PROJETS ET PROGRAMMES EN COURS

(Sont ici listés les projets financés dont des membres de VALE sont les porteurs ou collaborateurs principaux. En-dessous, on répertorie les projets échus.)

1. ARENES – programme ANR-DFG consacré à l’histoire du sport (dir. Alexis Tadié) (2023-2026)

Ce programme est soutenu par l’ANR-DFG. Fruit de la collaboration entre quatre universités françaises (Sorbonne, Limoges, Rouen, France-Comté) et de deux universités allemandes (Fribourg, Université de la Sarre), il est dirigé conjointement par un responsable de chaque université (Alexis Tadié pour VALE). Il prolonge des travaux menés sur les cultures du sport par A. Tadié depuis plusieurs années (colloque « Sports et Sociabilité au cours du long XVIIIe siècle », par exemple, co-organisé à Sorbonne Université en octobre 2022 avec Caroline Bertonèche (Université Grenoble)). Il vise à étudier les espaces du sport et en particulier les stades, sous tous leurs aspects (historique, architectural, culturel, etc.).

Les stades de sport constituent en effet des points de cristallisation des rapports sociaux et des processus de mobilisation collective, dans lesquels différentes visions du monde se disputent publiquement l’espace et où se négocient valeurs et normes ou encore l’intégration et l’exclusion sociales. Séparées du monde extérieur par l’espace, l’atmosphère et la symbolique, les arènes du sport servent d’espaces d’incarnation de spectacles de masse à fort potentiel émotionnel, mais sont aussi des édifices qui définissent représentation et reconnaissance, et toujours instrumentalisables par les acteurs politiques. Enfin, les arènes du sport sont des lieux de performances héroïques qui évoluent en permanence au fil du temps et qui témoignent des tendances à la professionnalisation, à la commercialisation, à la médiatisation et à la mondialisation du sport de haut niveau et de la société. Ce projet de recherche a donc pour objectif d’étudier la pertinence, la puissance et la qualité scientifique des arènes du sport au cours du ‘long’ XX^e siècle, dans un contexte franco-allemand, européen et mondial.

Site du projet: https://www.uni-saarland.de/fr/ufr-p/arenes.html

2.Projet ANR American Contemporary Theater in France (ACTiF) (2024-2028)

Ce programme soutenu par l’ANR est animé par Emeline Jouve (Toulouse 2), avec des partenaires dans 5 universités, dont, au sein de VALE, Julie Vatain-Corfdir. 

Abstract: Why has the impact of American theater on French stages remained limited, despite the US’s booming performing arts industry, and leading soft power in other fields? ACTiF aims to investigate this unexplored paradox, thus filling a gap in performance studies and international cultural policy studies, and building bridges between ongoing research on French and US theaters.

ACTiF considers “theater” in the sense of dramatic texts as well as theatrical productions and performance art and is understood and approached as cultural productions that are born of “situated knowledges” (Haraway). The importation of US theater in France is the result of a selection process whose context and logics must be scrutinized to account for its relative scarcity. Therefore, the project’s first objective is to circumscribe the episteme (Foucault) of the cultural transfer mechanisms, specifying the various aesthetic, political and diplomatic stakes involved in the circulation of US plays in France from the 1960s to the 2020s. Its second objective is to contribute to the development of instruments useful to both academic and artistic communities, and the general public alike, to galvanize French research on transatlantic cultural exchanges and to heighten the visibility of US theater.

To reach these goals, the conceptual and practical method of action-research—bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplines and theater professionals—will be implemented.

Blog du projet: https://actif.hypotheses.org/

Work-packages

WP 1: Taking inventory of US theater in France since the 1960s

WP 2: Mapping out France–US theater relations

WP 3: Investigating adaptations

WP Trans.: Cross-referencing cultural differences

Scientific consortium

Scientific coordinator: Emeline Jouve (Toulouse 2, CAS)

Scientific partners : Julie Vatain-Corfdir (Sorbonne Université, VALE), John Bak (Université de Lorraine, IDEA), Nicolas Peyre (Toulouse 1, IDETCOM), Christophe Triau & Emmanuel Wallon (Nanterre, HAR), Xavier Lemoine (Gustave Eiffel, LISAA)

ACTiF also relies on extensive partnerships with cultural institutions both in France and the US.

