Research projects

Research in the CCL covers a wide array of literatures, languages, cultures and traditions, which we study individually and in comparison, in the original and in translation, through textual focus and in theoretical, historical and socio-political contexts.

Our fields include literature (from the Classics to the avant-gardes and to the present, from the canonical to the most recent experiments), language, theatre, performance, translation, multilingualism, creativity, aesthetics, literary and critical theory, literary and cultural history including the ‘new cultural histories’ (such as literature and the senses, the body, cognition, sport, spectacle).

We work in postcolonial studies, memory studies, trauma studies, the environmental humanities, ecocriticism and the Anthropocene, gender studies, disability studies, the medical humanities, biofiction and heterobiography, biography and autobiography, and literature in interdisciplinary relation with visual arts (painting, photography, sculpture), film and cinema history, philosophy, sociology, law, scientific discourses, education, human rights, creative writing and playwriting.

Featured projects

Beaubrun's Picture of Anne of Austria, standing, heavily pregnantMontrer la reine

Marie Claude Canova-Green’s new project on the Queen’s body, Montrer la reine, focuses on the court experience of two Spanish Infantas that became Queens of France in the seventeenth century, Anne of Austria and Maria-Teresa of Austria. In particular, the project will investigate the physical impact on their bodies of the constant necessity of paraître and their transformation into visual commodities. Read more about Marie Claude’s project…

 

FrenchTheatreSoWhite? A History of Postcolonial Performance in France

Clare Finburgh Delijani’s current book project on postcolonial Francophone theatre examines the many ways in which contemporary theatre in France treats histories of colonialism, in order better to understand identity, community and nation today.  ‘Decolonising’ the terms ‘postcolonial’ and ‘Francophone’, the book applies these notions to migrant and post-migrant theatre makers working in France today, in order to underscore the complex, entangled relationships between the former Empire – France – and its former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and East Asia.  Read more about Clare’s project…

 

Streaming, Meme-ing, Intervening in Meaning: Cultural Translation and the Transformation of Global Popular Culture Through the Creative Use of Online Participatory Technologies

Led by Dr Sarah Maitland, and supported by the Goldsmiths-LASALLE Partnership Innovation Fund (PIF), Streaming, Meme-ing, Intervening in Meaning is an international multidisciplinary cultural translation research network that will deliver a programme of research workshops, public roundtables and knowledge exchange events aimed at investigating how global audiences are transforming popular culture content produced in other cultural and linguistic contexts through their creative use of online participatory technologies (including video-sharing platforms, static and animated image macro generators, video editing software and livestreaming services). Read more about Sarah’s project…

 

Intermedial Beckett

Derval Tubridy’s research project Intermedial Beckett explores the complex intersections between literature, performance and the visual arts. It uses Samuel Beckett as a lens through which to analyse radical trans-generic artworks from the 1960s to the present. The intermedial nature of Beckett’s corpus, and his innovative engagement with avant garde media – to the extent that his later prose and dramatic work compromise and transgress boundaries of genre and discipline – are significant determining factors that explain Beckett’s position as a key figure, and a vital force, for contemporary artists in the expanded field of visual and aural culture. The project examines the modalities of influence and engagement between the arts, focusing on issues of iteration, aural spatiality, virtual embodiment, digital materiality, and neurodiversity. Read more about Derval’s project…

 

Building Charles 400

Seventeenth-Century specialists at the Open University and Goldsmiths University are working on the project ‘Building Charles 400’, which will bring together scholars of Stuart History, Literature, Art, Music, Dance and Architecture with practitioners from galleries, archives, libraries and museums (GLAMs) and key stakeholders in post-16 education. The idea is to create a new interactive web resource that presents a rich array of source material (objects, buildings, maps, texts, music and dance) exploring Charles I’s legacy that will feed directly into the exam boards’ syllabi, so that teachers can quickly and easily access a range of new teaching materials. Building Charles 400 is part of the Open University’s project Charles 400: Culture and Legacy (1625-2025), led by Dr Sara Wolfson.

 

Work and Smell: Studies on German, French and English Prose

Frank Krause‘s current project on work and smell in German, French and English prose explores how olfactory motifs underline problems and opportunities of social recognition. The significance of literary references to smell for the ways in which societies imagine their worlds of work and their value has been hitherto underrated. Read more about Frank’s project…