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Tant que la lecture est pour nous l'initiatrice dont les clefs magiques nous ouvrent au fond de nous-mêmes la porte des demeures où nous n'aurions pas su pénétrer, son rôle dans notre vie est salutaire.
(Marcel Proust, Sur la lecture)

Postgraduate

The Department | Careers | Sources of Funding | Research Interests | How to Apply

The Department

The French Department at Aberdeen provides a stimulating and supportive research environment within a very dynamic and friendly Department with a track record of excellence in research and a broad experience of postgraduate supervision.

The Department was awarded a 'starred five' (the highest possible rating) in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise, and an 'Excellent' (again the highest possible rating) in the last Teaching Quality Assessment. We offer a wide range of specialisation for postgraduate research, leading to the degrees of MLitt and PhD. All full-time staff are active in research and research-led teaching.

Members of the Department are closely involved in a number of recently established taught MLitt programmes in Comparative Literature and Thought; in Visual Culture; in Early Modern Studies; and in Medieval Studies.

Main areas of research strength include 'Modern Literature and Thought' (Christopher Fynsk, Nadia Kiwan, Nikolaj Lübecker, Michael Syrotinski, Nick Nesbitt); 'Comparative Literature' (Christopher Fynsk, Nikolaj Lübecker, Michael Syrotinski); 'Contemporary French Politics and Society' (Nadia Kiwan, Nikolaj Lübecker, Nick Nesbitt); 'Francophone Literature and Film' (Nadia Kiwan, Michael Syrotinski, Nick Nesbitt); '16th -and 17th -century Emblem Studies' (Alison Saunders); 'Medieval Studies' (Glynn Hesketh, Margaret Jubb); 'Francophone and Global Colonialism,' (Nick Nesbitt); 'Haitian Revolutionary Studies' (Nick Nesbitt). We also welcome interdisciplinary research involving more than one Department: recent postgraduates have, for example, worked on topics combining French with Philosophy, English, Film and History of Art. The new MLitt in Comparative Literature and Thought is the first of its kind in the United Kingdom.

There are important interdisciplinary research fora within the College of Arts and Social Sciences which are open to postgraduate students, as well as to staff. The newly formed 'Centre for Modern Thought' under the directorship of Christopher Fynsk is a broad cross-disciplinary initiative whose aim is to explore the ways in which contemporary philosophy and theory can most effectively address ethical and socio-political issues in the modern world. The 'Centre for Early Modern Studies', established in 2001, was the first research centre for this period to be established in the United Kingdom.

The College of Arts and Social Sciences provides an induction course for new research students, which all our postgraduates attend. Students have full access to the resources of the University library with its holdings of one and a quarter million items. The Library has excellent holdings in all fields of French Studies. Additionally, it has built up particularly rich resources in the areas of emblem studies, contemporary French theory and French-speaking Caribbean and African literature and culture. Students are provided with computing facilities and an e-mail address, and all full-time postgraduates are normally offered office space with their own PC. They are also welcome to take part in the University's extensive Professional Development programmes of training courses and workshops covering areas as diverse as time management, web authoring, career planning etc.

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Careers

Postgraduate degrees in French typically lead to careers in University teaching and research in this country or abroad (recent doctoral graduates have been appointed to lectureships in London, Dublin, Belfast, Trinidad and Sheffield), but they can equally lead to careers in, for example, academic administration, the civil service, the EU, international organisations, industry or the media.

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Sources of Funding

College scholarships and sixth-century PhD scholarships are awarded on a competitive basis. Students applying for a PhD in French are eligible to apply for the Isabella Middleton top-up scholarship in French. Home-based students may apply for AHRC grants. Some additional funding is available to support research and conference travel. Research students may be offered the opportunity to undertake a small amount of paid undergraduate teaching.

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Research Interests

Professor Christopher Fynsk concentrates on intersections between modern literature and philosophy, and has a special interest in French psychoanalytic theory. He has written on a number of authors in the French post-structuralist movement, and has dedicated himself to the writings of Maurice Blanchot throughout much of his career.

