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Research Programmes
Students may study for the degrees of MA, M.Phil and PhD in French studies.
French at Kent came 7th 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.
Doctoral Students and Research Studentships
Institutional support for staff research has been matched by a strong commitment to research students. This is demonstrated by the university’s current investment of £27,000,000 in Woolf College, a new Postgraduate Studies College, with state-of-the-art resources, opened in 2008.
Research students in Kent benefit from generous funding opportunities. The School awards up to three Postgraduate Bursaries each year which cover fees. Research students are also encouraged to develop their academic skills and prepare for their future careers by teaching seminars relating to their research topics. Since 2006, the School has awarded three University Scholarships per year, funded at Research Council levels (fees and maintenance). Each year one postgraduate in French has received one of these three-year awards. Incoming language assistants in French are eligible for a 50% reduction in tuition fees. In 1998, James Fowler established a link with the ENS (Paris), which provides research status and free accommodation in Paris for research students each year. French at Kent leads the UK in co-tutelle arrangements at PhD/Doctorat level.
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 who in 2006, Beckett’s centenary year, spoke at nine conferences in Europe, the United States and Japan. 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 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.
If you wish to enquire about our research programmes, please contact