Dr Tanguy Harma
Lecteur
Tel: +44 (0)24 765 22404
Email: tanguy dot harma at warwick dot ac dot uk
Faculty of Arts Building, University Road
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
About
I am a dedicated teacher hailing from Montpellier. I have worked across 3 continents in a variety of education institutions and universities, and have always enjoyed making a difference in the student learning experience.
I completed a PhD in 2018 in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London, and have worked in a variety of educational environments and HEIs, both in the UK and abroad. I worked as a French Language Assistant at Dunraven School and Greenford High School in London, and taught as a French Instructor in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Minnesota in the US. I also worked as an Associate Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, as a Pre-Sessional Lecturer at the University of Southampton in the Academic Centre for International Students, and as an Assistant Professor at Istanbul Culture University in Türkiye.
This international teaching experience has complemented my theoretical knowledge in the field, which I acquired through the completion of a training course that conformed to the UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching in Higher Education Institutions. This course led me not only to achieve excellent knowledge of pedagogical principles and academic discourse related to teaching and learning in HEIs, it also developed my ability to reflect critically on my own teaching practice. It led to my recognition by the Higher Education Academy as an Associate Fellow in March 2014 (AF-HEA), and I am currently working towards full fellowship status.
I have achieved a good grasp of the educational challenges that students face in the UK at various stages of the curriculum, and I enjoy designing a learning experience which explores new ways of engaging with core subjects in the humanities in the current digital environment.
I teach French oral classes in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures since 2023. I am part of a tightly-knit team composed of the French Language Coordinator, the Heads of Year and the other instructors on the course, and my aim is to develop students’ confidence and accuracy in spoken French through a range of pedagogical tools and activities, both in the classroom and outside. The classes I teach also integrate a cultural and historical dimension which enables students to foster an awareness of the current affairs of France and of the francophone world. I have also been running the French Conversation Club since 2023, and I take part in student assessment and end-of-year examinations.
I am committed to the promotion of equal opportunities in my teaching practice, and aim at maintaining the highest standards in terms of equity, diversity and inclusion, in line with the University of Warwick’s rigorous policies in this area.
Research interests
My research explores the crossover of French Existentialist thought with 19th- and 20th-century American literature and culture. It spans across a variety of literary genres and cultural movements, from American Romanticism and the Transcendentalist tradition to the American counterculture, with forays into the European avant-gardes and the transcontinental movement of Existentialist philosophy.
My first research monograph, entitled The Paradox of Thanatos: Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg, from Self-Destruction to Self-Liberation, was published by Peter Lang in 2022, and has been nominated for a BSA Book Award in 2024.
I am currently working on an essay on queer temporalities in Beat writing for a special issue of the European Journal of American Studies, and on a book chapter for the edited collection Allen Ginsberg in Context (2025) with Cambridge University Press.
Teaching
Academic year 2024–2025:
- FR1013: Modern French Language I First year oral
- FR2014:Modern French Language II Oral
- FR3014:Modern French Language III Oral
I also organise and run the French Conversation Club for second / final-year students
Publications
Book:
- The Paradox of Thanatos: Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg, from Self-Destruction to Self-Liberation. New Approaches series. New York: Peter Lang, 2022
- Nominated for a BSA Book Award in 2024
Book Chapters
- Coming soon: ‘Jack Kerouac’, in Allen Ginsberg in Context, ed. by Erik Mortenson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025
- ‘Vers un Existentialisme Beat?’, in Beat Generation: L’Inservitude Volontaire, ed. by Olivier Penot-Lacassagne. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2018, pp. 109–18
Articles
- Coming soon: ‘American Existentialism Undercover: Re-assessing Emerson’s Contribution to Existentialist Thinking in North America’. European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy – EJPAP. XVII-1, Jan 2025
- ‘From Thoreau to Kerouac: The Pull towards Nature, a Revolt against Culture?' JAST, ed. by Defne E. Tutan. Vol. 57, spring 2022, 53–70
- 'Norman Mailer's Existentialism; Or, the Divine Essence of Psychopathy'. Academia Letters. Article 3250, 2021