Dr Glynn Hesketh is the editor of a 3-volume Anglo-Norman theological encyclopedia, La Lumere as Lais (1996-2000) and of an Anglo-Norman Life of St Katherine of Alexandria (2000). He is currently working on further Old French theological and encyclopedic texts.

He also works in Linguistics and is currently supervising (jointly with English) a PhD thesis on accommodation theory in conversational analysis. He would welcome research projects in mediaeval language and literature, in the history of the French language, or in linguistics.

Dr Margaret Jubb specialises in the study of mediaeval French Crusade historiography and of literary representations of the Crusades, her most recent published book in this area being The Legend of Saladin in Western Literature and Historiography (2000). She has also worked on the Vie de saint Alexis as part of an interdisciplinary project on the St Albans Psalter launched on the Web in July 2003. She would welcome research projects on any aspect of mediaeval French literature, and more particularly on Crusade texts; the development of prose writing in the vernacular; the interface between epic and historiography; the adaptation of medieval texts by writers in later centuries; interdisciplinary work with History of Art on the relationship between illustration and text in mediaeval manuscripts.

Dr Nadia Kiwan has an academic background in French Studies and Sociology, and works in the field of contemporary Francophone studies. She specialises in issues of citizenship, discrimination and cultural production in contemporary France, particularly among North African-origin populations. Her recent publications include 'The Citizen and the Subject' in Redefining the French Republic (2005) and 'The “Whiteness” of Cultural Policy in Paris and Berlin (co-authored with K. Kosnick) in Transcultural Europe: Cultural Policy in the Changing European Space (2006). She is currently working on a book entitled Discourses and Experiences: Young People of North African Origin in France. She would welcome research projects in areas relating to migration, transnationalism, citizenship, new social movements, political discourse, cultural/audio-visual arts policy, and post-colonial music production in France.

Dr Nikolaj Lübecker works in the field of French and Comparative Literature from 1850 to the present day. He is the author of Le Sacrifice de la sirène – un “coup de dés” et la poétique de Stéphane Mallarmé (2003), and is currently preparing a study of the relationship between French literature and politics, 1924-1955. He would welcome research projects on modern and contemporary poetry, historical avant-gardes, critical theory and inter-art studies.

Dr. Nick Nesbitt’s work in Francophone Studies focuses on global colonialism and the political history of ideas in the Black Atlantic world. He has just completed a second book project for University of Virginia Press' New World Studies Series, entitled 'Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment' (Fall 2008). His next book project will be a collaboration with the Cameroonian philosopher Jean-Godefroy Bidima (Tulane University, Collège International de Philosophie), tentatively entitled 'The Politics of Autonomy in Africa and the Caribbean: Right and Power in Contemporary Global Colonialism.' He is also co-editing a volume with Professor Brian Hulse of William & Mary entitled "Radical Difference: Deleuzian Perspectives on the Theory and Philosophy of Music.

Professor Alison Saunders specialises in the interdisciplinary field of emblem studies. She has recently published The Seventeenth-Century French Emblem: a Study in Diversity (2000) and the co-authored Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (vol. I 1998, vol. II 2002). Earlier works include The Sixteenth-Century French Emblem Book: a Decorative and Useful Genre (1988) and Catalogue des poésies françaises de la Bibilothèque de l'Arsenal, 1501-1600 (1985). She is currently working on a bibliography of the 17th century French Jesuit polymath Claude-François Menestrier and a monograph on moralising French verse in the Renaissance. She would welcome research projects on French renaissance poetry, or on 16th or 17th century emblem literature.

Professor Michael Syrotinski has published widely in 20th century French literature, literary theory, and Francophone African literature and culture. He has recently edited an issue of Yale French Studies on Paulhan, and published a translation and critical edition of Les Fleurs de Tarbes. Previous publications include Defying Gravity: Jean Paulhan's Interventions in Twentieth-Century French Intellectual History (1998) and Singular Performances: Reinscribing the Subject in Francophone African Writing (2002). He would welcome research projects on Francophone, particularly West African literature, philosophy, culture and film; other areas of francophonie, especially the Caribbean, North Africa, 20th century French literature, philosophy, intellectual history, literary theory, translation; intersections between deconstruction and postcolonial theory. He would also be keen to supervise projects which traverse different fields.

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