Salons littéraires and student power!

It’s been great to get the blog up and running again this week, albeit not always with the most positive of news. To round the week off, a post from our co-Programme Director, Aedín ní Loingsigh, who, along with Mathilde Mazau, ensured that our students were actively involved in choosing one of the set texts they’ll be studying next semester…

“‘C’était une journée de novembre exceptionnelle’ —  to paraphrase the opening of Simone de Beauvoir’s Les Belles Images — when students and staff members met for French at Stirling’s inaugural salon littéraire. Up for discussion was de Beauvoir’s novel: Les Belles Images. It has been a much-loved core text on the Stirling pre-honours curriculum for many years. But recent feedback prompted us to consider whether we might change it to gain some new perspectives on feminist movements. Annie Ernaux’s 2000 L’Événement was a suggestion that raised a lot of challenging questions. In the end, staff felt these questions were best answered by our students.

Our students rose to the task in a wonderfully engaging way. With the support of staff members, two teams composed of honours-level students presented compelling arguments to help our pre-honours students decide which novel they would prefer to read in Spring 2024. Embodying the spirit and elegance of Dominique, the vengeful but vulnerable mother of de Beauvoir’s main character, Alice, Daisy, Fiona and Heather recreated one of the novel’s iconic scenes to persuade students who had not yet read it that Les Belles Images was a more relevant, entertaining and linguistically rewarding choice for them. And the coup de grâce (we were sure): Ernaux describes the problems of women of her generation. But de Beauvoir diagnoses them and worked actively to solve them.

Team Ernaux responded with aplomb. Dispensing with the array of props used by team de Beauvoir, Marta and Robyn, with tutor Mathilde Mazau, reminded their audience that Ernaux was a Nobel-prize-winning author; that, being a young student, the character of L’Événement was more than relatable to them; and that Ernaux’s style of writing is closer to that of Edouard Louis, an author many of our pre-honours students had already studied and liked. Not shirking from the difficult issue at the heart of Ernaux’s memoir, the team explained that, while aspects of the novel’s engagement with the subject of illegal abortion were difficult, L’Événement deals with an important and topical issue. They reassured students that with the right preparation and guidance, the novel would give rise to informed, sensitive and balanced conversations in class.

In the end, the barnstorming speeches of team Ernaux won out. 80% of the students who were eligible to vote explained that they had been persuaded that Ernaux’s text was more relevant to their lives and that Ernaux’s Nobel-winning status was an important factor in assessing which author they wanted to read. Arguments that had persuaded students to vote for de Beauvoir were balanced towards the belief that it would be more effective for improving vocabulary and that learning more about de Beauvoir would be motivating. The invaluable advice on good taste provided by Les Belles Images was not a deciding factor…

Many thanks to the students who participated so enthusiastically in this event and to tutor Mathilde Mazau for her hugely effective preparation with them. Congratulations to team Ernaux and commiserations to Team de Beauvoir. All is not lost: next year Dominique plans to rise again and fight in the way only she knows how to!”

Thank you to everyone who was involved in organizing and running the salon littéraire and, in particular, to Aedín for sending through this update. We’ll be curious to see what next semester’s Year 2 students make of Ernaux now.

“French is a part of me”

It’s a sunny Friday afternoon and we’re edging closer and closer to the summer which seems like a good time to introduce you to another of our undergraduate students. Many of our students in French at Stirling join us having studied French until the end of their secondary school studies but we also welcome students onto our Beginners’ stream every year, students who have either never studied any French before or who have perhaps done 1 or 2 years but who usually haven’t studied it for a few years at least. For these students, the first two semesters focus on intensive language learning (alongside whatever other subjects they are studying), then in 3^rd semester they begin to study French and Francophone cultures while continuing to build their language skills and confidence, and they merge with our Advanced stream from Semester 4 onwards. Today’s post is by Valeriia who has just finished the first 2 semesters in our Beginners’ stream:

“Bonjour tout le monde! My name is Valeriia, and I just completed my first year at the University of Stirling. I’m pursuing a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in International Management Studies with European Languages and Society. Let me tell you, choosing this programme has been the best decision of my life. In my 20 years, I have experienced many changes, just like everyone else. Among these changes, foreign languages have played a significant role. I first discovered French when I was in 5th grade. It caught the attention of my teachers, who noticed my interest in French culture and recommended that I start learning the language. Subsequently, I enrolled in an academic lyceum where I delved deep into English and French, participating in various Olympiads and scientific competitions throughout Ukraine. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, and I thought nothing could disrupt this harmony. However, German unexpectedly entered my life, diverting all my efforts and time to this new language. Consequently, I began to forget French since, as they say, “if you don’t use it, you lose it.”