- Entry ‘Jack Kerouac’s Book of Dreams’. The Literary Encyclopedia (The Literary Dictionary Company Ltd). First published 29 November 2018
- ‘The Words I Put in your Mouth: The Sexual Politics of Rambling in Kerouac’s Tristessa’. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, ed. by Feryal Cubukcu. Vol. 158, 2015, 337–42
- ‘The Semiotics of Power: Corrupting Sign Systems in Contemporary American Exceptionalism, in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho and in Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis’. The European Journal of American Culture, ed. by John Wills. Vol. 33/3, 2014, 195–208
- ‘The Glamorisation of Death in Kerouac’s Tristessa through the Phenomenon of the Sublime’. GLITS-e – Electronic Journal of Literary and Cultural Criticism, ed. by J. Franklin, J. Richards and M. Simpson. Vol. 4, 2014
- ‘A Spenglerian Re-reading of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”’. Bakea – History in Western Literature, peer-reviewed conference proceedings, ed. by Zekiye Antakyalioglu, 2013, pp. 519–26
Other
- Foreword to Erosion of Colours, a novel by M. P. Seals, trans. by John P. Ring and Li-Chieh Yen. Taipei: Sosealogy, 2023
Dissemination of research - conferences/seminars
- 13-15 May 2024: ‘Living, Writing, Being: The Way of Nature in Thoreau and in Kerouac’, 12th annual conference of the European Beat Studies Network, ‘The Beats: Wilderness and Wildness’, University of Bialystok, Poland (hybrid conference);
- 30 Jan 2024: ‘Capturing the Phenomenon: Jack Kerouac’s Spontaneous Prose and the Existentialism of Sartre’, Work-in-Progress Research Seminar, University of Warwick;
- 3-5 Oct 2023: ‘The Prophet and the Allegorist: Beat Visionary Poetics’, 9th NALANS International Conference on Narrative and Language Studies, Trabzon, Turkey (hybrid conference);
- 28-30 Sept 2022: ‘Synchronic Visions: Beat Writing, Towards a Transcendental Ontology’, Beat Times: Temporalities in Beat Writing – 11th annual conference of the European Beat Studies Network (EBSN), Murcia, Spain;
- 11-13 May 2022: '"Mind is shapely, Art is shapely": The Intuitive Poetics of Allen Ginsberg', 15th International IDEA Conference, Hatay, Turkey;
- 29-31 Oct 2021: 'Counterculture, Counterpower? "Disengagement: The Art of the Beat Generation"', Tenth Anniversary Conference of the European Beat Studies Network (online conference);
- 28th March 2020: ‘Transatlantic Ontologies: From Sartre back to Emerson, towards an American Existentialism’, ‘Over the Horizon: Comparative Perspectives on Literature’ International Conference, London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, Birkbeck, London;
- 9-12 Oct 2019: ‘Tripping on the Threshold of the Doors: The Difficult Negotiation of the Visionary in Ginsberg’s "Drug Poems"’, 8th annual conference of the European Beat Studies Network, Nicosia, Cyprus;
- 5 June 2019: ‘Outsiders Atomised: Beat, the Subversion from Within’, 2019 GLITS Annual Interdisciplinary Conference, Goldsmiths, London;
- 18-20 April 2018: ‘“A Sense of Dooming Boom”: Kerouac’s Psychopathic Aesthetics of Speed', 12th International IDEA Conference, Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey;
- 13 February 2018: ‘The Figure of Thanatos: Processes of Self-Destruction and Self-creation in Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg’, presentation of my doctoral research at the Études Montpelliéraines du Monde Anglophone (EMMA) research centre, Montpellier, France;
- 20-22 September 2017: ‘Kerouac’s Vision of Anguish: An Interpretation of the Dynamics of Dis-integration in Big Sur’, 6th Annual Conference of the European Beat Studies Network, Paris, France;
- 13 Oct 2016: ‘The Intuitive Self Made Supreme: An Existentialist Reading of Emersonian Transcendentalism through Sartre’s Concepts of Nothingness and Engagement’, GLITS Lterature Research Seminar, Goldsmiths, London;
- 27-29 June 2016: ‘A Song of Beauty and Death: Kerouac’s Music of Sublimity in Tristessa', 5th Annual Conference of the European Beat Studies Network, Manchester;
- 28-31 October 2015: ‘From Sartre to Mailer: Civilisational Nothingness, Commitment, and the Immanence of the Here-and-Now in Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”’, 4th Annual Conference of the European Beat Studies Network, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium;
- 19 June 2015: ‘“All Wet Black Sunken Earth Danger”: Cosmic Alienation and Disintegration in Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur’, ‘Environments: Landscapes and the Mind’ conference, Goldsmiths, London;
Professional associations
I am a member of the Transatlantic Studies Association, the British Association for American Studies, the Beat Studies Association and the European Beat Studies Network.
Qualifications
BA, University Paul Valéry – Montpellier 3
Maîtrise, University Charles-de-Gaulle – Lille 3
MA, University Paul Valéry – Montpellier 3
PhD, Goldsmiths, University of London
AF-HEA
Advice and Feedback Hours:
Mondays 10-11am, FAB 4.43
Wednesdays 10-11am, FAB 4.34
Teaching 2024-25
FR1013: Modern French Language I First year oral
FR2014:Modern French Language II Oral
FR3014:Modern French Language III Oral