RSS 1.0Modern Languages
Academic staff in the Department of Modern Languages are engaged in a wide range of research and scholarly projects. The Department hosts a vibrant research seminar series with guest speakers from across the EU. It also contributes to the new Faculty of Humanities research seminar series. Academic staff in the department are also members of research networks in Africa, the United States and Europe. The Department has recently undertaken a major expansion in its research activity. It has an international profile in francophone African and Caribbean Studies, and is strengthening its profile in a number of other areas including contemporary European cinema, gender and society in post-reunification Germany, pedagogical theory and practice and culture and society in contemporary Spain.
This collection is licenced under a Creative Commons licence. The collection may be reproduced for non-commerical use and without modification, providing that copyright is acknowledged.
Recent Submissions
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Mental Health and Well-Being in Prisons and Places of DetentionThis study aims to address the critical mental health challenges faced by individuals in prisons and places of detention. By introducing and validating a novel conceptual framework that integrates social determinants of health with the stress process model, this study aims to provide actionable insights for improving mental health care in correctional settings. The research seeks to inform policymakers, prison administrators and mental health professionals about effective interventions and systemic reforms that can reduce recidivism, enhance rehabilitation and promote a more humane and just criminal justice system.
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Les cartes et les territoires. Les ruralités dans les fictions françaises des XXe et XXIe sièclesThe book explores the representation of rural spaces in contemporary French literature.
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Murder in East Germany: A Most Puzzling CaseAn investigation of how murder was investigated and publicised in East Germany, given the fact that the East German regime claimed that - thanks to socialist societal conditions - there was no serious crime in the country.
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Introduction: Peninsular Identities, Transatlantic Crossings and Iberian NetworksThis volume promotes recent and innovative research in different areas of knowledge within the scope of Iberian studies, contributing to the deepening and dissemination of this expanding research area. This book makes available new approaches to the study of Iberian and Ibero-American spaces and cultures, with particular emphasis on Portuguese-Galician, Basque and Catalan identities produced in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and during dictatorship. A considerable number of chapters discuss issues of memory, reflecting the impact of the Historical Memory Law in Spain and its lively discussion in the public sphere. Social mobilization and economic dynamics also play an important role in this volume. In addition, transatlantic contacts with Portuguese and Spanish speaking countries are covered, giving expression to the most recent trends in Iberian studies, which is broadening its scope to exchanges and influences between the Iberian Peninsula and South America and Africa. This volume will be of interest to students, developing and established researchers, and experts in Iberian studies.
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Year Abroad (A Dialogue)This article is the product of an exchange that took place over the course of two months between March and May 2023 and offers reflections on how the year abroad in Modern Languages has changed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The four contributors each bring a distinct expertise in year abroad provision and represent different language areas and geographical regions of the United Kingdom. The core themes explored in the discussion are the need for flexibility and resilience in degree programmes, the importance of accessibility and inclusion, and the challenges and opportunities of digital developments in a mobilities context. As well as reflecting on the impact of the pandemic on year abroad provision, the contributors also dwell on how the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union has altered the year abroad landscape.
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Introduction: Transcultural spaces and identities in Iberian studiesThis volume brings together innovative research across the diverse field of Iberian Studies, including insights from economics, society, politics, literature, cinema and other art forms, either in a revisionist perspective or incorporating new data. Reflecting recent developments in the field, the subject matter extends beyond the boundaries of Spain and Portugal, as it also includes transnational and transatlantic interconnections with Europe, Africa and the Americas and its scope ranges from the nineteenth century to the effects of the Catalan independence crisis and Brexit. The 18 chapters here are authored by established academics and early career researchers from the UK, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Japan and the USA. The book will appeal to students, researchers and all who have a particular interest in deepening their understanding of the countries of the Iberian Peninsula.
