Seminars

The Centre for French History and Culture regularly hosts Research Seminars in the School of History at St Andrews. These are usually biannual. We also sponsor the French Visual Culture Seminars in the School of Art History.

Staff and students from other universities, as well as independent scholars, are most welcome to become participants in these seminars. If you wish to attend or be placed on the mailing list, then please contact the Director ([email protected]).

2023-24

Thursday 26 October (5-7pm, Buchanan 216). Biannual Seminar – Prof Felicia McCarren (Professor of French at Tulane University; 2023-24 Leverhulme Visiting Fellow at Oxford), “A Night at the (Paris) Opera”

Friday 27 October (10am-noon, Old Class Library, 65-71 South Street). PGR Workshop with Prof Felicia McCarren (Professor of French at Tulane University; 2023-24 Leverhulme Visiting Fellow at Oxford)

Wednesday 15 November (1-2pm, St Katherine’s Lodge room 0.01). Salon Talk – Katherine Stratton (Modern Languages)
‘Practical Horsemanship and Education in Sixteenth-Century France: Charles Perier and the Printed Horse’

Wednesday 21 February (4-5pm, School 2). Spring Semester School of Art History French Visual Culture Seminar with Dr Susan Laxton (Professor in the History of Art at the University of California, Riverside), ‘Surrealist Photomontage c. 1931: Politics and Desire’. Wine reception to follow at 79 North Street.

2022-23

Wednesday 28 September, 1-2pm. Salon Talk – Carine Chelhot Lemyre (Art History) ‘A Stereoscopic Voyage en Égypte’

Wednesday 26 October, 1-2pm. Salon Talk – Kate Rudy (Art History)
Animating the page with the body: use-wear evidence in courtly romance manuscripts for the gestures used to read them aloud’ (Microsoft Teams)

Thursday 10 November, 4pm. Biannual Seminar – Graeme Small (University of Durham) Old Seminar Room, 71 South Street
‘History, literature and the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles: the “Burgundian Decameron” in context, c. 1458-1550’
Chair: Dr Justine Firnhaber-Baker

Wednesday 8 February, 4pm. Biannual Seminar – Dr Richard Taws (UCL)
‘Charles Meryon’s Graphic Risk’ (Microsoft Teams)
Chair: Dr Stephanie O’Rourke (Art History)

Thursday 23 March, 5.30pm. Seminar Dr Bryony Coombs (University of Edinburgh) Old Class Library, St John’s House, South Street
‘Scottishness in the Margins: Visualising Scottish National Identity in French Manuscripts 1420-1540’
Organised jointly with the Institute of Scottish Historical Research

Wednesday 5 April, 4-5.30pm. French Visual Culture Seminar – Dr Yuriko Jackall (Wallace Collection) School I, St Salvator’s Quad
‘The Making of Fragonard’s Swing. Some New Suggestions.’
Organised jointly with the School of Art History

2020-21

Thursday 1 October, 5.30pm. Marc Jaffré (independent scholar)
‘Planets revolving around the sun? Court and Courtiers in Louis XIII’s France, 1610-1643’

Monday 5 October 4-5pm. Peggy Brunache (University of Glasgow)
‘Slavery and resistance in the French Antilles’

28 October 2020, 4-5pm. French Visual Culture Seminar – Kathrin Yacavone (University of Cologne)
Intermedial Authorship: Victor Hugo and Nineteenth-Century Photography’

18 November 2020, 4pm. Biannual Seminar – Christy Pichichero (George Mason University)
‘Black | Power: Race and Global War in the Early Modern French Empire’
Chairs: Prof Julia Prest and Prof Guy Rowland

17 February 2021, 4pm Biannual Seminar – Aro Velmet (University of Southern California)

2019-20

6 November 2019, 4.15pm Biannual Seminar – Prof Laurence Brockliss (Oxford)
‘Doing research in eighteenth-century France: private libraries as public resources’

5 February 2020, 4.15pm. Biannual Seminar – Dr Mary Franklin-Brown (Cambridge)
‘Bertran de Born and St Leonard: Setting Poets Free’

26 February 2020, 4.15pm. Biannual Seminar – Prof Andrew Orr (2020 Visiting Fellow)
‘The War after the Great War: France and the Turkish War of Independence’

2018-19

6 February 2019, 4.15pm Biannual Seminar – Prof Gregory Hanlon (Dalhousie)
‘After mentalités: Human ethology and anthropology from the criminal archives of the Ancien Régime’.

13 March 2019, 4.15pm Biannual Seminar – Prof Emily Clark (Tulane)
‘Simon Calpha’s Ride: Senegambian Spectacle in French Colonial Louisiana’.