3. PROJET ANR: « Literature and the Arts as Spaces of Negotiation for Ireland’s Future » (PI: Fiona McCann)

Ce projet est coordonné par Fiona McCann, professeure de littérature britannique et irlandaise des XXe et XXIe siècles (VALE), et ses principaux partenaires sont Hélène Lecossois, professeure de littérature irlandaise à l’Université de Lille (CECILLE), et Alexandra Poulain, professeure de littérature et d’arts contemporains britanniques, irlandais et postcoloniaux à l’Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle (PRISMES). Parmi les autres partenaires figurent Lara Cuny, PRAG à l’Université d’Aix-Marseille et spécialiste du financement du Arts Council of Ireland, Nora Hickey-M’Sichili, directrice du Centre culturel irlandais (CCI) à Paris, deux chercheurs postdoctoraux et un doctorant (qui sera recruté en septembre 2026), ainsi que deux doctorantes, Martina Balassone et Valentine Lerouge (VALE), qui travaillent respectivement sur le roman contemporain de la diaspora libanaise et sur la notion de la frontière dans la littérature irlandaise et indienne.

The aim of this project is to investigate the place of the arts and literature in the current negotiation of Ireland’s political and social future, particularly in relation to the island-wide discussion about a border poll in the near future. Just over 100 years after a partial independence obtained after a war of independence (1919-1921) and which then triggered a civil war (1922-1923), exactly 100 years after the Boundary Commission which entrenched the limits of the border, and just over 25 years after the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement which, ostensibly, put an end to the Northern Ireland Troubles (1968-1998), the moment is ripe for the ongoing conversation about Ireland’s future, both in political and social terms.

The main objective of this research is to consider the specific role occupied by literature and the arts (i.e. visual and performance arts, music) in this conversation, both as a way of reflecting the different positions and, potentially, of shaping attitudes to both the constitutional question and the various issues subtending it. The specific art forms under scrutiny will be novels, poetry, music, theatre and dance performances, paintings, installations, and exhibitions. The central hypothesis is that contemporary literature, music, visual and performance arts from both sides of the border are currently actively contributing to the project of re-imagining Ireland, sketching out new political, social and environmental futures from an all-island perspective, and inviting reflection and debate on the contours and risks at stake in a potentially seismic political reconfiguration of the island. The specific role of literature and the arts in reflecting and diffracting views on the future of the Irish border has not yet been the subject of research and this project is the first to engage with it. Beyond the actual art works themselves, this project also aims to provide a space for artists and writers, as public intellectuals, to convey their opinions on and visions for Ireland’s future in the context of a possible border poll in the coming years.

This project starts out with the premise that contemporary Irish literature and the arts have always been spaces in which changes in Irish society are writ large long before the general public and political actors become aware of them, and where various political and social configurations are contested, re-imagined, narrated, visualized, and performed. The border in Ireland is not just a line demarcating the six counties of the North and the twenty-six counties of the South; it is not just, since Brexit, the only land border between the European Union and the United Kingdom; it cannot be reduced to political and geographical jurisdictions, waxing and waning cellphone cover, as marking the shift from signposts in kilometers to signposts in miles and vice versa. This is because, even if the materiality of the border has diminished in the post-Agreement era as British Army checkpoints were dismantled, customs removed, and cell phone cover harmonized, and even if there are an estimated 72 million vehicle border crossings and 110 million people border crossings each year (NISRA 2021), the border still occupies an important place in Irish imaginaries. The “present indefinite” of “the unification project” (Bell & O’Dowd 2024) has become more pronounced since Brexit in 2016 and this project aims to fill several gaps in Irish research by stretching well beyond the modalities chosen in literature to represent the border to include an analysis of island-wide artistic collaborations in music, theatre and the performance arts, cross-border arts funding (Aosdána, the Arts Council of Ireland, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland), the development of all-Ireland environmental art-activism, and the intersection of Law and the arts on this question. Authors and artists from both north and south of the border will be studied and interviewed and their ambivalence, opposition to, or support for a reconfiguration of the whole country as it transpires in their creative work will be discussed and analyzed, as will the reception of their work. As Professor Colin Harvey has recently stated, “a time is coming when imaginative and deliverable options must surface” (Harvey 2025) and therefore the time is ripe for an investigation of these imaginaries as they are produced in the arena of the arts.

