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School of Languages, Linguistics and Film

Dr Émilie Oléron Evans

Émilie

Senior Lecturer in Cultural History of French Art

Email: emilie.oleron@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 20 7882 2995
Room Number: Arts One 2.09B
Website: https://linktr.ee/emilieoleron
Office Hours: Semester 1: Tuesday 9.30-11 online (Teams) or in person (ArtsOne 2.09B).

Profile

I am an art historian specialising in cultural transfers, historiography (19th-20th century) and the interrelation of art and translation. I joined Queen Mary in 2017 as a Teaching Fellow in visual culture of the French-speaking world.

In 2014, I received my PhD from the Université Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle and Queen Mary. In 2015, I published my first book: Nikolaus Pevsner: Arpenteur des arts, in which I analyse the career of German-born art historian Nikolaus Pevsner (1902-1983) as a pivotal moment in the progressive integration of questions of art and architecture into British culture.

In 2015-17, I held a postdoctoral fellowship in Historiography of Art at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Strasbourg, where I coordinated the Dictionnaire Culturel de Strasbourg 1880-1930 and contributed to the exhibition Strasbourg, Laboratoire d’Europe as an author for the catalogue and an expert on art and culture in the city at the turn of the 20th century.

My  research currently focuses on women art historians and on the role of translation in the evolution of art history as a discipline. I am writing a book on American art historian Linda Nochlin and the reception of her work in France.

 

Teaching

I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
 
I teach on art history and visual culture.
Modules convened include
  • FRE 5003 Art in France, Manet to early Picasso
  • FRE 6001 Photography: the Self and its Image
  • FRE 6029 Surrealism
  • SML4006 Culture & Language: French Visual Cultures block (block 2),
  • FRE 6053 France and its Museums from Louvre to Louvre
  • FRE 4042 Picturing a Nation: France and its Images from Marianne to #JeSuisCharlie
Past postgraduate supervisions include
‘Hermann Muthesius au Royaume-Uni’, Master 2 Transnational History, École Normale Supérieure (co-supervisor, 2017-2019)
‘La fortune critique de J.M.W. Turner en France au XXe siècle’, Final Year Dissertation, École du Louvre (co-supervisor, 2016-2017)

Research

Research Interests:

  • Cultural transfers, circulations of people, objects and thoughts
  • Art and translation, art in translation
  • Transnational history of art museums and collections, with a focus on the interactions between France, Germany and Britain
  • Women in art history: Translators, mediators, scholars and curators
  • History of the Modern Movement in art, architecture and design
I am currently a convenor on the following projects:

Examples of research funding:

2019 - I was involved in two projects supported by Paul Mellon Centre Educational Programme grants:

Reconfiguring Relationships: Britain and the Bauhaus (International workshop, Tate Britain, October 2019)

Innovation and Acculturation: the Émigré Art Historians and Britain (International conference, in collaboration with the Leo Baeck Institute, November 2019)

Publications

Books

2023 (in press) L'histoire de l'art engagée de Linda Nochlin, Strasbourg, Presses universitaires de Strasbourg

2015 Nikolaus Pevsner, arpenteur des arts, Paris, Démopolis

Reviewed in:

 

Peer-reviewed Articles

 

Book Chapters

 