In 2022, I made the decision to study at a university in Scotland. I had no doubt that Stirling was the perfect choice for me. When I discovered that the university offered the opportunity to study French and even spend a semester in a French-speaking country, I felt a rush of excitement. I once again fell in love with the French language, even after a long break. The native French-speaking teachers provide incredible assistance and support, whilst the university campus and the entire community continuously inspire and motivate me to strive for new knowledge. It’s almost like having a piece of France in Scotland. I’m extremely glad that the University of Stirling offers language learning opportunities for beginners, those looking to refresh their skills, and those who already have a strong foundation. But is there a limit? Personally, I strongly believe that perfection knows no bounds.

You know, they say that knowing at least one foreign language becomes second nature. If you were to ask me what the nature of the French language is, I would tell you that it varies for everyone. For some, it’s the language of love, for others, it’s the world of cinema, and for some, it’s the pages of timeless French classics or the pleasure of gastronomy. For me, it encompasses all of these aspects. In a nutshell, it is life itself. You come to realise that a foreign language is so is so intricately woven into your life that it becomes a part of who you are. So, French is a part of me.

Through personal experience, I have come to understand that even when life takes unexpected turns, it is important to hold onto what you love and what gives you strength. I look forward to the upcoming years as a student and rejoice in my progress and the progress of my ‘camarades’. We, like all students, have a lot of work ahead of us, with so much more to learn about the French language and culture. However, at the University of Stirling, we are never alone. In unity, there is strength!”

Many, many thanks to Valeriia for this great blog post and we hope the summer will offer many opportunities for you to continue to build your language skills so you’re ready for the language and culture combination that awaits in the autumn!

And we’re back!

Le blog est de retour! It has been an incredibly busy couple of months for students and staff at Stirling and we are already a few weeks on from the end of our teaching semester so, firstly, well done to all our students for all the hard work over this spring. There’s lots of news for us to share and, although the teaching is over for this academic year, life remains busy for us all but we hope you’ll bear with us as we catch up with overdue blog posts and bring you up to speed with everything that’s been happening and lots of what lies ahead in French at Stirling (and beyond!).

To get the ball rolling once again, it’s fantastic to be able to start with a post from our former student Scott who graduated with a BA Hons in French and Spanish. Scott’s post is particularly timely against the backdrop of the presidential elections that have taken place in Turkey this past week. Confused as to what the connections might be with French at Stirling? Read on…

‘Herkese merhaba! Nearly two years since leaving Stirling and, almost like a rite de passage for French Studies’ students, I was asked (quite a while-ago now) to write a blog piece about my destinations following graduation. I did my undergraduate at Stirling in French and Spanish from 2016 to 2021. Although I was studying French and Spanish, I was always interested in the Middle East and what the Middle East is/was; as the saying goes, Middle of what, East of where?

A country that I was always interested in was Turkey – a good example of the East/West question depending on who you ask. I had been there a few times on holiday and had heard about Orhan Pamuk, but I hadn’t really done much reading into the history of the country or the language and culture. It wasn’t until I was on my British Council year – which should have been used to improve my French rather than being on first-name basis with the bakers in the nearest boulangerie to my flat–, that I began to study Turkish language and culture. Before I knew it, I was dead-set on doing something Turkey-related after finishing my degree at Stirling; it was either further study or finding work in Turkey in some kind of capacity. Luckily for me, Turkish studies was offered as a two-year Master’s degree in the UK; the only issue being, moving from relatively cheap Stirling to incredibly expensive London was quite the shock. Lockdown helped for the first year, I was able to stay at home then I completed a three-month term at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul last summer. Then, I did the London thing; saw the sights, rode the subway, and paid an exorbitant price for oh-so-fashionable city coffee. I’m now back in Scotland getting ready to hand in my end-of-year essays, and preparing for my dissertation.

