Dernières publications

Marie-Gaëlle Drouet - publié le 13/05/2024

[Fiche] This paper will consider how Salman Rushdie’s novel ((Victory City)) is eminently framed by multiple acts of creation involving questions of agency, artistry and resistance. In his fifteenth novel, Rushdie tells the epic story of the young orphan girl Pampa Kampana who is endowed with magical powers by a goddess and who subsequently creates the city of Bisnaga, literally meaning “Victory City” – a city supposedly modelled on the 14th century-Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar, South (...)

Klaus Benesch - publié le 23/04/2024

[Conférence] Following Frank Lloyd Wright's famous aphorism, "There is no architecture without philosophy", this talk analyses the links and bridges between the fields of architecture and philosophy. Focusing specifically on architecture and hospitality, Klaus Benesch examines the importance of building in American history and outlines the central argument of his next book, ((Architecture and the Construction of Ideas)), which explores the use of architecture by thinkers and philosophers of (...)

Fleur-Ann Dany Brouard - publié le 14/03/2024

[Fiche] In ((The Doctor and the Saint)), Arundhati Roy compares and contrasts the lives and beliefs of Mahatma Gandhi and B. R. Ambedkar, the father of the Indian Constitution. Analyzing the two men's trajectories, Roy seeks to explain their conflict on the subject of Untouchability during the Second Round Table Conference (1931). In doing so, she dismantles the myth of Gandhi's sainthood and radical progressivism while defending and justifying Ambedkar's attack on Hinduism. Through its (...)

Lowell Duckert - publié le 16/02/2024

[Conférence] How can words and concepts from the Early Modern period help us address today's environmental issues? In this talk, Lowell Duckert outlines the basic tenets of the Environmental Humanities and the different methodologies this field draws on, before giving examples of Early Modern texts describing ecological issues.

Mathilde Branchereau - publié le 14/02/2024

[Fiche] In ((A View of the Empire at Sunset)), Caryl Phillips proposes a fictionalised version of the life of novelist Jean Rhys – a Creole woman from Dominica expatriated in Europe – as a mirror image of the decline and dissolution of the British colonial Empire over the course of the 20th century. By depicting the protagonist’s struggle to find a sense of belonging, the novel highlights how colonial subjects may be confronted to a feeling of identity ambivalence and a loss of bearings.

Vanessa Guignery, Jaine Chemmachery, Cédric Courtois - publié le 25/01/2024

[Conférence] Cette page propose trois interventions sur le genre du "Refugee writing". Vanessa Guignery présente tout d'abord les modalités et définitions de ce genre, puis Jaine Chemmachery analyse les formes littéraires et intermédiales des ((Refugee Tales)), inspirées des ((Canterbury Tales)) de Chaucer, et du projet "28 for 28". Enfin, Cédric Courtois se penche sur la forme de la nouvelle, qui a pu être qualifiée de "mineure" et que les autrices de son corpus ont choisie pour (...)

Céline Bonicco-Donato - publié le 18/01/2024

[Conférence] À travers trois réalisations de l'architecte américain Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), Céline Bonicco-Donato analyse la manière dont celui-ci s'est inspiré de plusieurs courants de la philosophie américaine (notamment le transcendantalisme de Ralph Waldo Emerson et le pragmatisme de John Dewey) afin de développer sa propre philosophie architecturale et urbaine, travaillée par deux grands principes : "l'intérieur est un dehors, l'extérieur est un dedans" et "la partie est (...)

Agathe Viffray - publié le 15/12/2023

[Fiche] Pre-Raphaelite women artists assimilated the type of the erudite woman that had been forged by their male counterparts: they complied with the canon, yet slightly shifted it by softening the usual rejection of the learned woman and emphasising the idea of freedom linked to the possession of knowledge. From the (twin) figures of the governess and the Angel in the House (two forms of possession of knowledge deemed acceptable for women by Victorian society) to the image of the sorceress (...)

Virginie Thomas - publié le 17/11/2023

[Fiche] Very few representations of female knowledge can be found in Pre-Raphaelite paintings without them being imbued with a threatening dimension. Female knowledge is necessarily associated with the representation of a domesticated woman, echoing the recommendations of the time defined, for example, by John Ruskin in ((Sesame and Lilies)). On the contrary, the aim of the pictures of learned women was to send a warning against the deadly potential of woman's unwonted curiosity through the use (...)

