Dr Greg Kerr
- Senior Lecturer (French)
telephone:
0141 330 5290
email:
Greg.Kerr@glasgow.ac.uk
Room 326, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Hetherington Building, Bute Gardens, University of Glasgow, G12 8RS
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425Biography
I studied at Trinity College, Dublin (BA, European Studies & PhD, French Studies) and the University of Cambridge (MPhil, European Literature and Culture). Before coming to Glasgow, I taught at Sciences Po Paris, the University of Oxford and Lancaster University. In 2016-17, I was Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow at the Analyse et Traitement Informatique de la Langue Française (ATILF) research laboratory, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Nancy.
Research interests
My main research interest is in modern poetry in French, and I have written two books in this area.
Exile, Non-Belonging and Statelessness in Grangaud, Jabès, Lubin and Luca: No man’s language (UCL Press, 2021 - available as free download or in print) discusses four writers of different origins for whom poetry can be linked to a condition of not being at home in any one language, even their mother tongue. With Dr Véronique Montément of the Université de Lorraine, I have co-edited a Modern Languages Open special collection on a related theme, Between borders: French-language poetry and the poetics of statelessness (2019).
Dream Cities: Utopia and Prose by Poets in Nineteenth-century France (Legenda, 2013) explores the relationship between utopian thinking about cities and the literary genre of the prose poem, through the writings of some canonical poets (Charles Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, Arthur Rimbaud) and figures belonging to the Saint-Simonian movement.
I am also interested in word-and-image-based approaches to culture, in architecture and urban space, particularly as they relate to literature, and in le rire moderne in late nineteenth-century culture.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425
internal postal address:
R326 Level 3
French
Hetherington Building
Glasgow G12 8RS
Grants
2016-17
POSE (Poetics of Statelessness in Twentieth-Century France and Europe), Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, Analyse et Traitement Informatique de la Langue Française (ATILF) research laboratory, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Nancy, France, € 86538.
2013
Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland publication grant for Dream Cities: Utopia and Prose by Poets in Nineteenth-Century France (March 2013), £1000.
Supervision
I am happy to hear from prospective research students about your ideas for projects on 19th- and 20th-century French literature and culture, and always keen to support applications for doctoral funding (AHRC/SGSAH, Carnegie, College of Arts doctoral funding).
Projects in the following areas are especially welcome:
Poetry
The literature of exile/non-belonging/statelessness
Postmonolingual writing
Utopian Studies
Literature and the urban environment
Text/Image Studies
- Astrom, Kristina
Liminal Play: Inter-art relations between Stéphane Mallarmé and James McNeill Whistler
I have previously supervised projects at the levels of PhD and MPhil by research in a range of areas, including: inter-art relations in the work of Stéphane Mallarmé and James McNeill Whistler; autobiography and the phototext in the late twentieth century; caricature in response to the Paris Commune and the Franco-Prussian war; the nineteenth-century novel and the urban environment; modern and contemporary poetic expression and urban commemoration. A number of these projects have been funded by College of Arts PhD scholarships or SMLC's Peter Davies research scholarships in French and Modern Languages.
Teaching
Teaching and convenorship
• French Culture (Level 1 lectures and seminars)
• Convenor of Honours-level options ‘Text/Image Cultures: Theory and Practice’ and 'Modern French Poetry and Poetics'.
• Convenor of Senior Honours French Written Language and Spoken Language programmes.
School Administrative Roles
• SMLC Learning and Teaching Convenor
Additional information
Additional Information
Editorial
- Forum for Modern Language Studies, Subject Editor (French), subsequently Special Issues General Editor, (2017-2024). Editorial board membership (2024-).
- Irish Journal of French Studies, Editor (incl. Book Reviews Editor), Irish Journal of French Studies (2019-).
External examining
- French Undergraduate programmes, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Galway (2020-2024).
Public engagement
- Organiser of Picturing Glasgow: Raymond Depardon in conversation, an interview with French photographer Raymond Depardon to discuss his 1980 photographs of the city of Glasgow, Zoom (5 November 2020). Collaboration with Chris Leslie on associated short film Present Past: Glasgow in Photographs.
- Co-curator (with Anne Dulau Beveridge) of The Truest Mirror of Life, a display of nineteenth-century French caricature drawn from the holdings of the Hunterian Art Gallery (8 August 2017- 21 January 2018).
- Member of the Board of Directors of the Alliance Française de Glasgow, (2015-2020) and co-organiser (with Joan Lefever, University of Strathclyde) of joutes oratoires intervarsity debates.
-
‘Armen Lubin, écrivain de l’apatridie’: interview in Nouvelles d’Arménie Magazine (243, 2017) on the topic of research on Armen Lubin / Chahan Chahnour (article reproduced with permission on the Autobiosphere research website).
Book reviews
- Greg has contributed reviews to the following journals: French Studies, Forum for Modern Language Studies, The Irish Journal of French Studies, The Journal of European Studies, Modern Language Review and Nineteenth-Century French Studies. He also previously authored the 'Post-Romantic Era' section of the French section of the Year's Work in Modern Language Studies.
Further Qualifications
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice (CAP).
Discipline
- Modern Languages Discipline+ Catalyst Deputy Lead, Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities (2021-), Acting Lead (2024).