Séverine Genieys-Kirk (PhD, FHEA)

Lecturer

Biography

Background

Séverine Genieys-Kirk graduated in Anglo-American studies and specialised in Elizabethan and Jacobean Literatures at the University of Nanterre, Paris X, where she took her MA (Maîtrise) in 1995 and her D.E.A (Diplôme d’études approfondies) in 1997.

From 1997 to 2002, she pursued her doctoral studies on women’s writing in early modern France and England at the University of Glasgow. From 2001 to 2004, she was a post-doctoral fellow at University College Dublin, and from 2004 to 2005, she held a lecturership in French in the same institution. Then a recipient of an IRCHSS (Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences) Post-doctoral Fellowship Award (October 2005-December 2006), she started working on one of her new research projects at the National University of Ireland (Maynooth): ‘The Gender of Knowledge: Madeleine-Angélique de Gomez (1684-1770) and the transmission of women’s writing in France, Britain and Ireland’.

She joined French and Francophone Studies at the University of Edinburgh in January 2007.

Her research expertise on early modern women is transdisciplinary - including translation, reception, theatre and film studies. Her academic work has led her to further explore cross-cultural migrations between France and England, and further afield (Spain, Italy and Germany) with a focus on the reception of female-authored texts and the representation of historical women across time periods and genres within the broader context of feminist historiography.

She has published widely on early modern women writers and is currently preparing a collective volume, Recovering Women’s Past: New Epistemologies, New Ventures (Nebraska UP). She has also curated several events as part of her impact project Learning to see women of power: from the Renaissance to the present with The French Institute of Scotland.

Over the last two decades, she has been an active member of several international research groups, such as SIEFAR , www.siefar.org, EU-DARIAH’s Women in History, and  The Center for New Historia (The New School, New York). She has also recently been appointed as a member of the editorial board of the Brepols Book Series: Early Modern Women Writers in Europe: Texts, Debates and Genealogies of Knowledge’, led by Dr Carme Font.   She has also a keen interest in the performative arts, and is Scotland’s Correspondent and Critic for Plays International & Europe since 2017 (https://www.playsinternational.org.uk/), and enjoys working with practitioners.

She has been  invited to give guest lectures in Japan and Spain, and has been the recipient of several awards, an AHRC fellowship grant (2010-2011) and has recently received a EUSA nomination for Outstanding Commitment to Liberation in the Curriculum (Spring 2020).

Undergraduate teaching

Final-Year Option (2008-ongoing): 'Women writers in early modern France: feminists in disguise?'

Final Year option:  (2014- 0ngoing): 'French theatre (1700s-1830s) and the making of revolutions : politcs, love, and fantasy… '

Second-Year Language Course Organiser (2012-ongoing)

Postgraduate teaching

Programme Director in Theatre Studies (2017-)

She has been contributing to the following MSC core courses:

  • Msc in Theatre and Performance studies: 'Music and Theatre in early modern France', 'Poetry and theatre and early modern France' (2012-)
  • Msc in Renaissance studies: 'Translating women in the long eighteenth century' (2013-)
  • Msc in Comparative literature: theories and methods of literary study: 'Feminist criticism' (2014, Semester 2)

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Current PhD students supervised

Dominique Mason,  'Anglophilia and gender on the agenda: English female authors lost and found again in French translation (from 1700 to the present)’

Past PhD students supervised

2019-2020: Msc Supervision: Qinhan Zhou,  ‘Hamlet and Macbeth in Chinse Opera’

2018: Msc Supervision:  Yingnan Chu ‘Asia an Asian Theatre in Hélène Cixous’ plays’

2015-2016: Msc Supervision : Ivana  Cernanova, ‘Pathological and thrapeutic discourses in 18th-century French women’s writing: the case studies of Comtesse de Boufflers’s and Madame d’Epinay’s Letters’

Research summary

Her current research interests are in the field of early modern European literature, with particular focus on early modern women’s writing in France and England (e.g Mary Wroth, Madeleine de Scudéry, Eliza Haywood, Madeleine-Angélique de Gomez, Ann Thicknesse, Mary Hays);  translation studies (more specifically literary migrations in the 17th- and 18th- centuries, including parodies and adaptations of novels in the long eighteenth century); the history of women's writing; interaction between literature and the visual arts from the Renaissance to the present day, with a particular interest in Baroque/ Rococo aesthetics; feminist historiography, representation of gender in literature, the performative and visual arts.

Postgraduate applications in any of these areas would be welcome.

Current research interests

Since 2012, she has been an active contributor to Professor Gina Luria Walker’s international Female Biography Project which became Project Continua www.projectcontinua.org and has now morphed into an exciting venture, The New Historia (2016-). Séverine’s own contributions to the Female Biography Project has inspired the topic of her ongoing impact project, 'Learning to the see the Power of Women: cultural encounters between past and present',' – which she launched in 2016 as part of her 3-day symposium, 'Recovering Women’s Past: New Epistemologies, New Ventures'. Over the last decade, she has peer-reviewed for several scholarly journals, such as 'French Studies', 'Dalhousie French Studies', 'Forum in Modern Languages studies', and more recently for Tulsa Women’s Studies. She has also written reviews for the Plays International and Europe Magazine (since 2018-) ISSN 02682028.