This project will run over a term of 48 months. It will include discourse and literary analysis, socio-cultural qualitative research methods, as well as public engagement events and media involvement.

The project aims at responding to a considerable gap in contemporary research on the relationship between Irish literature, the arts and politics and the research methodologies are firmly transdisciplinary, anchored as they are in literary studies, performance studies, economics, sociology, political science, queer studies, environmental studies and reception theory.

 

4. Projet Emergence IDEX « IRIS : Capturing Iridescence (16th-19h c.): Bioinspiration & the Humanities » (2025-2027) 

Objectives: Through the study of the representation of iridescence in the arts and literature from the 16th to the 19th century, the IRIS project aims to bring the humanities into the field of biomimetics. The project brings together an interdisciplinary team of 9 researchers (anthropology, art history, history of science, literature, drama, translation studies, history, conservation) from 6 different countries.

Rationale: « Iridescence » a term evoking Iris, the goddess of the rainbow, was first coined in most European languages in the early 19th century. Its first recorded instances in print point to the English language, via the work of mineralogists and geologists. That the word should have first appeared in the natural sciences comes as no surprise, given that nature has retained a “monopoly on this metallic-like, colored effect” (Parker 2016, 58) until the 21st century, when nanoscience allowed the advent of iridescence-inducing technologies such as pearlescent flakes (Schenk et al. 2013). Our project will look into the work of artists & authors as they experimented with iridescence before it was even understood or named.

While focusing on European art forms and techniques, our project contends that the history of western representations of iridescence between the 16th and 19th century cannot be disconnected from a global history of international negotiations. Although trade, travel and exchange were nothing new in the 16th century, « the trade in goods across distances moved a significant step towards becoming truly globe-encompassing [f]rom the late sixteenth century onwards » (Gerritsen & Riello 2021, 4). Following those same routes, plants, animals, men and women, pictures and books circulated in hitherto unheard-of numbers. In addition to increasing the number of iridescent specimens which were brought to the attention of the European audience, the discovery of new forms of natural iridescence, which oftentimes could not be shown first hand, led to the development of a booming visual and textual culture of reportage through which artists and authors tried to render these new natural wonders.

Since iridescence represented a major mimetic challenge, namely the reproduction of something that could not be explained any more than it could be named, artists and authors had to innovate to reproduce its appearance and effects. This methodological premise ties in with the field of « bioinspiration »: this emerging domain, defined by the Biomimetics Committee of the International Organization for Standardization in 2015 as “a creative approach based on the observation of biological systems”, has up to now been mostly concerned with industrial or architectural developments (Raskin & Molina 2018; Camborde 2018; Pawlyn 2019; Boeuf 2022; Chayaamoor-Heil 2023; Fernandes 2024). Similarly, courses or programmes introducing biomimesis are overwhelmingly offered outside humanities departments (see the available programmes & resources on the CEEBIOS website, https://ceebios.com/formations-enseignement/). In his 2024’s Introduction to Biomimetics and Bioinspiration, Bharat Bhushan includes a chapter on “Biomimetics in Arts and Architecture ». Although he acknowledges that « artists and architects strive to derive [nature-inspired] properties and incorporate this organization into their work” (21), the chapter is mostly concerned with the creation of new materials and structures. It overlooks textual creation altogether and, to a lesser extent, visual arts. While literature is not given any single mention, visual arts are presented as demonstrating « a fascination with representing landscape and living nature, but without adaptation or use of functions derived from the natural world » (18).

Breaking away from such dominant perspective, we want to show how poetic, dramatic, literary and pictorial designs were never intended as « mere copies of living nature » but work instead to « extract a principle (or principles) from nature, seek to understand that principle, and incorporate the principle into a new medium, design, or other applications » (23), thereby staging new forms of ecological interactions between humans and their environment. The IRIS project will show how emerging discussions of “biomorphism” and “eco-aesthetics” (Romand et. al 2023) lead us to reassess the place of humanities within the ongoing institutionalisation of biomimetics as a field.