Catalogue essays and encyclopaedia entries

  • 2017 (Commissioned) ‘Illustres et inconnues: pour une histoire des femmes à Strasbourg, 1880-1930’ and (with R. Recht) ‘Aby Warburg, étudiant à Strasbourg’, in: R. Recht, J. Pijaudier-Cabot (ed.), Strasbourg, laboratoire d’Europe, 1880-1930, exhibition catalogue, Strasbourg, Musées de la ville de Strasbourg.
  • 2017 (Commissioned) Dictionary entries: ‘Affaire Spahn’; ‘Blochmann, Elisabeth’; ‘Clemen, Paul’; ‘Heuss-Knapp, Elly’; ‘Hipp, Johanna’; ‘Koch, Hans’; ‘Kraus, Franz Xaver’; ‘Kunstgewerbe in Elsass-Lothringen, Das’; ‘Leitschuh, Franz Friedrich’; ‘Maugain, Gabriel’; ‘Muller, Dorette’; ‘Mündel, Curt’; ‘Polaczek, Ernst’; ‘Rau, Jacqueline’; ‘Schmarsow, August’; ‘Schneegans, Friedrich Eduard’; ‘Springer, Anton’; ‘Trübner, Karl’; ‘Verbindung deutscher Kunstvereine für historische Kunst’; ‘Wolff, Paul’; ‘Wust, Emma’, in: R. Recht, J.-C. Richez (dir.), Dictionnaire culturel de Strasbourg 1880-1930, Strasbourg, PUS.

 

Translations

  • (Commissionned, in press) N. Pevsner, Géographie de l’art anglais (The Englishness of English Art), Strasbourg, Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg.
  • (Commissioned, in preparation with M. Galland-Szymkowiak) A. Schmarsow, L’Architecture, configuratrice d’espace – essais, Marseille, Parenthèses.
  • 2014 A. Sacks, ‘Migration et musique chorale: deux facteurs d’émancipation et de succès pour les Juifs allemands dans le Berlin d’avant-guerre’, in: L. Guillon, H. Knörzer (ed.), Berlin et les Juifs XIXe-XXIe siècles, Paris, Éditions de l’Éclat.

 

Reviews and conversation pieces

 

Research Blog

Supervision

Emily Fuggle, 'Facilitators, administrators, and curators: The Women of the Ben Uri (1915-1995)', Collaborative doctoral award in partnership with Ben Uri Museum and Gallery

Matthew Shaul, 'Colour my Dreams? Colour Photography and the Invention of German Identity' (second supervisor)

 

I welcome applications from candidates wishing to undertake doctoral research in visual culture, including the following areas:

  • Cultural and artistic transfers (19th-20th century)
  • Transnational art history (France, Germany and Britain)
  • Women in art history
  • Text and image relationship

Public Engagement

‘Leonie and Carl Gombrich in conversation’ (conducted interview of the grandchildren of art historian’s Ernst H. Gombrich for the Visual & Material Forum)

'Moving Memories' - a series of talks and activities organised at Tate Exchange as part of the Queen Mary Arts and Culture residency on the topic of 'Ideas in motion' (11-16th June 2019)

Public talk on the history of the chair(s) of aesthetics and/or history of art at the Collège de France in Paris: 'Donner chaire' (video).

Interview on architectural history for the Global Lab podcast: 'Seeing Cities (audio)' (2019)

Literature workshop for Books@Work, Steelcase, Strasbourg (Jul 2017).

Interview for a video presentation of writer and translator Denise Naville in the exhibition Strasbourg, laboratoire d’Europe, Strasbourg (sep 2017-feb 2018).

Guest Talk, “Nikolaus Pevsner, a Kunsthistoriker in Britain”, Inauguration of the exhibition Germans in Britain organised by Migration Museum Project, QMUL(Jan 2015).

Contributor to the exhibition catalogue Les frères Humboldt: l’Europe de l’esprit, Observatoire de Paris, curated by Bénédicte Savoy and David Blankenstein (May-Jul 2014).

Dissemination

Available to watch online:

'Donner chaire : défense et illustration d'une discipline dans les rapports des chaires d'esthétique et d'histoire de l'art du Collège de France' - Conference on 'Le Collège de France et le musée du Louvre' at the Collège de France, Paris: Link to video.

'Mémoire double: les Kurz et l'École de Vienne', given in the international workshop held at the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art on Penser, travailler, écrire à deux. Les couples d’historiennes et d’historiens de l’art / ⁢⁢⁢⁢⁢Thinking and Working Together: Couples and the Writing of Art History : Link to video.

 

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