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Research

Staff members in the French programme have specialist research interests and publish their work in relation to the following areas and authors:

  • Francophone African literature: Postcolonial literary theory
  • Communicative language teaching methods
  • 20th century Francophone and Anglophone literature and theory
  • Women's writing
  • Camara Laye
  • Les Rougon-Macquart (Zola)
  • Zola and the law
  • Beckett, Tournier and Emil Cioran
  • 20th century French and francophone literature

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Postgraduate Students in the French Programme

Alexandra Dumitrescu (PhD candidate)

Research Interests

Contemporary literature (Michel Tournier, Arundhati Roy, Christoph Ransmayr); Critical theory (postmodernism and metamodernism), Comparative literature, Alchemy in literature and film, Word and Vision in William Blake’s texts, European Studies (history of ideas, philosophy, literature).

Honours and Fellowships

  • 2006 –2009, Ph.D. Fellowship, University of Otago, NZ.
  • 2005 Fellowship of the Czech Ministry of Education for presenting “Bootstrapping Finnegans Wake ” at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
  • 1995- 1998 Romanian Ministry of Education Postgraduate Award.
  • 1995- 1997 Romanian Ministry of Education Undergraduate Award.

Selected Publications & Conference Presentations

  • 2008, ‘Innocence and Experience in Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things.”’ (book chapter) Rites of Passage in Postcolonial Women’s Writing, ed. Pauline Dodgson and Gina Wisker, Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi (forthcoming).
  • 2008, ‘Metamodernism or the Quest for Self in Contemporary Fiction,’ Emerging Trends in Contemporary Language and Literature, Babasaheb Ambedkar University, Aurangabad, Maharashtra, India;
  • 2008, ‘ Milton’s Inheritance: Between Paradise Lost (1667) and Milton (1804),’ Milton in His Time Conference, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India;• 2007, ‘Metamodern Nostalgia,’ Religion, Literature and Arts: Melancholy, Nostalgia and the Religious Imagination, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia;
  • 2007, ‘Michel Tournier’s Metamodernism,’ French Studies Conference, University of Otago, NZ;
  • 2007, ‘Rereading William Blake: Intimations of Metamodernity,’ David Nichol Smith Seminar, Dunedin, New Zealand;
  • 2007, ‘“The Fifth Horseman,”’ Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction, Geoff Hamilton (ed);
  • 2007, ‘Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre,’ Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction, Geoff Hamilton (ed), (due in 2008);
  • 2007, Interconnections in Blakean and Metamodern Space , Double Dialogues (peer reviewed journal), http://www.doubledialogues.com/issue_seven/dumistrescu.html;
  • 2006, ‘Postmodern Politics and Metamodern Literature: Arundhati Roy’s Power Politics’ and The God of Small Things’. Postcolonial Politics Conference, University of Otago, NZ;
  • ‘Foretelling Modernity: Realization of the Self in Anonymous Alchemical “Rosary of Philosophers,” William Blake's “Jerusalem” and Andrei Codrescu's
    ”Messi@h.”’ (book chapter) Adrian Radu (ed) Constructions of Identity , Cluj-Napoca: Napoca Star, 2006, pp 151-168;
  • ‘Bootstrapping “Finnegans Wake”’, Hypermedia Joyce Studies (peer reviewed online journal), vol 7, no 1/2006, http://hjs.ff.cuni.cz/archives/v7/main/essays.php?essay=dumitrescu
  • 2005, ‘The Devil and a Reluctant Messiah in the Garden of Delights,’ Tribune (peer reviewed journal) 17/2005: pp.16-18.
  • ‘Berkeley’s Arguments for the Existence of God’. Studia (peer reviewed journal) XXI (4), 2005: pp.12-23;
  • 2004, ‘Redeeming Feminine Archetypes in Blakean and Alchemical Texts’. Invention: Literature and Science. The 10th Conference of the British Comparative Literature Association, University of Leeds, UK;
  • 2004, ‘Patterns of Transformation: Paradigm Shift and Self-Realization: William Blake and Andrei Codrescu’. De-Constructions of Identities, Second International Conference of the Romanian Association for British and American Studies, Cluj-Napoca, Romania;
  • 2000, ‘Romanian Avant-garde on the American Continent.’ Echinox (peer reviewed journal) 3/2000: pp. 3-11;
  • 1998, ‘The Antinomianism of William Blake’. Echinox (peer reviewed journal) 3 /1998: pp. 9-20.