Main steps:

Members of the project will convene for biannual seminars (3 of them online, 1 in-person) devoted to an iridescent object or species (re)discovered by Europeans between the 16th and 19th century. Seminars will include guest speakers from the fields of STEM, industry and/or design. They will lead to the identification of key objects in the history of the capture of iridescence which will feature in a virtual museum of iridescence (see description below). Our seminars will thus be conceived of as workshops designed to discuss and plan the overall design of the gallery (scenography, number and scope of virtual rooms, audience research & interpretive writing policy). They will enable us to identify questions and avenues (or dead ends, for that matter) that will guide the drafting of a CFP for an international and interdisciplinary conference. This conference will be designed as a series of workshops bringing together specialists from different disciplines around the same objects. The workshops will be divided by category (e.g. shells, birds, insects, stones, meteorological phenomena, etc.) and will result in the production of multi-authored articles for publication. To this day, no biomimesis-related publication or event has gathered experts from all disciplines featured in our project: while biologists & designers are key actors in biomimesis we want to show that some « biologically inspired solutions to human challenges » may come from areas of the humanities which have not yet taken part in the « effective communication between many disciplines » (Lecointre & al. 2023).

Our gallery, designed as a cabinet of curiosities, will feature a selection of representations of iridescence dating from our reference period. For each, visitors will be able to access an explanatory note produced by several specialists, as well as other historical, artistic and literary references which will illuminate their meaning. These cards (distinct from the aforementioned academic articles) will be conceived of as museum labels meant for visitors to grasp the importance of interdisciplinarity in capturing the meaning of these objects and the innovations they attest to. Additionally, we would like to provide family-friendly interpretation so that even younger audiences, such as schoolchildren, could engage with our content in age-appropriate ways.

Working Hypotheses: below is a provisional list of questions/topics to address

* Techniques of iridescence

– Appropriation: techniques of « appropriation » included attempts at rendering iridescence by collecting the material straight from the animal/mineral/vegetal (Mandrij & Simonini 2023). The term « capture », which features in the title of our project, condenses the ambivalence of such techniques, by underlining their potentially predatory and unethical aspect.

– Innovation: the rendition of iridescence which so occupied authors and artists alike also led to technical (visual) and generic innovations (visual & textual), as well as innovative taxonomy or translations. How have naming & describing iridescence before it was named impacted its interpretation?    

* Functions of iridescence: much in the way iridescence serves functional purposes in the natural world (such as camouflaging or signalling), we will investigate the functions of iridescence over the periods and areas covered by our project.

– Production of knowledge: how did artists and authors contribute to the apprehension of iridescence? This includes the official employment of artists by scientists (Kusukawa 2019) as well as the circulation ofconcepts and tropes between literature (including technical) and science, or across genres and linguistic areas.

– Historicising physical phenomena: this will include a study of the changing function of iridescence depending on a « period eye » (Eaton 2016, McMahon 2017). We will here look more closely into the (geo)politics of iridescence as well as into its philosophical and epistemological use in order to historicise the very idea of biomimesis.      

* Effects of iridescence: the history of captures of iridescence will allow us to complicate the very notion of « mimesis » which « biomimesis » rests upon, which we will show is far more confrontational and dialectical than merely representational.

– How did iridescence affect the mediums through which artists and writers tried to capture it? As a mimetic challenge in itself, iridescence questions the very limits of representation and pushes artists and authors to experiment and fail, sometimes. This part will include discussions of the conservation and obsolescence of iridescence in visual arts (the degradation of materials making it sometimes impossible to sustain iridescence). It will also deal with iridescence’s loss of poetic and dramatic efficacy over time: how can we reactivate and not miss the puissance and polysemy of iridescence from our own historical position which now sees it as mostly « innocuous » or hackneyed? (McMahon 2017, 3). How and why did poets and playwrights strive to recreate the effect of iridescence upon their readers/viewers, and what does it teach us about the history of the « material perception » (Nordén et al., 2023; Fleming, 2017) of structural colours?

– How did iridescence affect human engagement with the natural world? We will here explore issues related to early forms of ecological sensitivity and sense of “biomimethics” (Delannoy 2021) and how they transpire through the capture of iridescent subjects by artists and writers. 

Not only does the IRIS project aim to be part of the emerging field of bionspiration, it will also enable the whole spectrum of the humanities to find their place within it, at a time in their history when it seems more crucial than ever to demonstrate their social relevance.