One of the many things I liked about the studies at Stirling was the breadth of literature we read. I particularly enjoyed Didier Daeninckx’s Cannibale, Hygiène de l’assassin by Amélie Nothomb and Guy de Maupassant’s Boule de suif – which I still return to now and again for how good it is. And, even though I did my French dissertation on film studies, I really enjoyed the close-reading of texts and the ways in which literature had so many different layers of meaning to what you initially read on the page – something you can see very clearly in Boule de suif. It was this interest in literature that I’ve been able to develop in my Master’s through the works of Ottoman writers from the mid-nineteenth-century who, similar to de Maupassant, wrote about the changing world and peoples’ relationships to one another, even though it’s written in a language that no one speaks or writes in anymore – unless you meet a diehard Ottomanist. And, if the stars align, I can take what I’ve been working on mixed with what I learned at Stirling and use it for a PhD programme – hopefully somewhere across the pond.

I initially thought that what I was involved in was far removed from all things French at Stirling but that’s just not the case. After picking up Ahmet Mithat Efendi’s Avrupa’da bir Cevelan (A Jaunt in Europe) and Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem’s Araba Sevdası (The Carriage Affair) – two authors I’m currently working on, who write pages upon pages of French written in the Ottoman-Arabic script  –, I’m back in the deep-end, flicking through French Grammar in Context trying to refresh my memory of French tenses and what subject and object clauses are – something that still plagues me in Turkish. Or if it’s not French grammar I’m reading up on, it’s French literary and cultural theory which, currently, is almost completely incomprehensible to me – but we march on.

Funnily enough, there is quite an interesting history of the use of French language and French culture in Turkish. Just under one-hundred years ago, then president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, using similar policies to those of my favourite Académie, wanted to shake-up the Turkish language by removing many Arabic and Persian loanwords and instead create new Turkic words mixed with Western language. So, in Turkish, if I ever forget the word for suburb, truck, or screen I can just use banliyö, kamyon, and ekran respectively. And apparently, if you squint your eyes a little, the word for school (okul) in Turkish comes from the French école – but no one really knows.’

Many, many thanks to Scott, firstly for his patience as it has taken rather longer than we’d have hoped to get this post online, but primarily just for this excellent article that does so much to show the wide range of avenues that open up to our students after their degrees involving French at Stirling. We look forward to reading more about Scott’s progress over the years ahead and will keep our fingers firmly crossed for the PhD applications!

More news and updates to follow… À bientôt!

French at Stirling: “Go for it!”

Following on from Amy’s tales of Study Abroad in Aix and elsewhere in the spring, time to round off the week with another profile of one of our Year 1 students, just starting out on their time with us at Stirling:

“Bonjour! I’m Tom, currently in my first year studying French at Stirling. As my photo shows, leaving school was something I did a while ago now. Going to university to study French has been a dream of mine for a long time, and I’ve recently been lucky enough to see it come true. 

I’ve been fascinated by France for years. Its people, culture, countryside, and history are so close to ours, and yet so different. Although I’ve enjoyed lots of trips, many holidays and even a honeymoon there, it still felt as though I was only scratching the surface of France and the French. The next step for me was to take away language as a barrier to understanding and engaging more, and a university degree seemed like the best way of doing that.

When I started looking around at where to go, being able to commute from home in Falkirk was vital, so that narrowed it to the five universities across central Scotland that offer degrees in French. Visiting each of the campuses, speaking with the tutors and looking into the details of the various courses made it an easy decision to come to Stirling. 

The focus of the course at Stirling is on the today’s French-speaking world, and the university delivers that as a modern, outward-looking institution. The university has also invested a lot of money recently in campus facilities, and it shows. Campus Central is a great facility, with places to sit, eat and study, and with easy access from there to the library, lecture theatres and seminar rooms. Nowhere on campus is more than a 10-minute walk away.

