Dr Holly Langstaff
Associate Tutor
Email: H dot Langstaff dot 1 at warwick dot ac dot uk
Postal address: School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Arts Building, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL
About
I came to the University of Warwick for my PhD on the twentieth-century writer Maurice Blanchot, which was supervised by Professor Leslie Hill. I have taught in the French department at Warwick since 2013.
Research interests
I’m interested in modern and contemporary literature and thought. My research to date has focused on the work of Maurice Blanchot.
My monograph Art and Technology in Maurice Blanchot will be published with Edinburgh University Press in 2023. This book reappraises the influential French thinker Maurice Blanchot’s writing from the 1940s to his late work in the 1980s, demonstrating how Blanchot’s explration of the question of technology remains decisive throughout his career. It situates Blanchot’s fictional and critical work in the context of his thinking of art as techne — the Greek root of ‘technology’ meaning both craft and art — as it develops out of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy.
I am working on a new project which begins by examining the influences behind Blanchot’s third and final novel Le Très-Haut [1948].
Publications
Art and Technology in Maurice Blanchot (Edinburgh University Press, 2023)
'Uncontrollable Mechanisms: Maurice Blanchot's Inorganic Writing', French Studies, 73.3 (July 2019), 401-15 https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/knz130
Review of A World in Ruins: Chronicles of Intellectual Life, 1943 by Maurice Blanchot, trans. by Michael Holland, Modern and Contemporary France, 26: 1 (2018), 103-04
Teaching
I am interested in modern and contemporary fiction, critical theory, and philosophy. Previously I have convened Modern French Thinkers, Modern Masterpieces, Aspects of French and German Literature. I am a tutor on the IATL module 'Change' in 2023.
Translation
I project manage the Warwick Prize for Women in TranslationLink opens in a new window.
In 2023 I am chair of the judges for the Oxford-Weidenfeld PrizeLink opens in a new window. I judged this prize in 2021 and 2020.
I am co-director, with Ros Schwartz, of Bristol Translates Summer SchoolLink opens in a new window.
Outreach and Widening Participation
For several years I worked with schools in the West Midlands on widening participation initiatives as WP Lead for the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Warwick. I am interested in understanding the barriers preventing students from all backgrounds enjoying, and choosing to study, languages.
I currently work for The Queen’s College Translation Exchange overseeing the running of the Anthea Bell Prize for Young TranslatorsLink opens in a new window. I develop resource templates for all languages and select texts and design resources for French and German. In 2022, the second year of the prize, over 14,000 students participated in the competition.
At the Translation Exchange I am also on the Steering Group for Inclusive Outreach through Translation. I am running a new project for schools in Rochdale in 2022-23, in partnership with Oxford MML, Cambridge MMLL, and the Stephen Spender Trust. I ran the Fiamma Luzzati Covid-19 comic blog translation projectLink opens in a new window over the summer of 2020.