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Introduction: Memory, transition and transnationalism in IberiaThis volume brings together a wide range of innovative research across the diverse field of Iberian Studies. It will be of interest to academic staff and research students, and will also provide a resource for undergraduate projects and for all those wishing to deepen their knowledge of the Iberian countries and their relationships with other parts of the world. The collection includes cutting-edge work in the fields of memory politics and historical revisionism, peninsular dictatorships, the Spanish Civil War, the Francoist legacy and transition to democracy, and colonial and postcolonial transnational exchanges between Iberia and other continents on a global scale. Within these core themes, pressing topics such as migrations, resistance, memory, exile and trauma, violence, sexuality and feminism, and their literary and artistic representations form the core of the volume. The 16 chapters are written by established and early career researchers from Brazil, India, Ireland, Hungary, Portugal, Spain, the UK, and the USA.
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Nicolas Mathieu entre le restaurant Drouant et la France périphériqueSpace is a central factor in Nicolas Mathieu's novels. Notably his last ones Leurs enfants après eux et Connemara present a threefold spatial divide: the little city of peripheral France, the major regional capital and Paris. This divide is presents both through the lense of his fictional texts, but also in the light of the paratext. Whilst some attention is carried to the idea of posture as theorised by Meizoz, we endeavour to show that the paratopie (Maingueneau) of Mathieu is that of a mediator between classes and postions stemming precisely from his position inbetween places.
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Slavery, Collective Memory and the Urban Landscape: The Rise, Fall and Rise of Liverpool’s Statue of William HuskissonIn 1982, residents of Liverpool pulled a statue of William Huskisson from its plinth. Today, a plaque at the site states that the sculpture was removed by “activists offended at Huskisson’s role in supporting slavery.” Less than a mile away, however, one finds Huskisson’s effigy, re-erected, with no reference to slavery. This article traces the history of the rise, fall and rise of the Huskisson statue. It concludes on how collective memory shapes the urban landscape and informs interaction with it. It also reflects on the nature of memory conflicts and the processing of unresolved events in the past.
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Der Aufstand vom 17. Juni 1953 im kollektiven Gedächtnis und Bewusstsein der Magdeburger vor 1990Eine Untersuchung und Analyse der kollektiven Erinnerung an den Aufstand vom 17. Juni 1953 unter Bürgern der Stadt Magdeburg.
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Patrick Modiano parolier (1967-1970) : à la recherche d’une voixPatrick Modiano, Nobel Prize for Literature 2014, has had an abundant activity as a songwriter between 1967 and 1970. Together with his friend from prep school, Hughes de Courson, they were writing songs for artists as prestigious as Françoise Hardy, Régine and Myriam Anissimov, famous for her biographies of Primo Levi and Romain Gary. In this article, we explore the core themes of some of those songs, asking ourselves to what extent they reflect literary themes and characters Modiano develops in his novels. We argue that his years of songwriting have allowed Modiano to find his voice as an author. With Modiano having found the sober elegance which is still marking his writing in Les boulevards de ceinture, he abruptly stopped writing songs, with one exception in 2018. Modiano dans la chanson1« C’est le soir où près du métro, nous avions croisé Modiano »...Vincent Delerm, chef de file de la Nouvelle scène française du début des années 2000, relate dans sa chanson « Le baiser Modiano » une rencontre nocturne, inattendue avec l’écrivain révéré. Delerm compte parmi les auteurs-compositeurs-interprètes que l’on peut qualifier de littéraires dans le sens où un certain souci de la qualité du texte régit ses chansons, lesquelles abordent, qui plus est, souvent des sujets littéraires. La présence d’un écrivain dans l’univers de Delerm n’a d’emblée rien de surprenant. (Obergöker 2008 ; Remy s.d.)C’est le soir où près du métroNous avons croisé Modiano Le soir où tu ne voulais pas croireQue c’était lui sur le trottoir Le soir où j’avais dit tu vois
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Navigating the Digital World: Teaching Contemporary Chinese Culture via a Third Space With a Multimodal ApproachThis study explores a multimodal approach to teaching Contemporary Chinese Culture to foster university students’ intercultural awareness and intercultural communication competence via a third space. Two universities in the UK took part in the study where the course contents moved from static notions of culture-as-fact in terms of national traditions to digital presentation of and live discussion about contemporary China. The pedagogy includes discussing Chinese celebrities’ digital videos and films on digital platforms, and students’ digital presentations in multimodal modes. Findings from students’ comments in the module evaluations, students’ reflective essays, and lecturers’ observations prove the viability of this approach and the data analyzed via themes address the function of the third space, the application of multimodality, and approaches to intercultural awareness and intercultural communication competence. The paper suggests that multimodality can be an effective approach to advancing theory and practice in future contemporary culture teaching and research in other higher education contexts.