The IRIS project aims to only explore works predating the conceptualisation of both « biomimesis » and « iridescence ». The works we will look into are thus inherently experimental, and the same applies to our methodology. Our seminars and conference are directed towards our main output, the opening of an online gallery of iridescence. Our gallery is conceived of as an experiment in interdisciplinarity, hence as a pedagogical tool in itself. It will feature practical examples of interdisciplinary readings of iridescent objects with the aim of showcasing the way humanities (including those fields whose creative output does not involve any material/object-oriented production) may contribute to a biomimetic reading of creative practices and become a reservoir of ideas for today and tomorrow. Hence the production of multi-level labels & texts aimed at targeting the widest possible range of audiences. Our gallery will thus offer the first ever online resource to stage the dialogue between humanities & STEM subjects around a natural phenomenon with biomimetic application.

Team members:

– Professor Vanessa Alayrac-Fielding (History & material culture, 18th c. Europe/China), Université de Lille.

– Olivia Dill (art history & physics: Dutch and English prints & watercolours of American insects, long 17th century), doctoral candidate at Northwestern University /Moore Curatorial Fellow, Drawings and Prints, The Morgan Library & Museum, NY, USA

– Dr. Arnaud Dubois (anthropology, industrial France & Europe), chargé de recherche CNRS/Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris. 

– Dr. Anne-Valérie Dulac (drama, poetry and visual culture in early modern England and France), MCF Sorbonne Université. Project leader

– Dr. Bérénice Gaillemin (ethnology & translation/linguistic studies, 16th/17th c. Europe/Hispanic world), post-doc Warsaw University / ERC Toetl. 

– Prof. Charlotte Ribeyrol (art history & 19th c. UK poetry) Sorbonne Université, PI ERC Chromotope (2020-2025). 

– Dr. Sophie Rhodes (art history, early modern England), tutor at Edinburgh University.

– Cecilia Rönnerstam MA RCA (conservation & research, early modern miniatures and technical literature), Nationalmuseum Stockholm, conservatrice / chargée de recherche. 

– Dr. Giulia Simonini (history of science, European history of colour 16th-19th c.), post-doc., Technische Universität Berlin.

 

VALE est partie prenante du GIS SOCIBILITE depuis 2019: le GIS Sociabilités, domicilié depuis janvier 2024 à l’Université Rennes 2, a été créé par une Convention constitutive en juin 2017. Composé à l’origine de 8 institutions partenaires, il en comprend à ce jour 17 (des universités de 5 pays différents, un groupe de recherche canadien de l’UQAM, le Musée Cognacq-Jay, la Bibliothèque nationale de France et les Archives nationales britanniques) et est ouvert à de nouvelles collaborations. Ce partenariat scientifique international et interdisciplinaire est destiné à fédérer des compétences et des moyens pour réaliser un programme de recherche dédié aux sociabilités du long dix-huitième siècle en Europe et dans le monde colonial, intitulé : « Histoire, modèles et transferts dans les sociétés européennes et coloniales de 1650 à 1850 », et permettant d’explorer une variété de thèmes et questions au cœur des études sur les sociabilités.
Depuis 2022 et jusqu’en 2026, le programme de recherche du GIS Sociabilités s’articule autour de 4 grands axes thématiques :

– Axe 1 : Sociabilité et politisation
– Axe 2 : Nourriture, boisson et sociabilité
– Axe 3 : La sociabilité des objets
– Axe 4 : Sociabilité et voyage

Entre 2019 et 2022, son projet phare, DIGIT.EN.S, financé par l’Union européenne (H2020-MSCA RISE), a permis la création d’une ressource numérique innovante et unique en son genre : ‘The Digital Encyclopedia of British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century’.

Il soutient chaque année la recherche des étudiant.e.s grâce à son Prix de Master, ainsi que par des bourses de recherche de Master et de Doctorat pour aider à la mobilité et l’accès aux archives.

Pour plus de détails, voir ici : https://gis-sociabilites.org

 

________________

PROJETS  TERMINÉS

1. ERC Consolidator Grant 2019: CHROMOTOPE. Principal Investigator: Charlotte RIBEYROL (2019-2025)

Lauréate d’une bourse Marie Sklodowska-Curie auprès de l’Université d’Oxford (2016-2018) et membre junior de l’IUF, Charlotte Ribeyrol est maître de conférences en littérature britannique du XIXe siècle à la faculté des Lettres de Sorbonne Université, et chercheure au sein du laboratoire VALE.