The campus itself is gorgeous, and there is no other learning environment like it in Scotland. This photo was one I sent to my work colleagues during the first week of the semester and having views like this when you’re taking a quick break from your studies is wonderful and really adds to the experience.

So, six weeks in, what is it actually like? Fantastic! 

The range of module options available means that there is something for everyone. In addition to French, I’m studying modules in Politics and Religion in first year, and all three courses are excellent, with great material and really engaged tutors. In French, the formal split between language and culture studies works very well, adding a great additional dimension to the course. We’ve just completed an analysis of a French movie, which was a lot easier than it sounds, and next week we’re starting on a short French novel. The approach to language teaching works really well, with seminars building on top of independent learning.

I was concerned that my big gap between school and university would be a problem, but the university’s Student Learning Services has really helped take those concerns away. They deliver a huge range of support to students, from online courses in study skills and essay writing, to 1-2-1 sessions offering direct support on specific topics.

My advice to anyone leaving school and thinking about a degree in French? Come and have a look at Stirling. It’s a great place to learn.

And, for anyone like me, for whom leaving school was a long time ago and is thinking about going to university? If my last six weeks in Stirling are anything to go by, you should go for it! You will not be disappointed.”

Many, many thanks to Tom for sending through this great post and we’re really pleased your first semester has got off to such a positive start! We’ll look forward to catching up with you over the course of the semesters ahead.

New French at Stirling research projects

Following on from the updates from our fantastic finalists, a few more updates but from colleagues this time, starting with Fraser McQueen who has been working with us as a Lecturer in French this past year:

“I’ve been fortunate enough to see a couple of things I’ve been working on for a while come to fruition over the past couple of weeks. Firstly, I’ve now signed a book contract with Liverpool University Press for my first monograph, which will be entitled Towards a Community of Friendship? Contemporary French Islamophobia in Literature and Film. The book will be based on my PhD thesis, which I also wrote at Stirling. I’d been working on the proposal since January (shortly after graduating in December), so it’s nice to have signed the contract, even if it’s only now that the real work of actually converting the thesis into a book starts!

Equally excitingly, after applying in April, I’ve been granted a ten-month postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for the Advanced Study of the Humanities, which will start in August. My project will be entitled ‘Colonial Continuities in the Literature of the French Far Right’. It will read novels written by writers associated with the French far right during the colonial period alongside others by writers associated with the contemporary far right. Its main aim will be to explore what this comparative perspective can tell us about how colonial discourses continue to structure a modern-day far-right imaginary that has increasingly penetrated the mainstream in France and beyond. Following the unprecedented gains made by the Rassemblement national in France’s recent legislative elections, the project could hardly be more timely. Two areas of particular interest will be the relationship between Islamophobia and antisemitism and discourses around gender.

I’m excited to get started on both projects and very grateful to the colleagues at Stirling who helped me with both applications. After submitting the final version of my thesis in September, I spent last year as a lecturer in French at Stirling, and will be sad to leave behind both those colleagues and the students I’ve got to know over the past year. I’m sure that I’ll stay in touch, though, and it’s great to know that I can get back to working on new research!”

Many thanks to Fraser for sending through this blog post and, firstly, thank you for having been a such an excellent colleague and, secondly, congratulations both on the book contract and the post-doc. We look forward to hearing more about both in in due course and do keep in touch!

Languages Week Scotland: Reading in other languages

This week is Languages Week Scotland which gives an opportunity to celebrate the signed and spoken languages used and learned across Scotland. We have decided to mark it on the blog by posting an article every day about a wide range of the language learning experiences of our students, friends and colleagues. To start us off, meet Iiris who is in the second year of her degree in International Politics and French at Stirling:

“Studying languages has pretty much always guided my study path and is how I ended up here in Stirling from my hometown of Turku, Finland. It all started with beginning to study English when I was ten. I absolutely hated it and made a point out of not participating or studying for it. It dawned on me that I was learning English even without trying, and the classes would go a lot faster if I just stuck my hand up. After that, I quickly began enjoying English, and when I picked up Swedish and Spanish a few years later, languages became my favourite subject. Instead of high school, I applied to the International Baccalaureate to be able to study in English and wanted to continue to do so at University. I chose Stirling because of being able to study politics and French as equals, which isn’t a given elsewhere. It has been really great, and I’m on track to becoming a polyglot soon, which is really important to me as an aspiring diplomat!

