Tag Archives: race

Modern Languages CDRG Research Showcase 2022: A Celebration of Recent Publications in Modern Languages panel

This post is part of our Research Initiation Scheme for 2021-2022.

On Friday 20 May 2022, Queen’s University Belfast hosted the annual Modern Languages CDRG Research Showcase. The event emphasised the wealth of research recently undertaken by the Core Disciplinary Research Group at Queen’s. The Celebration of Recent Publications in Modern Languages panel session in particular highlighted some recently published work from three Queen’s lecturers, Dr Dominique Jeannerod (French), Dr Síobhra Aiken (Irish) and Professor Maeve McCusker (French). The panel was chaired by Laura Kennedy, a current PhD student in French.

Image: cover of Dominique Jeannerod’s monograph

Dr Dominique Jeannerod, interviewed by Mark O’Rawe, a PhD student in French, provided an overview of his monograph entitled La Passion de San-Antonio: Frédéric Dard et ses lecteurs (Presses universitaires Savoie Mont Blanc, 2021). La Passion de San-Antonio considers the readers of San-Antonio book series by French crime writer, Frédéric Dard. Dr Jeannerod explained how he, like millions of others, grew up in France reading the San-Antonio books. However, these novels were perceived as anti-literature due to a variety of socio-cultural factors, ranging from their aggressive market orientation to Dard’s grotesque humour and idiosyncratic use of French slang. As a result, the San-Antonio books were to be read outside of the classroom. Despite or indeed because of this lack of institutional recognition, the collection of novels has enjoyed a very diverse readership. Dr Jeannerod’s research work on this topic focuses on the relationship between the reader and the author, asking questions about who the readers of San-Antonio are, how they read, and what their assumptions or prejudices might be. In the interview, Dr Jeannerod discussed the varying trends in the San-Antonio readership across generations, which saw the novel’s popularity decrease around the 1990s. The conversation with Dr Jeannerod concluded by looking forward to the return of San-Antonio in multimedia form, with the anticipated release of a TV series, based on the book series.

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Postgraduate student interviews: Evie Domingue (MRes)

This post is part of our Research Initiation Scheme for 2020-2021.

Evie Domingue is an MRes in Arts and Humanities candidate, whose research focuses on representations of Afro-Brazilian women in the media and the ways they represent themselves in their own media productions. In this interview, I speak with Evie about, amongst other things, her reasons for pursuing research on this topic, the strong sense of urgency it holds in Brazil’s current socio-political context, and her advice for those thinking of doing an MRes.

Prior to postgraduate study, Evie completed her BA Hons in Spanish and Portuguese at Queen’s University Belfast. She cites the ‘Brazilian Digital Culture’ module that she completed in her final year, taught by her MRes supervisor Dr Tori Holmes, as having sparked her interests for both media and Brazilian studies. It also gave her the opportunity to incorporate her passion for race studies into the aforementioned topics. She notes that the independent study she completed as part of this module gave her insight as to what was to come for the MRes.

Evie Domingue, personal archive

In terms of methodology, Evie is analysing various forms of media – a YouTube channel, music, a film, a streaming platform and a telenovela (serial drama) – and picking up on the most prominent themes within this material. She notes that whilst her project is still developing and evolving, so far she has found recurring topics in her research material to be issues of identity, black aesthetic standards in the realm of self-representation, and black female protagonism.

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