Knowledge exchange

As part of her ongoing impact project, 'Learning to see the power of women: cultural encounters between past and present', she has curated several public events, such as the screenings of 'March' after Cicely Hamilton’s 'Pageant of Great Women' in 2016  and 'La Princesse de Montpensier' (Bertrand Tavernier) in 2018 as part a EU-DARIAH workshop, hosted at the University of Edinburgh.   She has also run  a series of workshops at The French Institute of Scotland (Edinburgh) on Mme de La Fayette and Mme de Villedieu, and organised  public talks, amongst which ‘Le Matrimoine’ by Aurore Evain.  More recently, she helped organise a local event for 'International Women’s Day' at the Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh, entitled: 'Thoughts and Actions of Women in History' (March, 7th, 2020), and was invited to give a  public talk ‘Women celebrating Women: From Christine de Pizan to Germaine de Staël’.

Project activity

2020: Appointed as member of the editorial board ofthe forthcoming Brepols Book Series: Early Modern Women Writers in Europe: Texts, Debates and Genealogies of Knowledge’ (Series editor, Dr Carme Font)

2020-2021:  Participant in  a French-university based Project (Université Paris-Saclay) : ‘Les représentations des harcèlements sexuels et sexistes du Moyen-âge à l’affaire Weinstein : comment étaient-ils nommés, justifiés, punis, localisés? ». Laboratoire DYPAC (DYnamiques PAtrimoniales et Culturelles) EA 2449, UVSQ et le  Centre Pierre Naville, Université d’Evry Val d’Essonne (Dr Armel Dubois-Nayt, project leader, Department of English Studies)

2019- On the editorial board of The New Historia (The New School, New York)

2018- ongoing: Scotland’s theatre correspondent and critic for Plays International and Europe Magazine

2017- ongoing: Member of The Center for The New Historia Scholars Council  and on the Editorial Board

2017- ongoing: Member of the Dariah-EU Women in History Group

2016- Ongoing impact project: 'Learning to see the Power of Women: Cultural encounters between past and present'

2011-2013: Contributed to the International Mary Hays's Female Biography Project led by Professor Gina Luria Walker, New York University (Pickering & Chatto, 2013-2014).

2009-2013: Participated in the NEWW (New Approaches to women writers Project), and participating as substitute member of the Management Committee, in COST Action IS 0901 “Women Writers in History”

2011: On SIEFAR’s scientific committee for the 2011 colloquium (La Querelle des femmes en Europe, 4, November 24-26, 2011)

2009- ongoing: On SIEFAR’s Translation Committee for the online biographical entries of early modern French women – Chief editor.

2005-2011: On SIEFAR’s administrative Committee

 

 

 

Past project grants

In 2010-2011, she was the recipient of an AHRC award for her project: Women’s spaces, voices and bodies: a cross-cultural study of female-authored prose in early modern Europe 1500-1700, from which arises her monograph 'Female-authored Prose in Early Modern Europe (1500-1700): a cross-cultural study'  (in preparation).

2008: 'Ut Pictura Poesis' and 'The Querelle des femmes' (Conference organiser - University of Edinburgh) - British Academy Grant

In 2005-2006, she  was the recipient of an IRCHSS (Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences) Post-doctoral Fellowship Award at the National University of Ireland (Maynooth): ‘The Gender of Knowledge: Madeleine-Angélique de Gomez (1684-1770) and the transmission of women’s writing in France, Britain and Ireland’.

* Alice Birch and Katie MItchell's adaptation of Marguerite Duras's 'La  Maladie de la Mort' and Peter Brook’s 'The Prisoner' (Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, August 2018) in 'Plays International and Europe', vol, 33, 7-9, pp. 26-27.

* Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' at Newhailes House Estate (Musselburgh, June 2018), in 'Plays International and Europe', vol. 33, 10-12, p. 34.

* A rehearsed reading of Muriel Spark's 'Doctors of Philosophy' (Edinburgh Theatre Festival. August 2018) in 'Plays International and Europe', vol. 33, 10-12, p. 34.

* 'Cyrano de Bergerac', a production by Dominic Hill (October 2018), 'Plays International and Europe', vol. 33, 10-12, pp. 32-3.

* 'Nora: A Doll’s House', an adaptation by Stef Smith (at Glasgow’s Tramway, Spring 2019), in 'Plays International and Europe', Summer Issue, vol. 34, 4-6, p. 30-31

* 'Solaris', an adaptation by David Greig (Royal Lyceum Theatre Autumn 2019), in 'Plays International and Europe', vol 34, 10-12, pp. 26-27.

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