Staff in the Department of French
Professor Lucille Cairns, BA, PhD London, Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques
Contact Professor Lucille Cairns (email at lucille.cairns@durham.ac.uk)
Biography
Professor Lucille Cairns is the sole author of five monographs: Marie Cardinal: Motherhood and Creativity (1992), Privileged Pariahdom: Homosexuality in the Novels of Dominique Fernandez (1996), Lesbian Desire in Post-1968 French Literature (2002), Sapphism on Screen: Lesbian Desire in French and Francophone Cinema (2006), and Post-War Jewish Women's Writing in French (2011), as well as of numerous articles/ chapters on male and female homosexuality in French literature and film, on French women's writing generally, and on French Jewish women's writing in particular. She is sole editor of Gay and Lesbian Cultures in France (2002).
She has been editor of Stirling French Publications (1997-2005), and specialist reader for many academic journals, including Crisolenguas (Puerto Rico), Forum for Modern Language Studies (UK), French Cultural Studies (UK), French Studies (UK), Journal of Lesbian Studies (US), Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge (US), and Women in French Studies (US).
She was President of AUPHF (Association of University Professors and Heads of French) from 2007-2010, and is currently the national representative for French studies on the Executive Committee of UCML (University Council of Modern Languages). She has been advisor on a number of senior promotions in UK universities, external panel member for the Independent Evaluation of Teaching in the French Department, University of Sheffield (2006), and external member of the panel for the review of the School of Modern Languages, University of Bristol (2009).
In 2009, she was made a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French government.
Professor Cairns is a member of REF 2014 sub-panel 28 (Modern Languages).
In 2011-12, under the framework of the French government's 'Investissements d'avenir' programme (21.9 billion euros), Professor Cairns was President of the Humanities committee charged by the French National Research Agency with evaluating submissions to the 'Laboratories of Excellence' scheme. This scheme is designed to endow world-renowned laboratories from all academic disciplines with significant means to construct a high-level integrated policy concerning research, education, and research exploitation.
In 2012, she was also President of the French National Research Agency's grants selection committee for a new research initiative in the social and human sciences, entitled ‘Emergences et évolutions des cultures et des phénomènes culturels’. She is assuming the same role in 2013 for the second iteration of this initiative.
AHRC Reviewer for the Block Grant Partnerships scheme, Round 2, Full Proposal Stage (BGP2).
Research Groups
- Culture and Difference
- Literature/History/Theory
- Visual and Performance
Research Interests
- Corporeal configurations in French literature and film
- French women's writing
- Jewish women's writing
- Literary, cinematic and wider cultural mediations of homosexuality in the French language
- Member of the Culture and Difference research group in MLAC. All of her publications are relevant to this group
- Professor Cairns is happy to supervise postgraduate students in most areas of 20th- and 21st-century French studies, and especially those areas listed
- Queer theory
Selected Publications
Books: authored
- 2011 Post-War Jewish Women's Writing in French, Legenda, 264 pp.
- 2006 Sapphism on Screen: Lesbian Desire in French and Francophone Cinema, Edinburgh University Press, 223 pp.
- 2002 Lesbian Desire in Post-1968 French Literature, Edwin Mellen Press, 484 pp.
- 1996 Privileged Pariahdom: Homosexuality in the Novels of Dominique Fernandez, Peter Lang, 178 pp.
- 1992 Marie Cardinal: Motherhood and Creativity, University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 283 pp.
Books: edited
- 2002 Gay and Lesbian Cultures in France, Peter Lang, 290 pp.
Books: sections
- Forthcoming 'Memories of Home, Generations and Genealogies in North African Jewish women's writing: the case of Paule Darmon's Baisse les yeux, Sarah (1980)', in Liatso, Yianna (ed.), Memories of Home: Generations and Genealogies in African Writing, Africa World Press.
- 2011 'Mères manquantes and Queer Triangulations: Emporte-moi and Lost and Delirious', in Grandena, Florian & Johnston, Cristina (eds.), Cinematic Queerness: Gay and Lesbian Hypervisibility in Contemporary Francophone Feature Films, Peter Lang, pp. 99-116
- 2007 'Dissidences Charnelles: the Female Body in Revolt', in Baldwin, James, Fowler, James & Weller, Shane (eds.), The Flesh in the Text, Peter Lang, pp. 205-225
- 2006 'Lesbian Desire in Recent French and Francophone Cinema', in Günther, Renate & Michallat, Wendy (eds.), Lesbian Inscriptions in Francophone Society and Culture, Durham Modern Languages Series.