Christine Vandamme - publié le 17/11/2023

[Article] The article deals with women and knowledge in Charlotte Brontë’s ((Jane Eyre)) (1847). The novel was quite revolutionary in its time for its strong assertion of female agency and self-empowerment and a keen perception of power dynamics inherent in the definition of gender and gender roles. However considering ((Jane Eyre)) through the sole prism of a novel of emancipation only dealing with women’s rights and aspirations would be reductive. ((Jane Eyre))’s fiery narrative is a (...)

Véronique Molinari - publié le 17/11/2023

[Article] This article provides an overview of the different ways in which women were educated in the Victorian period, from home-schooling to private day-schools and boarding schools. While the campaign for educational reform was seen, within the context of the Industrial Revolution and the growing feminist movement, as a key to freedom, improvements in female education were also met with resistance.

Elsa Benamouzig - publié le 08/11/2023

[Fiche] In 1979, Robert Benton’s film ((Kramer vs Kramer)) set a new path for family dramas in Hollywood. The acclaimed movie follows the journey of Ted Kramer from absent to great father as a single dad, including a portrayal of his failures and vulnerabilities. His divorce and unusual position as the main care-taker of his child changed the perception of the father’s role not only in the movies, but also in American households.

Ismaël Zaïdi - publié le 19/10/2023

[Fiche] Cet article a pour objectif de dépasser les études classiques sur les conditions de vérité des généralisations et ainsi de mettre en lumière ce qui se joue lorsque sont pris en compte les sujets humains et les stéréotypes qui leur sont associés. Nous partons d’un état de l’art qui nous mène à examiner les conséquences sémantiques de l’ajout de l’adjectif ((typical)) aux groupes nominaux dans les généralisations. Nous cherchons à examiner la notion de (...)

publié le 10/10/2023

[Question d'actualité] On the 14th of October 2023, Australian voters will be called upon to participate in the Voice to Parliament referendum, which proposes to enshrine in the Constitution an Indigenous voice to parliament. La Clé des langues has selected a number of articles, videos and fact sheets in order to better understand this historic national vote.

Ismaël Zaïdi - publié le 25/09/2023

[Fiche] This article examines the particular status of generic references (statements that assign a characteristic to a class or subclass) that concern human subjects. While such statements are often described as interchangeable, our study shows that each form of generic reference has social implications when human subjects are under study. Between non-acceptability, the expression of stereotypes and a need for context which is usually absent in studies, human nouns highlight more than ever the (...)

Annalena Geisler - publié le 06/07/2023

The coronation of King Charles III on the 6th of May 2023 has provoked much debate in the United Kingdom: the cost of living crisis, worsened by inflation, has prompted many citizens to criticise the large sums spent on royal festivities. This points to growing scepticism regarding the cost and relevance of the Royal Family, especially since the death of Queen Elizabeth II. This page provides resources to help understand the cost and finances of the monarchy and the royalist and antiroyalist (...)

Laure Gardelle - publié le 22/06/2023

Dans le cadre d'un partenariat entre l'Université Grenoble Alpes, l'Ecole académique de formation continue (EAFC) et les IA-IPR d'anglais de l'académie de Grenoble, des professeurs d'anglais de lycée qui dispensent l'enseignement de spécialité LLCER Anglais ont assisté à une conférence intitulée "Persuasive speaking and how to improve LLCER students' communication skills" animée par Laure Gardelle.

Annalena Geisler, Arthur Dussart - publié le 11/05/2023

The commercial and critical success of Jane Campion’s third feature-length film ((The Piano)) (1993) paired with the accolades it received (three Academy Awards, a César and the first Palme d’Or for a female director) cemented the reputation of the New Zealand director. ((The Piano)) is a period drama set in the beginning of the 19th century which centres on the mute Scottish woman Ada McGrath who, together with her daughter and her piano, travels to New Zealand to be married to a (...)

Agathe Faucourt - publié le 27/04/2023

This article examines the film adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2006 novel, ((Half of a Yellow Sun)). Released in 2014, Biyi Bandele’s adaptation was often criticized for its alleged betrayal of the original text. The task of adapting a novel of more than four hundred pages in a film of less than two hours was particularly daunting. Yet, it remains to be seen whether the film deserved to be labelled as unfaithful. Rather than judging the worth of an adaptation based on its degree of (...)

Wojciech Drąg - publié le 16/03/2023

This talk examines a variety of instances of contemporary experimental life-writing – a critical category theorised by Irene Kacandes (2012) and Julia Novak (2017). After defining the notion and providing a brief historical overview of formally unconventional auto/biographies, Wojciech Drąg introduces his research project concerned with life-writing works that renounce a narrative structure in favour of an archive (or a database). He then proposes a classification of archival subgenres that (...)

