Modern Languages and Cultures » SMLC - News and events (tag [French - Publications])

Unfinished Histories: Empire and Postcolonial Resonance in Central Africa and Belgium, edited open access volume by Pierre-Philippe Fraiture

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 13:44:00 GMT

Published in November 2022 by Leuven University Press and with the support of the European Research Council: Unfinished Histories available in open access.

Belgian colonialism was short-lived but left significant traces that are still felt in the twenty-first century. This book explores how the imperial past has lived on in Belgium, but also in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. The contributing authors approach colonial legacies from an interdisciplinary perspective and examine how literature, politics, the arts, the press, cinema, museal practices, architecture, and language policies – but also justice and ethics – have been used to critically revisit this period of African and European history. Whilst engaging with significant figures such as Sammy Baloji, Chokri Ben Chikha, Gaël Faye, François Kabasele, Alexis Kagame, Edmond Leplae, VY Mudimbe, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Joseph Ndwaniye, and Sony Labou Tansi, this book also analyses the role of places such as the AfricaMuseum, Bujumbura, Colwyn Bay, Kongolo, and the Virunga Park to appraise the links between memory and the development of a postcolonial present.

Publication of a new edited volume of interdisciplinary essays on autonomy co-edited by Oliver Davis

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 11:06:03 GMT

Arising from a Warwick-Monash Alliance collaboration, with Dr Chris Watkin, undertaken during the Covid years, this new edited volume considers whether autonomy is still a useful concept today. Is the Enlightenment understanding of autonomy still relevant in addressing contemporary challenges? How have the limits and possibilities of autonomy been transformed by recent developments in artificial intelligence and big data, political pressures, intersecting oppressions and the climate emergency? The challenges to autonomy today reach across society with unprecedented complexity, and in this book leading scholars from philosophy, economics, linguistics, literature and politics examine the role of autonomy in key areas of contemporary life, forcefully defending a range of different views about the nature and extent of resistance to autonomy today. These essays are essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the predicament and prospects of one of modernity’s foundational concepts and one of our most widely cherished values. Oliver Davis's chapter, on conceptualising the role of patient autonomy in psychedelically assisted psychotherapy, can be viewed Open Access here.

New monograph, "Hatred of Sex" by Oliver Davis and Tim Dean, University of Nebraska Press (2022)

Mon, 04 Apr 2022 13:16:16 GMT

Hatred of Sex

New monograph, "Heightened Genre and Women's Filmmaking in Hollywood: the Rise of the Cine-fille", by Mary Harrod, Palgrave (2021)

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 15:58:20 GMT

Heightened Genre and Women's Filmmaking in Hollywood

New monograph: "Past Imperfect: Time and African Decolonization, 1945-1960" by Pierre-Philippe Fraiture, published by Liverpool UP (April 2021)

Thu, 22 Apr 2021 15:06:00 GMT

Past Imperfect: Time and African Decolonization

Dr Jessica Wardhaugh publishes a research essay on theatricality for the Naxos Music Library

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 10:20:07 GMT

Dr Jessica Wardhaugh publishes a research essay on theatricality for the Naxos Music Library

Read Dr. Mary Harrod's short piece on 'Romance in the Time of Coronavirus'

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 17:34:27 GMT

Read Dr. Mary Harrod's short piece on 'Romance in the Time of Coronavirus'

new free-to-view article by Oliver Davis: 'Neoliberal capitalism's bureaucracies of "governance"'

Sat, 12 Sep 2020 07:26:00 GMT

The account of bureaucracy under neoliberal capitalism which I present in this article, under the innocuous heading it prefers to use to describe itself (‘governance’), draws together recent critical work by the late David Graeber, Wendy Brown, William Davies and Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, which it repositions in relation to Jacques Rancière’s conception of the ‘police order’. I suggest that the massive production of insecurity by proliferating bureaucracies which structure neoliberalism’s project of competitive hierarchisation creates the ideal conditions for a vicious circle of securitarian inflation. To read the full article click here

New article: Kate Astbury and Diane Tisdall, ‘Sonorising « La Forteresse du Danube » : Functions of music in Parisian and provincial melodrama of the early nineteenth century’

Fri, 11 Sep 2020 16:26:21 GMT

The combination of spectacle and elaborate scenery, orchestra and obligatory dance number made early nineteenth-century French melodrama expensive to produce and, consequently, the genre is strongly associated with the Parisian boulevard theatres. Provincial performances required creative solutions, not least because the music composed for – and central to – the Paris performances remained in manuscript form and was not, therefore, distributed automatically to regional theatres, whereas the play text was printed and widely available. This means that different scores existed for the same play, opening up the possibility that provincial audiences were presented with a different concept of melodrama to Parisians. Using as a case study La Forteresse du Danube (1805) by self-proclaimed leading exponent of the genre, Guilbert de Pixerécourt, this article will explore how comparing scores through performance-led research can further our understanding of the changes needed to make a Paris hit performable in the provinces.

For more, see Studi francesi, 191 (autumn 2020), pp. 248-360.

New book: Douglas Morrey, The Legacy of the New Wave in French Cinema, Bloomsbury, 2019

Sat, 05 Sep 2020 10:38:51 GMT

Douglas Morrey has recently published a major new appraisal of the legacy of the French New Wave

The book looks at both the subsequent careers of New Wave filmmakers and the work of later film directors and film movements in France. It is organized around a series of key moments from the past 50 years of French cinema in order to show how the meaning and legacy of the New Wave have shifted over time and how the priorities, approaches and discourses of filmmakers and film critics have changed over the years. Morrey tackles key concepts such as the auteur, the relationship of form and content, gender and sexuality, intertextuality and rhythm. Filmmakers discussed include Godard, Truffaut, Varda, Chabrol and Rohmer plus Philippe Garrel, Luc Besson, Leos Carax, Bruno Dumont, the Dardenne brothers, Christophe Honoré, François Ozon and Jacques Audiard.