, USA, Australia and elsewhere also give this group’s research enterprise a markedly international dimension.
Benefiting from strong institutional support, French continues to give priority to research activities and to develop high-quality research projects in fields that range from eighteenth-century French literature and thought to contemporary francophone writing and socio-linguistics. Sustainable development of research strengths is further ensured by grouping related projects into networks. The specific areas of research described below consolidate a sense of common purpose and identity and are an essential part of a research environment in French at Kent that is designed to foster and support individual and collaborative initiatives.
If you wish to enquire about our research programmes, please contact
Researchers in French are members of the Centre for Modern European Literature and are grouped in the following five clusters:
Word and Image Studies
This is a rapidly expanding research network. Peter Read came to Kent with an extensive list of interdisciplinary publications, notably on interplay between art and literature including three books published in 2008: Les Dessins de Guillaume Apollinaire; Picasso and Apollinaire The Persistence of Memory and Apollinaire, The Cubist Painters. Tom Baldwin recently authored The Material Object in the Work of Marcel Proust, which explores ekphrastic variations in the writings of Proust, and he is now preparing a new book that extends this critical approach to encompass a range of 18th-,19th- and 20thcentury authors. Research by Tom Baldwin and Peter Read overlaps with that of Jon Kear, a member of Kent’s School of Arts, whose publications on modern French literature and art bring him into the heart of the French’s research endeavour. Jon Kear and Peter Read have both recently published essays exploring the importance of Balzac’s Le Chef d’oeuvre inconnu to works by Cézanne and Picasso. This dimension of research in Kent is further strengthened by Alex Hughes’s work on twentieth-century French literature and photography and also on French cinema, an interest she shares with Jon Kear, who is a leading authority on the work of French film director Chris Marker.
Philosophy and Critical Theory
Lorenzo Chiesa works on French critical theory, psychoanalysis and philosophy and has published books and essays on Artaud, Badiou, Foucault and Lacan including a monograph published in 2007 - Subjectivity and Otherness. A Philosophical Reading Shane Weller is a leading Beckett scholar. Shane Weller’s work on Derrida and his monograph on French literature and ethics: Literature, Philosophy, Nihilism: The Uncanniest of Guests published in 2008 match related preoccupations in the work of Tom Baldwin, Lorenzo Chiesa and James Fowler, constituting a strong research cluster in the field of French philosophy and critical theory.
Gender Studies
Ana de Medeiros, like Alex Hughes, works in twentieth-century gender studies, and has increasingly focused on francophone writing, fields that have proved attractive to postgraduates. James Fowler’s work on the literary presentation of female prudes and libertines also contributes to Gender Studies. His research on the eighteenth century, particularly on Diderot, has expanded to allow his forthcoming book on libertinage and the figure of the prude to offer a substantial re-examination of received critical views on Sade, Laclos, Richardson and Crébillon fils.
Cultural Memory
Alex Hughes, Ana de Medeiros and Peter Read all have publications in the field of Cultural Memory and this area of research is further enriched by the School’s Cultural Memory Research Project and the major international conference which was hosted by Kent in 2008. For further information on recent conferences organized by French please click here.
Language and Linguistics
David Hornsby is a member of the Executive Committee of Kent’s Centre for Language and Linguistics Studies, launched in 2007. Growing out of the School’s Linguistics Research Group, this new Centre is designed to promote productive collaboration between colleagues from across the Faculty who have an interest in this thriving subject area.