Saugata Bhaduri - publié le 09/03/2023

Connected to the question of nationalistic and identitarian assertions versus the other-regarding 'worlding' of literary-critical praxis is the question of the Global South – questions more specifically connected to colonialism, postcolonial discourse, and new-imperialism. To what extent can postcolonialism offer a suitable methodological toolkit for studying literature today? Conversely, what are some of the current discontents with postcolonialism, arising particularly from emerging insights (...)

Saugata Bhaduri - publié le 02/03/2023

If, rather than being rooted in sectarian identity politics, reading strategies for literary and cultural practice have to be other-regarding, and not be cocooned within one’s self-same monolingual and monocultural universes, it calls for translation and comparative literature – where one goes beyond literary and cultural texts in one’s own language and reaches out to the other – to become mainstays of such a practice. To what extent would an emphasis on going beyond one’s own (...)

Saugata Bhaduri - publié le 23/02/2023

This first lecture focuses on recent developments in the area of Literary Theory, or to be more specific, on how ideology critique, which would have been one of the methodological mainstays of reading literature and culture under the aegis of Literary Theory, has been challenged over the last couple of decades, in the form of post-critical and post-theoretical developments, to lead to more ‘affective’ modes of dealing with literature and culture. The move, from the late 1990s, towards (...)

Jumana Bayeh - publié le 12/01/2023

Egypt's Arab Spring was experienced as a mediated event in two notable ways. First, in the immediate successes of Tahrir Square, Facebook was heralded as a fundamental agent of the uprising and responsible for the fall of Mubarak. Second, the failure of the 'Spring' with the election of an Islamist and a counter-revolution that saw the rise of a military dictatorship, news reports sought to make sense of the country's rapidly flailing political fortunes. Missing from both these forms of (...)

Jean-Daniel Collomb - publié le 25/11/2022

Dans le cadre d'un partenariat entre l'Université Grenoble Alpes, l'Ecole académique de formation continue (EAFC) et les IA-IPR d'anglais de l'académie de Grenoble, des professeurs d'anglais de lycée qui dispensent l'enseignement de spécialité LLCER Anglais monde contemporain ont assisté à une conférence intitulée "The United-States, climate, and the rest of the world" animée par Jean-Daniel Collomb.

Elsa Lorphelin - publié le 27/10/2022

Cet article examine trois nouvelles de Jean Rhys, « Again the Antilles » (1927), « Pioneers, Oh, Pioneers » (1969), et « Fishy Waters » (1976). Conçues comme un cycle de nouvelles, toutes trois mettent en scène un personnage récurrent et déclinent le thème de la mise au ban d’un homme par la communauté créole. Cette exclusion, loin de n’être qu’un phénomène social, est avant tout un phénomène discursif qui évacue la voix des marginaux et permet à Jean Rhys de proposer (...)

Manon Boukhroufa-Trijaud - publié le 20/10/2022

This article aims at shedding light on the work of Menka Shivdasani, a key figure of contemporary Indian poetry in English. It highlights her involvement in the collective poetry scene of Mumbai and her commitment to connect it to the world. It also focuses on the singular poetic voice she elaborates in the personal itinerary of her poetic work, shaping the self-portrait of a woman poetess in contemporary India.

Marion Coste - publié le 26/06/2022

L'arrêt Roe v. Wade a été annulé le 24 juin 2022 aux États-Unis. La Clé anglaise propose une sélection de ressources sur cette décision de la Cour Suprême et ses conséquences dramatiques.

Annalena Geisler - publié le 15/06/2022

In ((Americanah)), Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells the story of high school lovers Ifemelu and Obinze, their experiences of migration to the US and the UK, and their reunion 13 years later back in Nigeria. Through the means of defamiliarization and the depiction of Ifemelu’s sense of alienation in the US, Adichie sheds new light on America’s relationship with race and racism.

Annalena Geisler - publié le 25/05/2022

Even before winning the prestigious Booker Prize in 2019, Bernardine Evaristo had been an integral part of the British literary landscape, not only because of her experimental style, but also due to her activism and wish to cut down discrimination in the literary institution. In ((Girl, Woman, Other)), the British writer with Nigerian and Irish roots, attempts to give a voice to Black British women, who have long been invisible and voiceless in the public sphere.