Dr CLEMENCE O'CONNOR
Teaching Fellow
Personal Details
| Telephone: | +44 (0)1224 272635 |
| E-mail: | clemence.oconnor@abdn.ac.uk |
| Address: | Office: Taylor A52 Office phone: (01224 27)2635 School of Language and Literature University of Aberdeen King's College Aberdeen AB24 3UB |
Web Links
- Website on conference organizing skills: http://eventorganising.wikidot.com/
- http://www.abdn.ac.uk/modern/node/80
Biography
I was awarded the Agrégation in English Literature in 2002 (17th place nationally). Before taking up this position at Aberdeen, I taught French as a Lectrice at the Universities of St Andrews and Cambridge. I did my Ph.D. at the University of St Andrews (2005-9) on the work of Welsh-French poet Heather Dohollau. I am a member of the Society for French Studies, of Women in French in Scotland and of the Society for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France.
Research Interests
Postwar French poetry in dialogue with twentieth-century philosophy, translation studies, memory studies and visual culture.
Current Research
My doctoral and subsequent research (2005-9) has
cultivated synergies between contemporary French poetry and the fields of
visual culture, philosophy, gender studies, translation and bilingualism
studies, as well as memory and identity studies. My first research monograph, forthcoming with Rodopi, encompasses four connected and interdisciplinary
issues: text-image interactions, representations of place, exile and memory,
poetic performances of philosophical interrogations, bilingualism and the
boundaries of language. In this book, they are primarily explored through the
work of contemporary Welsh-French poet Heather Dohollau. As a sister publication, I am preparing a bilingual edition of her poems.
My second research monograph will explore the striking, yet under-studied correlation between the bilingualism of many major modern poets in French and their dialogue with the visual arts. From Apollinaire and Arp through Tsara and Michaux to Lorand Gaspar, Albert Memmi and Dohollau, many non-native, bilingual or bicultural poets have made major contributions to the development of the distinctly visual poetics characteristic of 20th- and 21st-century French poetics. Such a study would yield vital insights into what is at stake in modern French poetry, and will enable me to rethink the nature of poetic form. Rather than seeing it as the epitome of self-contained perfection and absolute control over a given language, my aim is to revisit poetry as a site for liminality, hospitality and dialogism with other languages and media.
Collaborations
Heather Dohollau: Poetry Between Languages, forthcoming monograph with Rodopi.
‘ Heather Dohollau: La poésie comme langue inconnue’, in Bilinguisme, double culture, littératures, Cristina Pirvu and Béatrice Bonhomme (eds.) (Paris: L’Harmattan), in press (2011); accepted June 2010.
‘Translating Non-Figuration: Heather Dohollau’s Poems on Pure Visuality’, French Studies,64 (2010) (special issue entitled New Ekphrastic Poetics, ed. Susan Harrow), 276-89.
- 'Les îles d'une écriture', in L'évidence lumineuse, proceedings of the Cerisy colloquium, June 9th-12th 2005, Daniel Lançon (ed.) (Bédée: Folle Avoine, 2006), 16-34.
- 'Biographie', co-written with Heather Dohollau, in L'évidence lumineuse, 161-4.
- Review of Jean-Claude Mathieu, Philippe Jaccottet: L'évidence du simple et l'éclat de l'obscur, in French Studies, 62 (July 2008), 360-1.
- Review of Emma Wagstaff, Provisionality and the poem: Transition in the Work of du Bouchet, Jaccottet and Noël, in Forum for Modern Language Studies, 43 (July 2007), 327-8.
- Review of Margaret Rigaud-Drayton, Henri Michaux: Poetry, Painting, and the Universal Sign in Forum for Modern Language Studies, 42 (October 2006), 467.
- Review of Glenn W. Fetzer, Palimpsests of the Real in Recent French Poetry in Forum for Modern Language Studies, 42 (October 2006), 463.
Research Grants
February 2009 Runner up (second place) for the Gapper Graduate Essay Prize 2008, Society for French Studies.
2005-2008 Three-year Ph.D. Scholarship, University of St Andrews.
Teaching Responsibilities
- Undergraduate language courses (levels 1 to 4).
- Level 1 French literature and culture courses.