{"id":170,"date":"2021-09-15T17:24:10","date_gmt":"2021-09-15T16:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/cdrgmodlangsqub\/?p=170"},"modified":"2021-09-15T17:24:10","modified_gmt":"2021-09-15T16:24:10","slug":"modern-languages-cdrg-research-showcase-2021-critical-interactions-panel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/cdrgmodlangsqub\/2021\/09\/15\/modern-languages-cdrg-research-showcase-2021-critical-interactions-panel\/","title":{"rendered":"Modern Languages CDRG Research Showcase 2021: Critical Interactions panel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This post is part of our <\/strong>Research Initiation Scheme<\/strong><\/a> for 2020-2021.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the 25th<\/sup> of June 2021, Dr Dominique Jeannerod (PhD supervisor in French at Queen\u2019s University), Dr Ashley Harris (former PhD student and departmental colleague until end of June 2021) and Ciara Gorman (current PhD supervisee) delivered a session entitled \u2018Critical Interactions\u2019 at the Modern Languages CDRG Research Showcase 2021. The trio of speakers aimed to highlight how their different respective research objects share structural and methodological affinities translating into common lines of enquiries. The overarching title for their collaborative paper, a preview of a joint panel at the (then) upcoming Society for French Studies conference 2021, was \u2018Crime on the Margins: Peripheries, Alienation and Criminalisation of Women\u2019. Whilst each of the three researchers is investigating different time periods and corpuses of French crime fiction, film and media, their papers incorporate many cross-cutting themes. These parallels include marginalization as well as space, place and liminality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Dr Jeannerod commenced the session with an introduction on \u2018Femininity as Monstrosity: Media, Madness, Murder\u2019. In this section, he elucidated that monstrosity is often gendered and displayed as an object of voyeurism in media. He alluded to the inescapable conditioning of media on our perception of morals, society and familiar discourse. He also outlined that women are rarely granted emancipation from the patriarchal order in crime fiction books and films. In fact, in most cases, if women are to subvert gender norms, they are shown to do so through means of madness. Dr Jeannerod\u2019s individual paper \u201c\u2018L\u2019inf\u00e2me, l\u2019orgueilleuse sanguinaire\u201d: The Multi-Media Lives and Afterlives of Pauline Dubuisson\u2019, focused on the multi-media portrayal and vilification of medical student Pauline Dubuisson (1927-1963), against whom the death penalty had been required, uncharacteristically for a crime of passion. The paper showed how the trial constructed out of an intelligent and emancipated young woman a media persona which was a reflection of both a still unchallenged patriarchal order in early 1950\u2019s France and of post WW2 masculine guilt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ashley Harris, personal archive<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Next, Dr Harris, whose paper was entitled \u2018Criminals or Victims? Teenage Girls in Contemporary Banlieue Cinema\u2019, spoke about her current investigation into the depiction of the banlieue<\/em> (urban peripheries \/ suburbs of Paris) in French films. She highlighted that the banlieue<\/em> is recognized for sustaining segregation at various levels: geographical, demographical, economical and social. Therefore, the banlieue<\/em> is now perceived to represent a place of lack \u2013 be that order, respect for the law or humanity. Consequently, the term banlieue<\/em> has become negatively charged in the social, political and cultural spheres. Dr Harris perceives French films, particularly throughout the last 25 years, to have problematized perceived understandings of the banlieue<\/em> and the experiences lived there. She considered how the films Bande de Filles <\/em>(2014)and Divines<\/em> (2016) showcase additional levels of segregation and marginalization in teenage girls\u2019 experiences of the banlieue<\/em>. The objective of her research is to unravel whether these films help us to more fully comprehend young girls\u2019 experiences of the banlieue, <\/em>or if they actually perpetuate stereotypes. Likewise, she considers media coverage to be at the centre of how we talk about the banlieue, <\/em>postulating thatthe banlieue<\/em> crisis can be considered above all else a crisis of representation, as banlieue<\/em> women experience an ensemble of forms of economic, geographic, racial and gendered marginalization \u2013 all of which are replicated in their exclusion in banlieue<\/em> films.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ciara Gorman, personal archive<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Finally, Ciara Gorman provided us with insight into her paper \u2018The Hollow Centre: Peripheral Life in the Heart(h) of the City in Le\u00efla Slimani\u2019s Chanson douce<\/em>\u2019. Ciara\u2019s research focuses on representations of criminal women in literary and crime contemporary fiction, with a view to assessing if and how they move the dial beyond such stereotypes towards a more intersectional feminist appreciation of what motivates women\u2019s criminality. She perceives violent women within these modes often to be portrayed as aberrations of nature or biology, which in turn strips them of their autonomy and their crimes of social and historical contextualization. In her research, Ciara has paid particular attention to the \u2018killer nanny\u2019 figure in Chanson douce<\/em> (Leila Slimani, 2016), analyzing the frightening paradox of lethal care giving and the sensationalism and marginalization of violent women. Ciara understands Slimani to offer a portrait of the novel\u2019s protagonist Louise, which takes into account her intersecting marginalities \u2013 perhaps offsetting, in turn, her marginalization as a child murderer. She believes that throughout the novel, one can clearly identify economic, emotional, and physical precariousness as contributing factors to Louise\u2019s breakdown and eventual crimes, thus de-criminalizing her violent actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In conclusion, the research papers discussed by Dominique, Ashley and Ciara poignantly elucidated the marginality of women in French crime fiction, film and media. They also highlighted the importance of considering space, place and liminality when investigating such gendered segregation. Each speaker exposed the media for having taken a hold of our collective decision-making and mechanisms, thereby neutralizing the idea of the power of the people and replacing it with the reproductions of dominations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Report by Jane McCutcheon, final-year undergraduate in English and Spanish<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is part of our Research Initiation Scheme for 2020-2021. On the 25th of June 2021, Dr Dominique Jeannerod (PhD supervisor in French at Queen\u2019s University), Dr Ashley Harris (former PhD student and departmental colleague until end of June 2021) and Ciara Gorman (current PhD supervisee) delivered a session entitled \u2018Critical Interactions\u2019 at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,10],"tags":[74,77,73,13,71,18,68,72,75],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events-2020-2021","category-research-initiation-2020-2021","tag-banlieue","tag-crime","tag-film","tag-french","tag-liminality","tag-literature","tag-marginalization","tag-media","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/cdrgmodlangsqub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/cdrgmodlangsqub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/cdrgmodlangsqub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/cdrgmodlangsqub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/cdrgmodlangsqub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/cdrgmodlangsqub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":180,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/cdrgmodlangsqub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions\/180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/cdrgmodlangsqub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/cdrgmodlangsqub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/cdrgmodlangsqub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}