News

Annual Conferences: The 65th Annual Conference of the Society for French Studies was held at Stirling University, 1–3 July 2024. Plenary speakers included: Catriona Seth (University of Oxford), ‘La Reine se meurt, la Reine est morte’; Kamel Daoud (Sciences Po), ‘La Guerre imaginaire: que faire de la France en Algérie?’; Lydie Moudileno (University of Southern California), ‘Black Royalty in Decolonial Times’; and Richard Scholar (Durham University), ‘French Utopiana: Inventions after More’. The winners of the 2023 R. Gapper Book Prize, Nikolaj Lübecker (University of Oxford), and the Postgraduate Poster Competition, Katherine Kent (University of Cambridge), were announced at the Gala dinner on the last night of the conference. We are grateful to everyone who participated, especially our Conference Officer, Kate Foster (Queen Mary University of London), for her work in organizing the event.

The Society is also delighted to announce that the 66th Annual Conference will be held at the University of Bristol, 30 June–2 July 2025. For more information, including the Call for Papers and deadlines, see <https://www.sfs.ac.uk/conferences/sfs-annual-conference-2025>.

R. Gapper Book Prize 2023: The Society is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2023 R. Gapper Book Prize is Nikolaj Lübecker (University of Oxford), for Twenty-First-Century Symbolism (Liverpool University Press). This was a unanimous decision and the jury agreed on the following statement about the book: ‘Twenty-First-Century Symbolism offers a series of powerful close readings of selected texts by Verlaine, Baudelaire and Mallarmé as part of a remarkable philosophical and poetic response to the current challenges and realities of the technological age. It demonstrates an impeccable knowledge and understanding of twentieth and early twenty-first century philosophy and critical theory, drawing on (with the lightest of touches) affect theory, ecocriticism, technology studies, media theory, theories of cognition and embodiment, art history, philosophy, cybernetics and gaming. The jury agreed that this book is a model for trans-disciplinary scholarship. It revisits these three poets and asks “what they can do for us” today, reading them against the grain of conventional readings and boldly casting new light on how we are impacted by them.’

The Society also wishes to congratulate the authors of the other shortlisted volumes:

• Jane Hiddleston, Frantz Fanon: Literature and Invention (Legenda)

• Charlotte Faucher, Propaganda, Gender, and Cultural Power: Projections and Perceptions of France in Britain c1880–1944 (OUP)

• Eric Robertson, Blaise Cendrars: The Invention of Life (Reaktion)

• Joseph Harris, Misanthropy in the Age of Reason: Hating Humanity from Shakespeare to Schiller (OUP)

Malcolm Bowie Prize 2023: The Society is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2023 Malcolm Bowie Prize is Doyle Calhoun (University of Cambridge), for ‘Variations on Verrition: (Re)turning to the Enigmatic Final Word of Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal’, PMLA, 13.2 (2023), 206–30. We also extend our congratulations to the runners-up, Victoria Baena (University of Cambridge) and Liam Lewis (University of Nottingham). The prize was judged by a panel composed of Nicholas Harrison (King’s College London, Panel Chair and SFS Vice-President), Diana Holmes (Leeds, SFS Vice-President), Shirley Jordan (Newcastle), Judith Miller (NYU), and Downing Thomas (Iowa).

Postgraduate Poster Competition 2024: The Society is pleased to announce that the winner of this year’s Postgraduate Poster Competition is Katharine Kent (University of Cambridge). We also extend our congratulations to the runners-up, Clementine Pursey (University of St Andrews) and Tamzin Elliott (Durham University). Profs Catriona Seth (University of Oxford) and Lydie Moudileno (University of Southern California), who judged the entries at this year’s Annual Conference in Stirling, were very impressed by the high standard of the submissions, and commended the care, consideration, and creative flair that had been put into making each poster.

R. Gapper Postgraduate Essay Prize 2023: The Society is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2023 R. Gapper Postgraduate Essay Prize is Hannah Scheithauer (University of Oxford), for ‘Cycles of Violence and Fictions of the “Grey Zone” in Jérôme Ferrari’s Où j’ai laissé mon âme’. We also extend our congratulations to the runner-up, Margaux Emmanuel (University of Cambridge).

Postdoctoral Prize Fellowship 2024: This year’s Postdoctoral Prize Fellowship is awarded to Solange Manche for a project that includes both the reworking and publication of her doctoral thesis and the development of a new postdoctoral project provisionally entitled ‘Planning for a Better Life in the Anthropocene: Traces of the Third World in Contemporary French Philosophy and Heterodox Economics’. The Fellowship will be held at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages at the University of Cambridge. The Society extends its congratulations to her and the runner-up, Laura Kennedy.

If you have any questions about a particular funding or prize scheme, please contact the member of the SFS executive committee responsible for the scheme; contact details are available via the relevant pages on our website: <https://www.sfs.ac.uk/funding> and <https://www.sfs.ac.uk/prizes>.

Research Monographs in French Studies (Legenda/MHRA): RMFS are selected, edited and supported by the Society for French Studies. The series seeks to publish the best new work in all areas of the literature, language, thought, history, politics, culture, and film of the French-speaking world, and to cover the full chronological range from the medieval period to the present day. Proposals are accepted for monographs of up to 85,000 words, while proposals for ‘short’ monographs (50,000–60,000 words), a traditional strength of the series, are still welcomed. RMFS books must be written in English, with quotations from primary sources given in French and, normally, accompanied by an English translation. All members of the Editorial Committee read all proposals and sample material. Examiners’ reports are sought in the case of proposals based on doctoral theses. We aim to respond to proposals with a decision and written feedback within two to three months. See <http://www.mhra.org.uk/series/RMFS> for more information.

Research Support Funding: The Society for French Studies offers grants in support of conferences and pedagogic workshops held in the UK or Ireland and concerned with research, teaching and learning in any area of French Studies. This includes one-day conferences and seminars, postgraduate conferences, and activities relating to the teaching of French Studies in Higher Education. Such activities may involve pedagogic workshops, symposia on the teaching and learning of French Studies, and networking events for practitioners. The Society is particularly keen to encourage regional cooperation.

Applicants are encouraged to apply for other sources of funding where practicable. Where appropriate, there will be an expectation of institutional contribution, and this should be clearly evidenced in applications. The Society will not support conferences which coincide with its own Annual Conference.

The Society recognizes the importance of supporting colleagues across the career stages represented amongst its membership, and also acknowledges that there are certain groups—especially postgraduate students, early-career researchers without permanent positions, and active scholars who have retired from permanent posts—for whom available resource is very scarce. We therefore allocate funds to support the conference participation, research visits, and other appropriate research-related expenses of postgraduate students, ECRs who are within 5 years of receipt of their PhD and are not in a permanent post, and colleagues (including those with emeritus status) without any access to institutional research funding.

There are no deadlines for this fund. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis, but applicants should bear in mind that consideration of their application may take up to two months from the date of application. Full details of the application procedure, eligibility, permissible costs, and conditions of grant, as well as the relevant application form, may be found on the Society’s website: <https://www.sfs.ac.uk/funding/conference-and-workshop-grants>.

Compiled by Giovanni Menegalle ([email protected])