Every time I study a new language, I always just throw myself off the deep end and start reading books I can hardly understand. At first, it’s frustrating and takes a while to get used to, especially if you don’t know the plot or the characters from before. But after a while it becomes tolerable, and usually, after a hundred pages you recognize most of the words. At the end of the book, you know plenty of new words, new phrases and you improved your reading. So it’s definitely worth it, but how to get motivated enough to read a book you don’t understand? 

The first trick is always choosing a book you like! When I was first learning English, I frequented the Fiction in English shelf at the library and chose whatever sounded interesting. I really liked adventure, so I went for books like Young Sherlock or Artemis Fowl. Afterward, I went back to English class and confused my teacher by using words like bloody hell and ambivalent – but I definitely also learned more appropriate and useful words, and quickly aced English class.

Another trick is to have a translator app or a dictionary nearby. When help is near, you don’t get frustrated as quickly. You can download Google Translator on your phone, and then use the camera to scan and translate words and phrases you don’t understand. For this Spring’s Contemporary French and Cultures Course, we were assigned Simone de Beauvoir’s Les Belles Images and Faïza Guène’s Kiffe Kiffe Demain, and I wanted to get a head start and read them over Christmas. These two were the hardest novels I had ever read in French. Kiffe Kiffe Demain uses plenty of slang, and Les Belles Images is challenging to understand even for a fluent speaker. But using the Google scanner got me through tough sentences, and I was able to finish both novels in two weeks. 

I try to boost my learning by making a vocabulary of the words used in a novel. Authors often use similar phrases and writing patterns throughout their texts, which is also why after a hundred pages you already understand the author so much better. When reading Kiffe Kiffe Demain, I initially started by scanning almost entire pages to make sense of what I was reading. After a while, I didn’t need to check at all.

Another trick is to read a book you already love, but in the language that you’re trying to learn. The other national language of Finland is Swedish and I’m currently stuck in a limbo between advanced and fluent. I don’t get much practice in Scotland since I don’t have Swedish friends, but I try to fix that when I vacation in Finland by reading familiar books in Swedish. The Moomin are everywhere in Finland, and I used to read the books watch the series in Finnish a lot. Now, I read them in Swedish, and it’s great because I can deduce the meaning by context and I already know what is going to happen. Most importantly, I know the book is good, so I never get bored.

I take the same technique and use it when watching movies! I choose a movie in the language I want to learn and then choose the same language subtitles. If I want to understand the movie, I’m going to have to read – and quick. This helps your reading but also listening because you can try to listen to the movie and glance at the subtitles for support if you need it. Netflix is full of good French content like Lupin and Les Intouchables you can watch.

First and foremost, my motivation is just to improve my language skills, and reading foreign books does just that. One of my favourite books is Les Misérables, but I am not at a point where I can read it in French yet. But if I keep reading books in French, I will be soon!  Reading is such a good way to learn new vocabulary and phrases without having to repeat a single word to yourself over and over again. You also learn a broader vocabulary beyond what you learn in class, and you too can confuse your teacher by using étourdissante instead of jolie.”

Some fantastic language learning advice from Iiris and a great blog post – thank you very much! As the week goes on, we’ll be posting about everything from teaching exchanges to language assistantships via language ambassadors and much else besides. And since Iiris has mentioned the novel here, we might even post something about the reading group on Les Belles Images Aedín ní Loingsigh is running for our Year 2 students. Bonne lecture et bonne semaine!

Semester Abroad – Killing time? Me too!

This past year has been particularly challenging for our Year 3 students. In most cases, they would ordinarily have spent their Autumn semester preparing for Study Abroad and then their Spring semester away at one of our partner institutions. This year was very different and, while our Study Abroad Advisors (Jean-Michel DesJacques for French and Jose Ferreira-Cayuela for Spanish) did a fantastic job matching students up with our usual partners, the changing conditions over the course of the Spring meant that the shape and form of their online contact with those partners varied quite a bit. The one thing that united all of the students on their Semester Abroad, though, was that they were all also working on independent research projects for us at Stirling throughout the semester. That’s a standard part of our Semester Abroad and the topics this year were as varied as usual, from Simone de Beauvoir to representations of activist movements onscreen and much else in between.

