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Magdalene College Cambridge

Professor Hugues Azerad

Professor Hugues Azérad specialises in comparative literature, modernisms, romanticism, aesthetics and postcolonial theory.

He is the author of L'Univers constellé de Proust, Joyce et Faulkner: le concept d'épiphanie dans l'esthétique du modernisme (Lang, 2002); of articles on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature in, among others, French Studies, Dalhousie French Studies, Modern Language Review, Journal of Romance Studies, Irish Journal of French Studies, CLC WEB (Purdue University), New Comparison, Cérédi; of chapters in, among others, Joyce in Trieste (U. Press of Florida, 2007); Romantic Border Crossings (Ashgate, 2008); Making Sense: For an Effective Aesthetics (Lang, 2011); American Creoles: The Francophone Caribbean and the American South (Liverpool UP, 2012); Proust and the Visual (UP Wales, 2013); Thinking Poetry (Palgrave, 2013); Proust in Context (CUP, 2013); New Cambridge Companion to William Faulkner (CUP, 2015); Édouard Glissant, l’éclat et l’obscur, (Presses Universitaires des Antilles, 2020).

He is the co-editor (with Peter Collier) of Twentieth-Century French Poetry: A Critical Anthology (Cambridge University Press, 2010); (with Emma Wagstaff, Michael G. Kelly and Nina Parish) of a double issue of French Forum, "Poetic Practice and the Practice of Poetics in French since 1945” (2012), and of Chantiers du poème. Prémisses et pratiques de la poésie moderne et contemporaine (Lang, 2013); (with Michael G. Kelly) of a special issue of L’Esprit Créateur, "La Poésie à l’œuvre: Poetry, Philosophy, Politics” (2015); (with Loïc Céry, Sylvie Glissant, Dominique Aurélia and Laura Carvigan-Cassin) of Édouard Glissant et Le Discours antillais: La source et le delta (Editions de l’Institut du Tout-Monde, 2020)

He is co-editor (with Marion Schmid) for the book series European Connections: Studies in Comparative Literature, Intermediality and Aesthetics (Peter Lang, Oxford) and the editor of the modern and contemporary French poetry and fiction sections of The Literary Encyclopedia.

He is currently subject consultant for www.myheplus.com, aimed at providing supercurricular resources to school-aged students looking to go beyond the school curriculum and discover their passion for a subject.

In 2010, he co-organized an international conference "Poetic Practice and the Practice of Poetics in French post 1945", held in London and Cambridge.

In 2013, he co-organized (with Michael G. Kelly) a one-day conference, which is part of the AHRC Poetry network.

In 2020, he organised a study-day on Édouard Glissant and Le Discours antillais.

He was the 2017 winner of Best Undergraduate Supervisor Award (Arts and Humanities) (CUSU Student-Led Teaching Awards). In 2019, he was short-listed for the same award.

Teaching interests

Nineteenth-century to twenty-first-century French and Francophone literature, culture, and thought.

Modernisms, world literature, poetry, world cinema.

Visual culture.

Language (culture and grammar modules, documentaries and translation, Outreach workshops).

MPhil in European Literature and Culture (ELAC) (MMLL/ English Faculty).

PhD supervision in French and comparative literature.

Research Interests

Comparative literature (Nerval, Proust, Reverdy, Joyce, Faulkner, Bonnefoy, Glissant, Césaire, Benjamin, Adorno, Rancière, Ricœur, Wynter).

Modernisms, Caribbean modernisms, world literature, aesthetics, postcolonial theory, utopian studies, eco-criticism.

Visual culture and poetry.

He currently works on a book about Glissant, politics, aesthetics and literary theory.

Recent research projects: 

Édouard Glissant and Félix Guattari; Caribbean/Planetary Modernisms; Aesthetics/politics of the image in world cinema.

Selected Publications

"Quand le 'cri du monde devient parole'. Relire 'À partir du cri' accompagné de Sylvia Wynter, d’Edward Kamau Brathwaite et de Jacques Coursil’, in Édouard Glissant et le Discours antillais. La source et le delta, Editions du Tout-Monde, 2020, 431-451.

"Poétiques de l’utopie chez Édouard Glissant”, French Studies, Volume 74, Issue 3, July 2020, 420-437.

"Lire en archipels : Digenèse et poétiques de la créolisation”, TRANS, 25 (2020).

Lire en relation : Édouard Glissant et Aimé Césaire à la démesure baroque de Lautréamont”, Dalhousie French Studies, 113 (2019), 111-122.

À rebours des systèmes: esthétiques du chaos-monde et de la chaosmose chez Édouard Glissant et Félix Guattari”, Irish Journal of French Studies, 17 (2017), 95-124.

Poétique/politique de la césure dans la poésie d’Édouard Glissant”, L’Esprit créateur,  55-1 (2015), 152-66.