- 2003 'Michèle Causse, Dominique Fernandez, Jeanne Galzy, Elula Perrin', in Eribon, Didier (ed.), Dictionnaire des cultures gays et lesbiennes, Larousse, pp. 100, 193, 205-206, 358
- 2002 'Dissidence sexuelle, conservatisme social? La mise en écriture du lesbianisme chez Hélène de Monferrand', in Morello, Nathalie & Rodgers, Catherine (eds.), Nouvelles écrivaines: nouvelles voix?, Rodopi, pp. 215-232
- 2002 'Identity or Difference? The Ontology of Lesbianism in Contemporary French Realist Fiction', in Cairns, Lucille (ed.), Gay and Lesbian Cultures in France, Peter Lang, pp. 157-171
- 2002 'Le Phallus lesbien (bis): Lesbo-Erotic French Writing of the Late 1990s', in Hutton, Margaret-Anne. (ed.), French Fiction in the 1990s, Department of French and Francophone Studies, University of Nottingham, pp. 89-101
- 2001 'Gender Trouble in Ma Vie en rose', in Mazdon, Lucy (ed.), France on Film: Reflections on Popular French Cinema, Wallflower Press, pp. 119-131
- 2000 'Mireille Best; Dominique Fernandez; Jocelyne François; Hélène de Monferrand; Monique Wittig', in Aldrich, R. & Wotherspoon, G. (eds.), Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History, vol. II: From World War II to the Present Day, Routledge, pp. 36-37; 131-133; 145-146; 290-292; 452-454
- 2000 'Sexual Fault Lines: Sex and Gender in the Cultural Context', in Kidd, W. & Reynolds, S. (eds.), Contemporary French Cultural Studies, Arnold, pp. 81-94
- 1999 'Who are you, Professor Foucault?', in Carrette, J. (ed.), Religion and Culture by Michel Foucault, Manchester University Press, pp. 87-103
Essays in edited volumes
- 2013 'Queer, Republican France, and Its Euro-American "Others"', in Dasgupta, Sudeep & Rossello, Mireille (eds.), What's Queer About Europe, Fordham University Press.
- 2013 'Vichy, Jews, Enfants cachés: French Women Writers Look Back', in Damlé, Amaleena & Rye, Gill (eds.), Women's Writing in Twenty-First Century France, University of Wales Press.
Journal papers: academic
- 2012 'Calibrating Queer in the work of Didier Eribon', French Cultural Studies 23, pp. 104-116
- 2011 'La Shoah et ses séquelles psycho-mémorielles', Revue des Écrivains Israéliens de Langue Française pp. 88-93
- 2011 'Lieux de mémoire juive: Francine Christophe's Après les camps, la vie and Marceline Loridan-Ivens's La Petite Prairie aux bouleaux', L'Esprit créateur 51, pp. 139-153
- 2010 ''La Mémoire de la Shoah': the Contentious Case of Soazig Aaron's 'Le Non de Klara'', French Studies: A Quarterly Review 64, pp. 438-450
- 2009 'Hyphenated Identity: Tunisian-French-Jewish-Female Writers', CELAAN Review - Revue du Centre d'Etudes des Littératures et des Arts d'Afrique du Nord 7, pp. 58-69
- 2009 'Sapphism in Twentieth- to Twenty-First Century French Film: Segue or Schism?', Australian Journal of French Studies XLV, pp. 264-276
- 2008 'Post-War Jewish Women’s Writing in French', Women in French Studies pp. 24-38
- 2007 'Queer Paradox/Paradoxical Queer: Anne Garréta's Pas un jour (2002)', Journal of Lesbian Studies 10, pp. 85-103
- 2004 'Lesbianisme et littérature', Lesbia Magazine 237, pp. 28-33
- 2003 'Lesbianisme et littérature', Les Cahiers du cercle 3, pp. 10-15
- 2001 'Corydon: Politique de la sexualité, politique des sexes', Bulletin des Amis d'André Gide XXIX, pp. 219-242
- 1999 'A Queer Romance: Me and French Studies', French Cultural Studies 10, pp. 327-336
- 1998 'Gazon maudit: French National and Sexual Identities', French Cultural Studies 9, pp. 225-237
- 1997 'Homosexuality and lesbianism in Proust's Sodome et Gomorrhe', French Studies LI, pp. 43-59
- 1996 'Gide's Corydon: The Politics of Sexuality and Sexual Politics', The Modern Language Review 91, pp. 582-596
- 1994 'Anne Ernaux, Filial Ambivalence and Ce qu'ils disent ou rien', Romance Studies pp. 71-84
- 1993 'Roots and Alienation in Marie Cardinal's Au Pays de mes racines', Forum for Modern Language Studies XXIX, pp. 346-358
- 1992 'Passion and Paranoia: Power Structures and the Representation of Men in the Writings of Marie Cardinal', French Studies XLVI, pp. 280-295