Anyway, we thought it would be good to get some perspectives on this unconventional Semester Abroad from the students who’ve actually been involved and we’re delighted to be able to post the first of these articles by Pauline, who has just completed Year 3 on her International Politics and Languages degree:

‘Studying on the beach on the Côte d’Azur, hanging out with friends and practising my French at the same time, learning more about the French culture and lifestyle first-hand. That‘s how I thought my semester would go. Well, it did not. Due to Covid and ever-changing restrictions in France concerning classes and in-person teaching, I was not able to go to SciencesPo Menton for my semester abroad. However, Menton was not lost. Online classes were still on and allowed me to experience a part of French teaching from afar. This was no real replacement for the adventure on the French Riviera I had hoped for, but it was better than nothing. So, I made the most of it and tried to do my best in classes alongside my French classmates. To be honest, I did not do very well. The topics were complex, assignments were usually based on personal opinions and the way SciencesPo is organised was unbearably chaotic and spontaneous for my strictly-structured ‘German brain.’ My favourite class was my C1 French class, since it was one of the few opportunities I got to practise my French. Although it was on a Wednesday at 7am, I did not miss it once, especially since it was tailored specifically to international students.

One major difference that distinguished Semester 6 from my previous Uni years was the workload. Rather than spending my time organising friends and hobbies around my daily studying, the latter was not very present. There was not much preparation needed for the classes I attended and because I did not have to bring back grades from my classes, the motivation to throw myself into assignments was lacking. So, I threw myself into the assignment that did count, namely the individual research project I had to complete for Stirling.

The work I put into my project could be seen as excessive. I spent most of my time this semester on research for a 2250-word paper. That probably sounds like a bad thing, but it was my way to kill time. It was easy to get into it, too, because I enjoyed learning more about my topic and perfecting phrasing, vocabulary and critical thinking. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to write about police brutality in France. I study International Politics together with French, so the political touch was a must for me. My supervisor, Aedín ní Loingsigh, recommended different articles and sources I could focus on. Among these was also a film by Ladj Ly called Les Misérables. Sounds familiar? I thought so too. I made the connection to the Victor Hugo novel, searched for police brutality and was guided smoothly to my research question: “La représentation de la police dans Les Misérables de Victor Hugo et dans Les Misérables de Ladj Ly.”

One struggle I encountered right to the end was the length of my project. The effort I put it would have been better placed in a dissertation than a 2250-word project, which resulted in 5000 to 6000 words at one point in the process. I was too enthusiastic. I had read so much, I had too much to say. Cutting down my arguments was probably the hardest part. It hurts when you have remove sentences in French that you’re really proud of because they sound so good and you used such fancy vocabulary. But I did it and I was proud of the work I submitted in the end.

Other than focusing all my academic energy on my project, I spent most of my semester 6 recharging and reenergising, climbing Scottish mountains and going for walks. And as good as that felt, I am more than ready for a semester where the thought of how to kill my time will never cross my mind.

Although my Semester 6 experience was not quite the one I had planned, it is still one I appreciate. The little insight I got into the French education system only inspired me to put studying in a francophone country on my bucket list for the future.’

Many, many thanks to Pauline for starting this series of reflections on Semester Abroad and for this honest account of the semester. We hope you have a great Summer and we look forward to being able to welcome you back to Stirling in the new academic year!

Congratulations!

Many, many congratulations to our PhD student Fraser McQueen who passed his viva yesterday. Fraser’s thesis (“Race, Religion, and Communities of Friendship: Contemporary French Islamophobia in Literature and Film”) was supervised by Fiona Barclay, Nadia Kiwan (at Aberdeen University) and Cristina Johnston (as well as by David Murphy, in the early stages of the research). We look forward to celebrating with you soon, Fraser!

And if you want to read more of Fraser’s work, you can check out his articles in The Conversation here or his most recent article in Modern and Contemporary France on Christophe Guilluy and Michel Houellebecq here.

Conferences, Launch Events and Scholarships

It’s hard to believe that almost three weeks have already gone past since the last French at Stirling blog post. It’s been another busy period for staff and students alike but, as the dust starts to settle a little, this seems like a good time to catch up with some French at Stirling news.

Often, for some of us, the Summer months would mean attending conferences and giving papers. Although that isn’t happening in the real world at the moment, lots of these events have gone online and Julie Hugonny, in particular, will be flying the French at Stirling flag over the coming months. In fact, Julie just gave a paper at the University of Maynooth’s ‘Femmes dérangées, femmes dérangeantes’ conference earlier this month. Her paper (‘Evelyn Habal: Everyday Magic’) examines the character of Evelyn Habal, an actress and prostitute in Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s L’Eve Future, who is reviled for deceiving men with her artificial beauty and her insincere words. But, as Julie explored in her paper, what this scathing description implicitly recognizes, is her ability to create the perfect woman, every day, with makeup and tulle. Julie will also be giving a paper entitled ‘The Last Man on Earth – A New Myth for a new Trauma’ at the Fates and Graces Mythologium conference in Washington DC and another entitled ‘Mary Shelley’s Last Man. The Delusions of Prophecy’ at the Collapse and Extinction: Art, Literature and Discourse Conference at Stockholm University.

And, back in March (so apologies for not having included it closer to the time) Nina Parish gave a paper on ‘’The UNREST project: War Museums, Memory and Interpretation’, about the Horizon 2020-funded project she worked on before coming to Stirling (www.unrest.eu) at the Modern Languages Research Forum at the University of Aberdeen in March.

At the end of last month, Aedín ní Loingsigh was involved in the launch of the Stirling Centre for Interpreting, Translation and Intercultural Studies (SCITIS),directed by Raquel de Pedro Ricoy. The research centre aims to foster national and international cooperation in the fields of Translation Studies, Interpreting Studies and Intercultural Studies, and to address issues that are relevant to increasingly globalised, diverse societies in ways that have an impact on policy and practice. To celebrate the launch, we were delighted to welcome Charles Forsdick (University of Liverpool) to give a short talk followed by a Q&A with audience members. Until recently, Professor Forsdick was AHRC Theme Lead for ‘Translating Cultures’ and oversaw a portfolio of around 120 grants in the fields of translation, interpreting and multilingualism. The exciting launch of SCITIS coincides with a period of unprecedented change in the world. As Professor Forsdick traced how ‘Translating Cultures’ has helped to develop and enrich understandings of global, multilingual transmission and translation in different interconnected contexts, the launch event also gave us an opportunity to explore with him the role and significance of translation and interpreting during the current international health crisis and the move towards a ‘new normal.’ Congratulations and good luck to all our Translation and Interpreting colleagues for the new Centre. You can keep up to date with SCITIS news on Twitter here!

And finally, following on from our RATE nominations last month, more congratulations to Stirling students and staff. Well done to Year 3 English and Film and Media student Oliver whose research project was awarded a Carnegie Vacation Scholarship. Oliver will be working on ‘ 21^st-century Exoticism in Western Cinema’ and Elizabeth Ezra will be supervising the project over the Summer. And congratulations also go to Beth, who is just completing Year 2 of her BA Hons French and Spanish, and who has been awarded a Stevenson Exchange Scholarship to undertake research alongside her British Council Assistantship next year. Beth’s project, which she shaped working with Jean-Michel DesJacques and Cristina Johnston, will look at France’s relationships with its former colonies. She is keen to examine how present-day memory plays into these, the controversies and power imbalances that exist, as well as the ways in which the relationships are represented through museum collections. Thanks to the scholarship Beth plans to travel to Paris, Genoa and Molenbeek in Belgium to gain a holistic understanding of the documentation of immigration from post colonised countries. As she explains: ‘I knew I wanted to find out more about this so I am very grateful to be given this opportunity to build on my current understanding and to have the freedom to travel more than I’d be able to without this grant. I’m excited to study at a university in France too and meet locals my age.’

