Two staff members have been honoured in this year’s Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence (WATE), which recognise and reward teachers who have had exceptional impact on the student learning experience. A key feature of these awards is that nominations are made by students themselves. Dr. Catherine Hampton, a specialist in Renaissance literature and an enthusiast for technology-enhanced learning, is one of five winners this year. On hearing of the award, Catherine commented: ‘My success with the WATE award is definitely testimony to the benefits of staff-student collaboration. I've worked with French department students on a number of new projects this year - the Student as Researcher, a peer mentor scheme, a dedicated Year Abroad portal - and all have grown in scope as a result of the creative input of the students involved. I hope to be able to take all these projects forward next year, and will be looking for more keen collaborators at that point.’ Dr. Amanda Hopkins, who teaches courses on modern French thinkers and strategies for reading, was also commended for an award, and reacted by saying: ‘This is my second WATE award, and in both cases I was nominated by a group of students which makes it particularly special. When the people you teach not only think you're worth proposing for a prize, but also take the time to write a convincing nomination, you really feel you must be doing something right.’ The Department extends its congratulations to both exceptional colleagues on their fantastic achievement.

The Complete University Guide 2013, released on 24th April 2012, shows a rise of two places, to 4th position, for French Studies at Warwick. Warwick is now ranked above Cambridge and Durham for French. Within the top 10, Warwick French Studies is also ranked joint first in terms of student satisfaction. For full details go to The Complete University Guide website.

For the academic year 2012-13, the Department of French Studies at the University of Warwick will allocate up to three bursaries up to the equivalent of standard fees at UK/EU rates levied for the taught MA for Research in French and Francophone Studies.

The MA for Research in French and Francophone Studies is an innovative MA programme, first introduced in October 2009. This taught MA is designed for students with a strong undergraduate academic background in French or francophone studies who want to pursue advanced individualized research into areas of expertise covered by the Department of French Studies at Warwick. We anticipate that students on this MA will consider progressing to MPhil/PhD research within the Department. It can be taken on a full-time or part-time basis, although we would expect most students to take the full-time route. More information can be found on the departmental website.

The deadline for the first round of bursaries is 31 March 2012.

If you have any further queries about the bursaries or about the Department’s MA programmes, then please contact the Director of Graduate Studies, Dr Katherine Astbury (Katherine.Astbury@warwick.ac.uk).

Rendez-vous with French cinema on May 31.

The team of lectrices.

Queer Theory in France

Dr Oliver Davis will be working as Co-Investigator alongside Dr Hector Kollias (King’s College London) on this three-year 200k research project funded by the AHRC under its Early Career Research Grants scheme. The project will run from October 2012 to September 2015.

The project aims to account for the relatively late arrival of queer theory in France. What happened to the ideas of prominent French thinkers such as Foucault, Derrida and Lacan when they were put to use by Anglo-American queer theorists? Why has France been resistant to a by-product of its own intellectual tradition? What role has been played by French academic institutions in this resistance? To what extent and in what ways can the belated introduction of queer theory into the French context be explained by the prestige and influence of psychoanalysis in France? How have different kinds of French feminism influenced the reinscription of queer theory into the French national context? Why have queer ideas circulated differently within these three national contexts? For example, how and why have the popular, as well as the theoretical, debates over the return of unsafe (‘bareback’) sex differed in the three national contexts? These are some of the major questions the project seeks to investigate. Housed in departments of French Studies, the project is nevertheless, like queer theory itself, inherently interdisciplinary.

The project includes two AHRC-funded PhD studentships. The studentship at Warwick is intended to allow an outstanding candidate to pursue their own research project, under the supervision of Dr Oliver Davis, situated broadly on the institutional, historical and political side of ‘Queer Theory in France’. A full advertisement for candidates will be issued shortly.

The project’s outputs will include a series of one-day workshops at each institution, a major international conference, an edited book as well as an edited special issue of a journal, both based on the workshops and conference. There will also be two public panel debates, held in London and Paris, which will aim to involve non-academics in the life of the project.