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The ‘People’s Sport’: Petty Theft in the German Democratic Republic, 1963-1985This article examines petty theft in the GDR. It considers offences committed from the early 1960s to 1985. It shows that GDR citizens stole a range of items including money, vehicle parts, clothes, food, cigarettes, alcohol, and construction materials and/or equipment from places such as factories, construction sites, shops, staff rooms, private homes, and colleagues’ bags. Many of these thieves were apparently motivated by a lack of money to buy the things that they desired. Though petty theft did undermine the vision of socialist society that the Party hoped to create, there is little evidence to support the conclusion that it constituted an act of outright resistance. Thieves stole for personal gain rather than in order to thumb their nose at Party bosses.
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Screening Dissent: The Uprising of 17 June 1953 in East German FilmAn analysis of how the politically sensitive subject of the anti-regime uprising of 17 June 1953 was portrayed in East German film productions.
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Le roman sans aventure... Vraiment ? Quelques réflexions sur la mondialité du roman québécoisThe present article challenges one of the major claims of Isabelle Daunais’ essay Le roman sans aventure (The novel without adventure) which states that literature from Quebec is hardly ever read beyond the boundaries of the province as its underpinning narrative pattern is what Milan Kundera in The Art of the Novel calls an idyll, a hermetic, protective environment. My contribution firstly seeks to show that the lack of reception of the Quebecois novel can be explained by the particular dichotomy separating the French-speaking literary field into “Parisian” and “Francophone” texts. Moreover, I would like to explore two Quebecois novels (Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner and La fiancée américaine by Eric Dupont) which engage with the world and with globalisation in numerous ways, thus contradicting the argumentation of the “idyll”.
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Les journaux de confinement de Leïla Slimani et de Marie Darrieussecq – Histoire d’un malentenduImmediately after French President Macron declared the lockdown of the country, French writers Marie Darrieussecq and Leïla Slimani have published their lockdown journals, Slimani in Le Monde, Darrieussecq in Le Point. However the reception was indeed problematic, in that most critics insisted on their class privilege, romanisation of an unbearable experience for normal citizens, to mention a few. Our text explores the reasons for this problematic reception: we show that the lockdown has brought to the surface a whole set of traumata closely linked to the German Occupation. What is more, we explore the changing role of the author in French society. The author is not the nearly sacred institution Roland Barthes describes in his Ecrivain en vacances, he has become a celebrity like any other. The diary (journal intime) has strong female connotations, thus allowing for misogynistic stereotypes to flourish. Finally, we argue that Annie Ernaux's Journal du dehors is a more appropriate literary approach to the urgency of sanitary, economic and social crisis.
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Mai 68, une approche transatlantiqueThe book is the result of a workshop held in 2018 at the German Association of French Studies in Osnabrück. It raises questions around May 68 as an international event, particularly at the Francophone periphery, in Montréal, in the Canadian Maritimes, in Belgium.
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The Quebec spring, a new May 68?May 68 seems to have become the global matrix for youth protest and indeed one of the first globalised rebellions. Powerful images of young people challenging the establishment circulated quickly around the globe , thus creating a language of dissent encapsulated in slogans, posters, music, happenings. In 2012, when students in the province of Quebec protested massively against an increase of their tuition fees, many commentators in the media compared this event to “May 68”. Indeed, we find striking similarities between Paris 1968 and Montreal 2012. But are things really that easy? We will explore in how far a common set of signs and symbols might, potentially, hide deep structural differences..
