All are very welcome to join us for the Wheeler Distinguished Annual Lectures (French Department) on Wednesday 4 March, 16:00-18:00, G. H03, 7 Woodland Road.
Exploring Research-Informed Creativity
Two lectures with award-winning authors and academics, Professor Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze, Durham University, and Professor Patrick McGuinness, St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford:
From Poisonous Mushrooms to the Archives of French-Nazi Collaboration: Writing Creatively as an Academic.
What does it mean to write fiction from within an academic context? How does research shape the work of a creative writer—and how can creative practice, in turn, reshape academic research? What, in fact, counts as ‘research’ when one is writing creatively? These are some of the questions explored in this lecture through my own engagement with literary fiction and creative nonfiction, from my début novel on mushroom poisoning (La logique de l’amanite, Grasset, 2015; The Beauty of the Death Cap, trans. Tina Kover, Snuggly Books, 2018) to my current archive-based project on everyday collaboration in Nazi-occupied Paris.
Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze
Professor of French
Durham University
Critical and Creative Writing in Academia's Bureau de change
I'll discuss how creative writing, critical writing, translation and teaching itself in universities are in a constant process of conversion and reconversion across their respective borders, while also being in important ways the same. The bureau de change, however, is always taking its commission, altering the exchange rates, rigging the currencies. Sometimes this works in our favour; more often it doesn't. But sometimes we can get one over on the bureau de change and come out with more than we started with.
Patrick McGuinness
Professor of French and Comparative Literature
St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford