Previous externally-funded research projects

Queer Theory in France

France has long been an avid exporter of revolutionary ideas, but what happens when a particular kind of ‘French Theory’ – queer theory – returns home to challenge the way people in France think about sex and sexuality? The dual purpose of this AHRC-funded three-year project was to analyse the appropriation of French thought by queer theorists working in Britain and the United States, and investigate why the body of work they developed met with such resistance when they tried to return it ‘home’ to France.

French Revolutionary Prints as Spectacle

This collaborative research project (2008-2012) between the University of Warwick and the historic house Waddesdon Manor was led by Dr Katherine Astbury. The project aimed to enhance our knowledge and understanding of the notion of spectacle in French Revolutionary prints, and their role in the cultural production of the 1790s. In particular, the research examined the interrelationship of theatre, politics and visual images during the Revolution.

Translation and the Untranslatable in Medieval Francophone Texts and Manuscripts

Dr Emma Campbell's project drew on scholarship in postcolonial and translation studies to consider a range of twelfth- and thirteenth-century material, including works attributed to Marie de France, romances by Continental authors (e.g. Chrétien de Troyes, Philippe de Rémi), thirteenth-century jargon texts, and Anglo-Norman bestiary manuscripts, as well as saints' lives and devotional literature.

Unlike many studies of medieval translation, the project was not primarily about the practice or theory of vernacular translation. Instead, it considered two issues: how translation is not necessarily about transfer of meaning between texts; and how redefining translation in this way enables a more expansive exploration of uses of translation that fall outside the more studied model of Latin to French translation.

The Politics of Psychedelics

Professor Oliver Davis worked on political questions arising from the ongoing ‘psychedelic renaissance’ (the rediscovery by biomedical science, psychiatry and the wider culture of the therapeutic efficacy of psychedelic substances). Some of this work in the critical medical humanities was collaborative, with Dr Alex DymockLink opens in a new window (Goldsmiths). In the French context, Professor Davis’s research on the psychedelic renaissance in the present was also informed by analysis of the remarkable five books and one film documenting the self-experiments with mescaline and other psychoactive substances conducted by writer, visual artist and reluctant psychonaut Henri Michaux in the 1950s and 60s.

The Ethics of Violent Action in Political Struggle

In this project Professor Nick Hewlett engaged with some major left and left-leaning thinkers whose work relates to the question of violence in pursuit of a fairer world, and whose writings have often influenced on-the-ground struggles. He considered among others the work of Marx, Engels, Sorel, Fanon, Sartre, Guevara and Benjamin, who are often seen as to offer legitimacy to the taking up of arms in the pursuit of emancipation. Others, meanwhile, such as Arendt, Gandhi, Camus and Ruddick, argue various cases against the use of violence - or at least for the strictly limited use of violence - for progressive ends.