Website : www.chromotope.eu

Rationale

CHROMOTOPE will offer the very first analysis of the changes that took place in attitudes to colour in the 19th century, and notably how the ‘chromatic turn’ of the 1850s mapped out new ways of thinking about colour in literature, art, science and technology throughout Europe. Britain’s industrial supremacy during this period is often perceived through the darkening filter of coal pollution, and yet the industrial revolution transformed colour thanks to a number of innovations like the invention in 1856 of the first aniline dye. Colour thus became a major signifier of the modern, generating new discourses on its production and perception. This Victorian ‘colour revolution’, which has never been approached from a cross-disciplinary perspective, came to prominence during the 1862 International Exhibition – a forgotten, and yet key, chromatic event which forced poets and artists like Ruskin, Morris and Burges to think anew about the materiality of colour. Rebelling against the bleakness of the industrial present, they invited their contemporaries to learn from the ‘sacred’ colours of the past – a ‘colour pedagogy’ which later shaped the European arts and crafts movement. Building on a pioneering methodology, CHROMOTOPE will bring together literature, visual culture, the history of sciences and techniques and the chemistry of pigments and dyes, with high-impact outcomes, including one major exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, a thorough pigment analysis of Burges’s Great Bookcase and the creation of an online database of 19th century texts on colour. This project will not only give invaluable insight into hitherto neglected aspects of 19th century European cultural history, it will also reveal the central role played by chromatic materiality in the intertwined artistic and literary practices of the period. This will in turn change the way the relationships between text and image, as well as the materiality of the text itself, may be envisaged in literary studies.

2. PROJET EMERGENCE IDEX « Canon Factory » (2023-2025) (CanFac)

Project presentation:

With its emphasis on the UK and Scandinavia as well as the German- and Dutch-speaking worlds, this project is dedicated to the study of literary works which, on the surface at least, are considered as not belonging in the canon and, for some of them at least, are not perceived as literature at all (spoken word performances, drama by non-native speakers, LGBTQI+ dramatic performances and fiction, novels in-between languages, graphic novels). Adopting a comparative perspective, it intends to explore to what extent they question accepted (and celebrated) forms, become part and parcel of them, or fashion a new canon. Along its two-year development, over a series of seven half-day workshops and a two-day international conference, the project will therefore investigate the forces and processes at work in what it will refer to as the “canon factory”. It will not only compare, contrast and question works and “genres” (or non-genres) from different linguistic and cultural areas, but it will also seek to approach them from a variety of methodological and conceptual perspectives. If close “readings” of its various objects are central — including of those that defy reading — , the project will resort to and combine the tools provided among others by postcolonial literary studies and decolonial praxis, text and image theories, reception theories, queer and gender theories as well as publishing history and publishing sociology. It will unfold along the following lines: 1) Questioning the Canon, 2) Performing the Canon, 3) Re-forming the Canon.

Site du projet: https://canfac.sorbonne-universite.fr/ 

Keywords:

Canon, British postcolonial literature, German-language literature, Dutch-language literature, Scandinavian literature, Spoken word, performance, novel and graphic novel, Minority authors

Project team:

The project involves scholars from Sorbonne Université research teams VALE (UR 4085) and REIGENN (UR 3556): Dr. Kim ANDRINGA (Co-principal investigator, senior lecturer, Dutch studies – REIGENN) et Dr. Guillaume FOURCADE (Co-principal investigator, senior lecturer, Anglophone studies – VALE), as well as: Dr. Sylvie ARLAUD (senior lecturer, German studies – REIGENN), Dr. Alessandra BALLOTTI (senior lecturer, Scandinavian studies – REIGENN), Pr. Bernard BANOUN (full professor, German studies – REIGENN), Dr. Jaine CHEMMACHERY (senior lecturer, Anglophone studies – VALE), Dr. Eric CHEVREL (senior lecturer, German studies – REIGENN), Dr. Jean-François LAPLÉNIE (senior lecturer, German studies – REIGENN), Dr. Benjamine TOUSSAINT (senior lecturer, Anglophone studies – VALE)

