PhD in French

Research areas

The Department of French is interested in receiving applications from prospective MPhil and PhD students across a wide range of areas. The Department has particular research strengths in the following areas:

New Critical Approaches to the NovelSeveral members of the Department work on the novel, covering the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Centuries, and including francophone and children's fiction. They engage with narrative theory, representations of social and cultural difference, and the relationships between literary and popular culture.

Word and imageTwo key areas: intersections between Dada and Surrealist art, literature and thought; the work of contemporary women writers and artists.

Modern French Theory and Cultural StudiesContemporary women’s writing and art, feminist theory, French colonial culture (in North Africa and the Caribbean), and representations of the exotic.

Intellectual historyPhilosophical, religious, and political ideas from the late Sixteenth to the late Eighteenth Century; relationships between these and literary texts.

French Cinema and MediaKey periods in French cinema (1930s, New Wave, 1980s, 1990s); contemporary women’s filmmaking; theoretical approaches (psychoanalysis, ethics); central aspects of cinema (set design, genre, spectatorship).

LinguisticsResearch in the department is centred on sociolinguistics, with a particular expertise in the following areas:

* Language and national identity in France, Quebec and Sweden
* Languages planning
* Language attitudes
* Variation in French
* Language in the European Union
* Languages and globalisation