Dr Richard Mason

Profile

Interdisciplinary in nature, my research draws links between literature and education in French and Francophone culture from the late nineteenth century onwards. Broadly, I am interested in tracing conceptions of reading, writing, and selfhood across these domains. Areas of interest include narratives of developmental selfhood; the role of reading and writing practices within experimental French pedagogy, particularly their ‘emancipatory’ framing; the institutionalization of education and literature.

Recently, I have written on the relationship between writing and selfhood in the emancipatory pedagogy of Célestin Freinet; on anti-pedagogic accounts of subjectivity in French philosophy in the 1970s; on anti-humanistic approaches to literature teaching in the period following May 1968; and on the status of education in Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu. I retain a strong interest in the work of Proust and Jean Genet, on whom I completed a doctoral thesis at King’s College London in 2016.

Prior to joining Queen Mary as Lecturer in French, I held roles as Teaching Fellow at King’s College London, and Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University College Cork. I am currently Outreach Officer for the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures and would be delighted to discuss any matter regarding schools’ engagement activities. I am also Conference Officer for the Society for French Studies.

Teaching

I have taught a range of topics in French literature, theory, and culture, as well as modules in Comparative Literature. I also teach French grammar, textual analysis, and translation.

Undergraduate Teaching

Semester 1 Narrative in Theory and Practice FRE/COM6006 French III FRE6202

Semester 2 European Tragedy COM507 French III FRE6202

Research

Publications

Edited volume

Difficulty’s Knots, a special issue of Paragraph, co-edited by Richard Mason and Kasia Mika, forthcoming March 2024.

Peer-reviewed articles

‘L’absence de l’école et les paramètres de l’éducation dans À la recherche du temps perdu’, forthcoming Bulletin d’informations proustiennes, 2023.

‘Writing and Selfhood in the Pedagogy of Célestin Freinet’, French Studies, 77.1, January 2023, 48–63.

‘Disturbing Visions of Childhood: René Schérer’s Writing on Childhood in the 1970s’, Nottingham French Studies, 59.1 (2020), 80–96.

‘Érotique de la phrase : la mise en scène de la parole de l’autre chez Proust et Genet’, Marcel Proust Aujourd’hui, 14 (2017), 116–29.

Book chapter

‘Le naufrage de l’homme profane: Jean Genet and the Anecdotal’, in Labours of Attention: Work, Class and Society in French and Francophone Literature and Culture, ed. by Adam Watt (Oxford: Legenda, 2022), pp. 132–43.

Reviews

Gérard Desanges, Marcel Proust et la Politique. Une conscience française (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2019) (forthcoming Modern Language Review)

Cynthia Gamble, Voix entrelacées de Proust et de Ruskin (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2021) (forthcoming Modern Language Review)

Public Engagement

‘Proust’s jeunes filles: a centenary celebration’, Bloomsbury Theatre, October 2019