2017-18

27 November 2017, 5.15pm, Biannual Semianr Prof. Pierre Serna (Paris I)
‘Did Animals Have Rights during the French Revolution? The story of the 27 dissertations sent to the French Institut in 1802’. – CANCELLED

18 April 2018, 4.15pm Biannual Seminar Dr Nélia Dias (Lisbon, 2018 Visiting Fellow)
‘A Science in the Making? “The Museum of Monuments of Non-Western Peoples” and the methods of comparison in early nineteenth-century France’

 

Events before 2017

Centre for French History and Culture Seminar Series

  • 5 April 2017 Dr Gregory Kennedy (Moncton) – “Mobilizing the Countryside and the Colonies: Militias in France and its Empire, 1700-1763”.
  • 1 February 2017 Professor Patrick Weil (Paris/Yale) – “What is the Meaning of the French Republic”. [Co-hosted with Modern Languages and International Relations]. Click here to view a film of the full lecture.
  • 9 November 2016 Professor Cecilia Gaposchkin (Dartmouth), “Nivelon of Soisson, the Relics of 1204, and the Cathedral of Soissons: Liturgy and Devotion in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade”.
  • 11 November 2015 Dr Rebecca Dixon (University of Liverpool) “Spectacular Bodies: Dress and Undress in Wavrin Master Manuscripts”
  • 23rd April 2014 Dr Junko Takeda (Syracuse University) “Savage Worms and Modern Machines: French Sericulture, Napoleonic State-building, and Tokugawa Japan”
  • 2nd May 2013 Professor Alan Forrest (University of York) “Remembering the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in Nineteenth-Century France”
  • 31st October 2012 Professor Emeritus Michael Jones (University of Nottingham), “Philippe de Commynes in Early Modern Britain: the Reception and Translation of his Memoirs”
  • 2nd May 2012 Professor Eric Jennings (University of Toronto, Canada):La France libre fut africaine: Free French Sub-Saharan Africa at war, 1940-1944″
  • 4th December 2011 Dr Michael Rapport (Stirling University):” The French Revolution: a Global Perspective?”
  • 18th November 2010 Dr Alison Forrestal (National University of Ireland Galway): “Memory and Memorialisation: Vincent de Paul and ‘the first sermon of the Mission'”.
  • 13th April 2010 Professor Rebecca Zorach (University of Chicago): “‘Sweet in the Mouth, Bitter in the Belly’: Absence and the Devotional Imaginary in a French Renaissance Book of Hours”
  • 25th November 2009 Professor Norman Ingram (Concordia University, Canada): “Eyes Across the Rhine: the Ligue des droits de l’homme and the German Problem, 1914-1944”
  • 29th April 2009 Professor James B. Collins (Georgetown University, USA): “Beheading the Body Politic: Parricides and Politics in the France of Henri IV”
  • 5th November 2008 Dr Simon Kitson (University of London in Paris): “Death and Liberation: the Allied Bombing of France”
  • 24th October 2007 Dr Jan Dumolyn (University of Ghent, Belgium): “‘Le pauvre peuple estoit moult opprimé’. The Discourse on ‘the People’ in the Burgundian Chronicles.”
  • 2nd May 2007    Professor James McMillan (University of Edinburgh): “God and the French soldier, 1914-1918.”
  • 18th November 2006 One Day Conference: Robert Kingdon’s Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion: A retrospective after 50 years
  • 3rd May 2006 Dr David Parrott (New College, Oxford): “The Army in Seventeenth-Century France: Perspectives and Problems.”
  • 23rd November 2005 ** Inaugural seminar ** Professor Martin Evans (Portsmouth University): “Myth, History, Politics: the Legacy of French Colonialism in Contemporary Algeria.”

French Visual Culture Seminar Series

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/arthistory/research/seminars/

  • 29 March 2017 Professor Alastair Wright (Oxford) – “Seurat’s Public”. 4.15pm, School V. **French Visual Culture Seminar** Alastair Wright Poster
  • 24 February 2016 Dr Hannah Williams (Queen Mary, University of London), “Mapping Artistic Communities in 18th-Century Paris” view poster (pdf)
  • 26 February 2014 Professor Alex Danchev (University of St Andrews): “Cézanne: Life and Letters”

  • Wednesday 13th March 2013 Amanda Crawley Jackson (University of Sheffield): “Unmapping the urban: contemporary art from France and insurgent public space”
  • 12th October 2011 Professor Peter Read (University of Kent): “‘Au rendez-vous des poètes:’ Picasso’s art and literary contacts during his early years in Paris”
  • 20th April 2011 Richard Taws (University College London): “The Telegraphic Image: Lemonnier, Chappe, and Haiti” view poster

Contact

Contact the Centre’s Director, Dr. Justine Firnhaber-Baker: [email protected]

Contact the Centre’s PGR Intern, Tori Champion: [email protected]

Mailing Address:
Centre for French History and Culture
School of History
University of St Andrews
ST ANDREWS
FIFE, KY16 9AL

Tel.:
+44 (0)1334 462906