And last but definitely not least, Elizabeth Ezra’s book Shoe Reels: The History and Philosophy of Footwear in Film, co-edited with Catherine Wheatley, has been nominated for the Kraszna-Krausz Book Award for an ‘outstanding or original contribution to the literature of photography or the moving image’.

More exciting French at Stirling news to follow over the weeks ahead!

Seeing what’s beyond the horizon…

Only another couple of weeks before teaching comes to an end for this semester at Stirling but there are plenty of blog posts to keep us going, starting this week with another profile of one of our Year 1 students, Marta, who started her BA Hons in English Studies and French in September:

‘I was born in the Canary Islands, Spain. ‘Canarian’ or ‘Spanish’, as equal terms or with different values, suit me well. I identify as both. But I’ll have to recognise that being Canarian comes with some specific aspects that being Spanish does not cover. And one of them is clear: Canarian means I grew up in an island, which have always made me conscious of the limits that surrounded my reality, as well as curious and hungry for discovery beyond those limits. However, my Spanish heritage is very prominent is most of the things that I do, and one of them may be my writing style. So hopefully this post is enjoyable despite that.

It is well known that the Canary Islands serve as a touristic destination, and tourism is their main economic driver. Because of that, language learning is key skill for life for Canarian children. We all start with English, but I discovered in my early study that I loved languages passionately, and I decided I wanted to learn more. My journey with French started when I was around 8 years old. My school offered extra lessons for French in order to prepare for the compulsory subject that it would be in two years, and my parents, being very interested in my desire to learn languages, decided that it would be a master move for me to already have a basic knowledge in French beforehand. However, the lessons weren’t memorable, and I didn’t really learn good French until I started attending my city’s School of Languages. I learned very fast how to speak French and became quite fluent thanks to the marvellous teachers that I had there.

When I was 15, I decided that I wanted to go to university able ,at least, to speak two languages fluently, as well as my mother language (Spanish). By investigating a little bit, I found a programme for the Baccalaureate called “Bachibac” (Spanish bachillerato + French baccalauréat), a bilingual programme between Spain and France that permitted its students to obtain two certificates at the end of their school journey: Spanish and French Baccalaureate. And I finished it, so I have both diplomas. During this last stage of my education I got into much more than French as a language, but French as a cultural meaning. I had to learn about French literature and history, as well as philosophy both in French and Spanish. I grew more interested in literature than I already was (a lot) and it gave me a more global perspective about cultures (since ‘la Francophonie’ carries much more cultures apart from metropolitan French, many others all over the world), as well as new inspiration for my writing. Plus, I was quite lucky to win a scholarship and I lived in France for three months with a family in Toulon (nothing to do with the topic at hand, but I bonded with them and I miss them quite a lot). I integrated with the culture for a while and I obtained first-hand experience of French life. And it meant a lot for a small island girl to see what’s beyond the horizon.

I already knew I wanted to study English for my degree since it was my first foreign language and I wanted to develop my knowledge in any way I could. French, however, became a last-minute option (in some ways at least, though I actually thought about it the minute I entered the Bachibac), so I integrated both in one. I had both personal and professional reasons to continue with French. I believe that the key to improvement of humankind lies in communication and understanding each other, and learning how to speak a language well, as well as the culture and history it carries, makes us better human beings as better communicators. Plus, I love French, and I wanted to make it part of me the best I could. And, well, French teachers, translators and other jobs similar to these are always going to be needed, because French is a very influential language in the world.

This is my first year in Uni studying English and French Studies and, to be honest, I guess it’s not what I expected (but don’t worry. It’s Covid’s fault!). It’s hard to learn a language without communicating (languages are communication mechanisms; it’s like learning how to run while sitting down), but I have to recognise that the effort that is being made makes this experience of online learning easier. But I still want to meet people (in person, please) and be able to speak French again.

Hopefully this was interesting. Bonne journée!’

Many, many thanks to Marta for this great post and I think many of us will recognise the image of learning to run while sitting down as it applies to some aspects of online language learning. We look forward to meeting you – and all this year’s First Years – in person as soon as possible and, in the meantime, we wish you all the best for the rest of this semester and beyond.