Dr Albertine Fox
Phd (Lond.), MA (Lond.), BA (Lond.)
Expertise
Albertine’s research explores the subversive potential of listening in relation to Western logocentric tendencies in experimental Francophone screen media, with a focus on 'listening spaces' and 'listening silence'.
Current positions
Senior Lecturer in French Film
Department of French
Contact
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Biography
Albertine was educated at a comprehensive school and she developed her love of cinema, music, and literature during her A-Levels at a further education college. Here she was introduced to films by Leos Carax, Mathieu Kassovitz, and Louis Malle, studied music by Dmitri Shostakovich, and read poetry and literature by Jacques Prévert, Joseph Joffo, Toni Morrison, and Carol Ann Duffy. After completing her undergraduate degree, Albertine spent time living and working in Montpellier and Paris, where she first came across Chantal Akerman’s 1970s films and this experience inspired her to embark on a PhD. She has also worked as an administrator at a Pupil Referral Unit for young people who are not able to attend a mainstream school, and as a TESOL assistant, providing English language support to refugees and asylum seekers. Albertine has also completed CPD certified training run by the National Autistic Society and CPD accredited Disability Equality Training.
Research interests
Albertine Fox is Senior Lecturer in French Film at the University of Bristol and her main areas of research are cinema and documentary studies, film history, theories of sound and listening, gender and sexuality, and queer theory.
Albertine's current research explores the subversive potential of listening in relation to Western logocentric tendencies in experimental Francophone screen media, with a focus on 'listening spaces' and 'listening silence'. She is developing a book project on listening spaces and the face-to-face encounter in documentaries from the Francophone world. Her first monograph, Godard and Sound: Acoustic Innovation in the Late Films of Jean-Luc Godard (Bloomsbury, 2017/2020), re-evaluates the multimedia work of the Swiss-French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard from an auditory perspective, expanding current typologies of film sound and prompting new debates about the relationship between music, sound, the moving image, and the film spectator.
Since 2018, Albertine has published three peer-reviewed articles in MIRAJ, French Screen Studies, and Paragraph on works by the Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, encompassing installation art (Maniac Shadows), short film (Trois Strophes sur le nom de Sacher), documentary (Sud), and her musical collaboration with her former partner, the cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton. Albertine has also completed a chapter on Akerman’s documentary De l’autre côté, shot on the US-Mexico border, published in Chantal Akerman: Afterlives (Legenda, 2019, co-edited by Marion Schmid and Emma Wilson). Most recently, Albertine has published an interview and collaboration with the Lebanese filmmaker Corine Shawi in Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, and she is preparing a further article and short essay on lesbian visibility in Lebanese cinema alongside her research for the book.
In 2014, Albertine was awarded the Susan Hayward Prize by the Association for Studies in French Cinema, and in 2012 she was awarded the R.H. Gapper Postgraduate Essay Prize by the Society for French Studies.
Publications
Recent publications
14/04/2020Hearing the Crackles in the Background: Listening and Female Intimacy in 'Portrait of a Lady on Fire'
Sounding queer collaborative acts
Studies in French Cinema
The Auditory Imagination and the Polyphony of Listening
Paragraph
The Mute E of a Listening Presence
Journal of Middle East Women's Studies
Vocal Landscapes
Chantal Akerman
Teaching
At postgraduate level, Albertine teaches sessions on the MA Comparative Literatures and Cultures ('Cultural Encounters' and 'Theories of Visual Cuture'), covering set work by Chantal Akerman, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Jocelyne Saab. She has also contributed to the MA Applied Translation and she co-supervises MPhil and PhD students. Albertine acts as Postgraduate Teaching Officer for the School and during the academic year 2021-22 she will also serve as interim Programme Director for the MA Black Humanities to cover for staff on leave.
Supervisory interests
Albertine is open to supervising PhD candidates on a range of topics in the broad areas of French and Francophone cinema and documentary film studies, encompassing any of the areas outlined under 'Keywords'.