French Studies in and for the Twenty-first Century french studies.indb 1 6/16/2011 11:26:54 AM french studies.indb 2 6/16/2011 11:26:54 AM French Studies in and for the Twenty-first Century Edited by Philippe Lane and Michael Worton Liverpool University Press french studies.indb 3 6/16/2011 11:26:54 AM First published 2011 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © 2011 Liverpool University Press The right of Philippe Lane and Michael Worton to be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A British Library CIP record is available Web PDF eISBN 978-1-84631-6-500 Print ISBN978-1-84631-6-555 (cased) ISBN 978-1-84631-656-2 (limp) Typeset in Plantin by R. J. Footring Ltd, Derby Printed and bound by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne french studies.indb 4 6/16/2011 11:26:54 AM Contents Notes on Contributors viii Foreword by Baroness Jean Coussins xix Chair of the All-party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages Foreword by His Excellency Bernard Emié xxi French Ambassador to the UK Part I: Contextualisations 1 Introduction 3 Philippe Lane and Michael Worton 2 A Short History of French Studies in the UK 12 Diana Holmes Part II: Research and Public Engagement Strategies 3 The exception anglo-saxonne? Diversity and Viability of French Studies in the UK 27 Adrian Armstrong 4 Why French Studies Matters: Disciplinary Identity and Public Understanding 37 Charles Forsdick 5 Learning from France: The Public Impact of French Scholars in the UK since the Second World War 58 Michael Kelly Part III: The Place of Women and Gender in French Studies 6 Gender and the French Language: The longue durée of French Studies in the UK 75 Michèle Cohen, Hilary Footitt and Amy Wygant french studies.indb 5 6/16/2011 11:26:54 AM vi • Contents 7 Contemporary Women’s Writing in French: Future Perspectives in Formal and Informal Research Networks 86 Gill Rye 8 French Studies and Discourses of Sexuality 95 Emma Wilson Part IV: The Place of Literature 9 Integrated Learning: Teaching Literature in French 107 Simon Gaunt and Nicholas Harrison 10 Oxford, Theatre and Quarrels 118 Alain Viala 11 Defining (or Redefining) Priorities in the Curriculum when the Good Times have Flown 129 William Burgwinkle Part V: The Place of Linguistics in French Studies Today 12 French Linguistics Research and Teaching in UK and Irish HE Institutions 141 Wendy Ayres-Bennett, Kate Beeching, Pierre Larrivée and Florence Myles 13 The Rise of Translation 155 Jo Drugan and Andrew Rothwell Part VI: Theatre, Cinema and Popular Culture 14 Teaching and Research in French Cinema 171 Phil Powrie and Keith Reader 15 Popular Culture, the Final Frontier: How Far Should We Boldly Go? 184 David Looseley Part VII: Area Studies, Postcolonial Studies and War and Culture Studies 16 An Area Studies Approach in European and Global Contexts: French Studies in Portsmouth 197 Emmanuel Godin and Tony Chafer 17 French Studies and the Postcolonial: The Demise or the Rebirth of the French Department? 207 David Murphy 18 The Development of War and Culture Studies in the UK: From French Studies, Beyond, and Back Again 220 Nicola Cooper, Martin Hurcombe and Debra Kelly french studies.indb 6 6/16/2011 11:26:55 AM Contents • vii Part VIII: Adventures in Language Teaching 19 French Studies at the Open University: Pointers to the Future 235 Jim Coleman and Elodie Vialleton 20 Opportunities and Challenges of Technologically Enhanced Programmes: Online and Blended Learning at King’s College London 247 Dominique Borel 21 French Studies and Employability at Home and Abroad: General Reflections on a Case Study 262 Maryse Bray, Hélène Gill, Laurence Randall 22 Sartre in Middlesex, De Beauvoir in Oxford: The Contribution of the ASMCF to the Study of France 272 Máire Fedelma Cross 23 Culturetheque: A New Tool for French Culture 288 Laurence Auer Appendices. Addresses to the Future of French Studies Conference Appendix 1. Opening Speech. A Vast and Dynamic Field of Research and Teaching 293 Maurice Gourdault-Montagne Appendix 2. A View from France 296 Jean-Paul Rebaud Index 300 french studies.indb 7 6/16/2011 11:26:55 AM Notes on Contributors Adrian Armstrong is Professor of Early French Culture at the Uni- versity of Manchester. His major research interests comprise late medieval French poetry, textual materiality and illustration, and text editing. He is the author of Technique and Technology: Script, Print, and Poetics in France, 1470–1550 (Oxford, 2000); The Virtuoso Circle: Competition, Collaboration and