Floor 3, Arts Building
Tel 64 3 479 9032
Email alexandra.dumitrescu@otago.ac.nz

 

Shannon Blackbeard (MA)

Academic qualifications

MA 2009
BA Honours in French, University of Otago, 2006.

Research Interests

Family relationships in 20th Century French novel.

Floor 3, Arts Building
Tel 64 3 479 9032
Email blash740@student.otago.ac.nz

 

Jonathan Dufour (MA)

Academic qualifications

MA 2008
BA Honours in French, University of Otago, 2006.

Research Interests

Myths and religious symbols in 20th Century French novel.

Floor 3, Arts Building
Tel 64 3 479 9032
Email dufjo267@student.otago.ac.nz

 

Anne Haderbache (MA)

Floor 3, Arts Building
Tel 64 3 479 9032
Email hadan877@student.otago.ac.nz

Academic Qualifications

MA 2010
Title:
" Two Paths to Otherness in L’Amour La Fantasia and Femme sans Sépulture.”
A study of Assia Djebar’ s historical novels under the lense of Jean- Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida.
Subtitle:
" Is Otherness a negation of the existence? Conflicting Self and Other: I is another."
Contemporary philosophers: Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida and Juliana Kristeva.
English Research and Thesis under the supervision of Dr P. Duffy, Dr C. Novaro and Dr C. Grigorut.
MA 2008, Research and Thesis in French. University of Otago. Dr C. Grigorut.
MA (Economics and Languages) Université de Mulhouse. Europe
Postgraduate Diploma in French, University of Otago, 2006.

Research Field

2010. Research and collaboration with the University of Hawaii. Department of Litterature and Languages. Moore Hall.(18th August to 27th Sept.2010) Presentation :'Music as Derrida's Element of Deconstruction in Assia Djebar's writing."
2010. Philosophers: Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Juliana Kristeva, Jean-Luc Nancy.
Otherness, Right, Justice and the Unbindable.
2008. War and French literature (Sartre, Eluard, Aragon, Camus).

Conference Presentations


9th East West Center International Graduate Student Conference on the Asia Pacific Region. Imin International Conference Center. Honolulu. HAWAI’I. February 2010.
Presentation: Phenomenology of light in contemporary European literature in Andree Chedid’s novel Nefertiti et le Rêve d’Akhenaton. Theory from Jean- Luc Nancy’s The Ground of the Image and methodology from Luce Irigaray’s Key Writings.

 

Margaret MacMurdo-Reading (MA)

Academic qualifications

MA 2008
Diploma for Graduates, University of Otago, 2005.
Postgraduate Diploma, University of Otago, 2006: Department of Media, Film and Communication.
Postgraduate papers in Landscape Architect Design and Horticulture, University of Minnesota, USA, 1995.
BFA (Fine Arts), Kent State University, Kent Ohio, USA, 1985: Painting, Drawing, Photography,  Minor in Psychology.
Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio: Fine Arts (painting, photography) Art Education Theory, French Language and Culture.
Atlanta College of Art, Atlanta, Georgia: Fine Arts (drawing, painting, printmaking).
Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis: Fine Arts, Foundation Studies (painting, sculpture, drawing), literature, philosophy.

Research Interests

Digital photographic technologies, the role of surveillance in popular culture media texts, and the phenomenological impact of these within our sociological, psychological and physiological contexts throughout global history now and in the future; the potentialities of merging our physical context with the digital. *(Digital technologies create the proliferation of surveillance technologies and many other visual recording and monitoring devices - therein lies the connection).

Floor 3, Arts Building
Tel 64 3 479 9032
Email macma474@student.otago.ac.nz

 

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