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Professor James Williams - Professor of Modern French Literature and Film

Professor James Williams - Professor of Modern French Literature and Film

I am Professor of Modern French Literature and Film in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. I lecture on contemporary French, Francophone and comparative literature; French, European and African cinema; gender and cultural studies; and critical and postcolonial theory.

Among the modules I (co-)teach are ‘International Film II: Readings and Representations’ (ML2101), ‘Liberal Arts 2: Power and Dissent’ (LA2000), ‘Transnationalism, Diaspora and Globalisation in Contemporary Film’ (ML3207), and ‘Redefining the Erotic in Contemporary French Literature and Film’ (FR3126).

I am the author of (among others) The Erotics of Passage: Pleasure, Politics, and Form in the Later Work of Marguerite Duras (1997), The Cinema of Jean Cocteau (2006), Jean Cocteau (a 'Critical Life') (2008), Space and Being in Contemporary French Cinema (2013), Encounters with Godard: Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics (2016), and Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary African Cinema: The Politics of Beauty (2019).

I am also (co-)editor of Gay Signatures: Gay and Lesbian Theory, Fiction and Film in France, 1945-1995 (1998), Revisioning Duras: Film, Race, Sex (2000), The Cinema Alone: essays on the work of Jean-Luc Godard 1985-2000 (2000),  Gender and French Cinema (2001), For Ever Godard (2004), May ’68: Rethinking France's Last Revolution (2011), and Queering the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema (2020). 

I am currently Year Abroad Officer for the Department and Director of its Centre for Visual Cultures.

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