Complexity in Late Medieval French Poetry (forth coming); and, with Sarah Kay, Knowing Poetry: Verse in Medieval France from the ‘Rose’ to the ‘Rhétoriqueurs’ (Cornell, 2011). Laurence Auer, diplomat, has been the Secretary General of the Institut Français, Paris, since January 2011. From 2006 to 2010, she was Cultural Counsellor at the French Embassy in London and Director of the Institut Français there. She has a first degree in English literature, and her graduate studies were in Arabic literature, and political science, Institute d’Etudes Politiques. She was granted a Fulbright Scholarship, Berkeley and UCLA, 1987. Wendy Ayres-Bennett is Professor of French Philology and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow at Murray Edwards College. She works on the history of the French language and the history of linguistic thought, particularly in seventeenth-century France. Her major publications include Vaugelas and the Development of the French Language (MHRA, 1987), A History of the French Language through Texts (Routledge, 1996), Les Remarques de l’Académie Française sur le Quinte- Curce de Vaugelas (PENS, 1996), Problems and Perspectives: Studies in the Modern French Language (Longman, 2001) and Sociolinguistic Variation in Seventeenth-Century France (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Kate Beeching is Reader in Linguistics and French at the University of the West of England, Bristol. She is on the executive committee of the Association of University Heads and Professors of French and was President of the Association for French Language Studies until french studies.indb 8 6/16/2011 11:26:55 AM Notes on Contributors • ix September 2009. Her research interests are in sociolinguistics, prag- matics and spoken corpora, specifically in the analysis of spoken French. Publications include Gender, Politeness and Pragmatic Particles in French (2002), and a volume co-edited with Nigel Armstrong and Françoise Gadet: Socio linguistic Variation in Contemporary French (2009) (both published by Benjamins). Dominique Borel is Director of the Modern Language Centre at King’s College, London. She is responsible for delivery of academic and specialist language programmes. She oversees the centre’s external provision of programmes in language and intercultural studies for client organisations, which include London Business School and The Foreign Office. Additionally, she supervises an extensive e-learning programme which includes the design of a cross-college platform for language and cultural training to undergraduates, graduates and staff. She holds an MA in Romance Languages and Literature from Birkbeck College and a PGCE from the Institute of London. Maryse Bray is Principal Lecturer in French in the Department of Modern and Applied Languages at the University of Westminster. Her research interest is focused on representations of France’s colonial past in contemporary popular culture. She has published in French and in English on various productions such as French colonial songs and post- colonial cinema. Recent publications include joint articles with Hélène Gill on the film output of Mahamat-Saleh Haroun for Nouvelle Revue Francophone (2009) and L’Eloge de la Francophonie (Michael Abecassis, ed., Cambridge Scholars Publishing, forthcoming in 2011). She is the academic leader for language learning at undergraduate level. Under her impulsion, an innovative applied Bilingual Skills strand has been introduced in all languages on the University’s Modern Languages degrees which, in addition to language skills, is designed to develop undergraduates’ employability skills. William Burgwinkle is a specialist in Medieval French and Occitan litera- ture, gender and sexuality, and critical theory. He is the author of Sodomy, Masculinity and Law in Medieval Literature, 1050–1230 (Cambridge University Press, 2004), Love for Sale: Materialist Readings of the Troubadour Razo Corpus (Garland, 1997), and Razos and Troubadour Songs (Garland, 1990), co-author of Sanctity and Pornography: On the Verge (Manchester University Press, 2010) and co-editor of The Cambridge History of French Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Significant Others: Gender and Culture in Film and Literature, East and West (Hawaii, 1992). He is currently head of the department of French at Cambridge. Tony Chafer is Professor of Contemporary French Area Studies at the University of Portsmouth and Director of its Centre for European and french studies.indb 9 6/16/2011 11:26:55 AM