 

3.  PROJET EMERGENCE IDEX « AmHealth »: « Health and the Environment in Nineteenth-Century United States’ Literature and Culture » (2023-2025)

Project “AmHealth”: Health and the Environment in Nineteenth-Century United States’ Literature and Culture

This project aims to investigate the tangled histories of health and ecological crises as they are represented in a wide range of literary and cultural productions of the nineteenth-century United States. It focuses on the notion of “environment” as a complex nexus of contradictory theorizations and pressures, between a natural resource for obtaining or preserving health and a human-made site where toxic forces have pushed many species on the verge of extinction. Doing so, the project elaborates literary and cultural criticism as a set of methods for thinking about the interrelated, and ongoing, health and ecological crises that shape our current condition through a reconsideration of what biomedical science calls “environmental factors.”

While centered around the A19 research group (Sorbonne Université VALE / Université Paris Cité LARCA), the project will also contribute to advance the integration of American literary and cultural studies within the perimeter of the Bio-Medical Humanities Initiative at Sorbonne Université, in order to position it as a key research center in France for studying health-related questions in the Anglosphere.

PI: Thomas Constantinesco (Sorbonne Université / VALE)

Blog of the project: https://a19.hypotheses.org/programme-2024-2025

Team members: Adeline Chevrier-Bosseau (Sorbonne Université / VALE) ; Vincent Maréchal (Sorbonne Université / Biologie et thérapeutiques du cancer) ; Cécile Roudeau (Université Paris Cité / LARCA) ; Yves Figuereido (Université Paris Cité / LARCA) ; Édouard Marsoin (Université Paris Cité / LARCA)

Buget: 90 000 €

 

4. « The Douai MS Project » (2021-2025), financé par l’Initiative Théâtre, VALE et le Fonds Franco-canadien pour la recherche (FFCR).

Sont membres de DIGITENS: Alexis Tadié, Clara Manco, Pierre Labrune.

Website: https://www.univ-brest.fr/digitens/menu/About/Description+%26+objectives

The Digital Encyclopaedia of European Sociability (DIGITENS) project will produce the first open-access digital encyclopaedia on sociability in Europe throughout the long-eighteenth century. The purpose of the DIGITENS project is twofold:

1. to develop the scope of research into British sociability in the long eighteenth century,

2. to relate British models of sociability to other European and colonial models of sociability and to examine how models and forms circulated from one society to the others, were appropriated and modified, encouraging the dissemination and construction of new models of sociability in Europe.

The purpose of the DIGITENS project is to build an original framework for understanding the interactions, tensions, limits and paradoxes underlying European models of sociability and to reflect on the following question: can the emergence and formation of European models of sociability be traced throughout the long eighteenth century (1650-1850)? Drawing upon the expertise of international members from different disciplines and national traditions, the project will create a toplevel interdisciplinary network and facilitate intersectoral communication between its academic and non-academic partners.The seven international universities will work together with the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Musée Cognacq-Jay in France, The National Archives in the United-Kingdom and McGill University allowing members to explore how understandings of sociability might be enhanced through dialogue, international collaboration, and digital technology, developing a broader contextualisation of the research into European sociability.

Through the implementation of outreach events, workshops and the production of the accessible digital platform, the DIGITENS team will promote a wide investigation of the value of eighteenth century principles in twenty-first-century private and public lives throughout Europe.

 

B. Projet Emergence IDEX, 2019-2022, ClioS (Clio on the Stage: Making History – Immediate History on the Early-Modern and Post-Modern Stages in Britain). Animé par: Line Cottegnies et Elisabeth Angel-Perez. 2019-2021. (prolongé jusqu’au 30 juin 2022)

Website: https://clios.hypotheses.org/

Rationale:

The project has brought together the expertise of scholars working in the fields of Shakespeare studies, contemporary British and French theatre and History, as well as theatre professionals, to reflect together on the appropriation of recent and “contemporary” history by drama – “contemporary” in respect to the author. The project originates from the fact that early-modern and contemporary dramas both manifest a particular interest in ”immediate history”. In both, this history is staged through the prism of the individual, more particularly through the inscription into an intimate sphere of affects and into the body. Through the representation of suffering individuals struggling with the traumas of “history” in the making, theatre invents forms and strategies to rationalise or critically reflect recent events, often deconstructing ready-made narratives.

