Margaret Atack

Professor of French

Margaret Atack

0113 343 3379

Biography

I completed my undergraduate and postgraduate studies in French at University College London. After temporary lectureships at UCL, Southampton and Cardiff, I was appointed at the University of Leeds from 1979 to temporary lectureships and then in 1981 to a permanent lectureship in French. In 1989 I moved to Sunderland Polytechnic where I took up the post of Head of the School of Humanities; in 1991 I was appointed Director of the School of Social and International Studies and Professor of French Studies.

I returned to Leeds as Professor of French and Head of the Department of French in 1993. Since 2002 I have served as Research Dean, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research.

I was a member of the 2001 French RAE French panel, and chair of the 2008 RAE panel. I'm a member of the Leverhulme Trust Advisory Panel, the Research Information Network Advisory Board, and the Editorial Boards of the Journal for War and Culture Studies, and the University of Wales Press Crime Fiction series.

Research interests

French film and fiction of the Vichy years, postwar narratives of war and occupation in France, French women's writing, roman noir and film noir, French culture of the 1950s and 1960s, 20th century French thought, narrative and cultural theory.

Current Research

I am Principal Investigator on a major AHRC-funded research project awarded in 2006: Narratives of the Second World War and Occupation in France: National Identity and Cultural Production. With Professor Christopher Lloyd of Durham, the Co-Investigator, I am currently preparing for publication the proceedings of the international conference held in Leeds in September 09, Framing Narratives: New Readings in the Second World War in France since 1939, and also the book of the findings of the project provisionally entitled: Narratives of the Second World in France: A New Cultural History. We have also created an interactive database.

I am also working on crime fiction set in Paris to contribute to a book arising from the October 2009 'Capital Crimes' conference held in Cardiff University.

Teaching

I am currently on research leave until the end of semester one, 2010-11, but my teaching usually includes the following courses:

Level 2: Foundations of Modern French Thought Roman noir film noir

Level 3: The Occupation in French Fiction and Film The Nouvelle Vague

Research supervision

I have supervised or co-supervised MAs by research and PhDs on Katherine Mansfield, the First World War in crime fiction, the early films of Godard, Resnais and Marker, Oradour and 17 October 1961, Simone de Beauvoir, women intellectuals 1968-1986, war crimes trials, Robbe-Grillet, and François Ozon (MA World cinema dissertation).

Current PhD supervision: 'Guilt and Shame in Fiction of the Second World War 1939 to the present'.

I welcome enquiries from potential applicants wishing to discuss a research project in the fields covered by the culture, fiction, film and thought of twentieth century France.

Publications

Books

  • 1989: Literature and the French Resistance: Cultural Politics and Narrative Forms 1940-1950, Manchester, Manchester University Press.
  • 1991:Contemporary French Fiction by Women: Feminist Perspectives, edited by Margaret Atack and Phil Powrie, Manchester, Manchester University Press.
  • 1999:May 68 in French Fiction and Film: Rethinking Representation, Rethinking Society, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Special issue

  • 2001:Crime and Punishment: Narratives of Order and Disorder, French Cultural Studies special issue edited by Margaret Atack, 12: 3, October 2001

Chapters and articles since 1998

  • 1998: `Writing from the Centre: Ironies of Otherness and Marginality', in Ruth Evans (ed.), Simone de Beauvoir's 'The Second Sex': New Interdisciplinary Essays, Texts in Culture Series, Manchester University Press, 1998, pp. 31-58.
  • 'Useless Passions: Intellectuals at the Liberation in Les Mandarins and Les Justes Causes', in James Dolamore (ed.), Making Connections: Essays in French Culture and Society in Honour of Philip Thody, Peter Lang, pp. 147-159.
  • 'Essay Review: Barthes and Utopia', French Cultural Studies, vol. 9 Part 2, no. 26, June 1998, pp. 249-56.
  • 'Drôle de jeu: l'amour, la résistance, la transgression', Cahiers Roger Vailland, no. 10, pp. 103-115.
  • 'L'Armée des ombres and Le Chagrin et la pitié: Reconfigurations of Law, Legalities and the State in post-68 France', in C. Burdett, C. Gorrara, and H. Peitsch (eds.), European Memories of World War Two, Berghahn pp. 160-174.
  • 1999:'May 58 - May 68: Exile, Alienation and Social Change in Etcherelli's trilogy', M. Allison and O. Heathcote (eds), Forty Years of the Fifth French Republic: Actions, Dialogues, Discourses, Bern, Peter Lang, pp. 145-161.
  • 'Sartre, May 68, and Literature: Some Reflections on the Problematic of Contestation', Sartre Studies International, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 33-48.
  • 'Le Corbeau and Le Ciel est à vous: entre le spectacle esthétique et la connaissance', Contemporary French Civilisation, special issue on Culture and Daily Life in Occupied France, guest editors Elizabeth Brunazzi and Jeanine Parisier Plottel, Vol. XXIII, no. 2, Summer/Fall 1999, pp. 337-54.
  • 2000:'The Experience of Occupation: Northern France in Two World Wars', in J. Bourne, P. Liddle, I. Whitehead, (eds.), The Great World War 1914-1945, vol. 1, Lightning Strikes Twice, London, Harper Collins, pp. 533-550.
  • 2001:'Introduction' to French Cultural Studies special issue, Crime and Punishment: Narratives of Order and Disorder, vol. 12, part 3, pp. 233-36.
  • 'L'Affaire Dominici: Rural France, The State, The Nation', French Cultural Studies special issue, Crime and Punishment: Narratives of Order and Disorder, vol. 12, part 3, pp. 285-301.
  • 2003: 'Julia Kristeva', The Literary Encyclopedia (on-line publication).
  • 2007:'The politics and poetics of space in 'Les Passagers du Roissy-Express', Modern and Contemporary France, vol. 15, no. 4, Nov 2007.
  • 'Sins, Crimes and Guilty Passions in France's stories of war and occupation', Journal of War and Culture Studies vol.1, no.1, Sep 2007.