The project was twofold. Firstly, it aimed at exploring the correspondences and echoes existing between early-modern and contemporary drama in the treatment of “immediate history” both in relation to the treatment of sources and the theatrical strategies used to turn “historical” drama into a political form. Secondly, it questioned what seemed to be the enduring relevance of Shakespeare and all that he now stands for in the contemporary imagination, and most particularly in the drama that deals with our immediate past. Is the “Shakespearean” still a fruitful prism to help expose the mechanisms at work in recent or immediate history in both early modernity and post-modernity? This led us to question the notion of the “contemporary” in dramatic creativity — what the contemporary meant to Shakespeare and other early modern writers, what it means to playwrights writing in English now, and to directors (and actors) staging their works, in what can be defined as “times of crisis or unrest”.

Aims of the project:

• Bring together specialists of early-modern and contemporary drama and history to appraise the treatment of immediate (or recent) history.
• Identify and study the genre of “drama of immediate (or recent) history” in a double comparative perspective (France and England, and early modernity and our late modernity).
• Confront the dramaturgical perspective with the theatrical one and elucidate why contemporary stage directors keep revisiting Shakespeare.
• Open the university up to the theatre world, foster collaborations between academics and theatre professionals; and organise events relevant for the general public both within the walls of the university and in theatres in Paris.

3. Partenariat stratégique Sorbonne – University of Sydney: Projet « Surveillance Imaginings » (2023-2024)

Présentation du partenariat

Nous avons le plaisir de vous informer de l’obtention d’un financement pour le projet « Surveillance Imaginings » dans le cadre du partenariat stratégique entre Sorbonne université et University of Sydney. Il est programmé du 31 mars 2023 au 31 mars 2024 et rassemble deux équipes de chercheurs en littérature et histoire. Les « Chief Investigators » sont le Professeur émérite Peter Marks à Sydney et Claire Wrobel pour VALE. La mise en œuvre du projet comporte deux temps forts : la venue de deux membres de l’équipe australienne à Paris la semaine du 19 juin (avec réunions, ateliers et conférences) et le séjour de deux membres de VALE à Sydney en septembre 2023. En plus de ces événements, les retombées du projet comporteront des publications communes et le dépôt de candidatures à des financement plus importants.

Membres participant au projet :

• SU (VALE): Cécile Beaufils, Lisa Folacci, Juliana Lopoukhine Alexis Tadié, Claire Wrobel (CI)
• Sydney: Meg Brayshaw, Jedidiah Evans, James Findlay, Peter Marks (CI)

Programme des évènements pour 2023: voir la page dédiée ici.

4.  GROUPE PHILOMEL – RESEAU GENRE (2020-2024)

Voir le carnet Hypothèses disponible à l’adresse suivante : https://philomel.hypotheses.org/

Sous la direction d’Anne Tomiche, professeure de littérature comparée, et de Frédéric Regard, professeur de littérature britannique et membre de VALE, le groupe interdisciplinaire « Philomel » a été, de 2020 à 2024, une Initiative soutenue par la Faculté des Lettres et par Sorbonne Université, visant à fédérer les activités liées aux questions de « genre » au sein de Sorbonne Université.  A partir de 2025, l’Initiative devient un réseau. Il vise toujours également à regrouper toute information concernant tous les enseignements et toutes les recherches relatives à ces questions.

Parti d’un noyau de collègues (musicologues, littéraires anglicistes, francisants, germanistes, italianistes, comparatistes, sociologues, géographes), « Philomel » accueille tous les collègues et doctorants intéressés par les questions de genre et désireux d’être associés et de s’impliquer plus ou moins activement dans les activités du groupe (tout en restant, bien sûr, membres titulaires dans leurs équipes de recherche respectives). L’Initiative Genre finance deux contrats doctoraux par an.

Depuis juin 2023, les nouveaux directeurs sont: Sophie Albert et Jean-François Laplénie. A noter: le groupe « Genre et autorité » de l’axe PACT de VALE poursuit ses activités autour des questions de genre dans l’aire anglophone.

Depuis 2025, Philomel a acquis le statut de « Réseau Genre » de l’Alliance Sorbonne Université.