Dr David McCallam

Reader in French Eighteenth-Century Studies

Telephone: (0114) 222 2860

Qualifications

BA (London Metropolitan), MA (Warwick), MPhil, PhD (Cambridge)

Biography

After graduating from City of London Polytechnic (now part of London Metropolitan University) in 1990 with BA First Class Honours and a Distinction in Spoken French, I taught French at London Guildhall University for a year. I then took an MA in Philosophy and Literature at the University of Warwick (1992) and worked in Oxford for a while before teaching English in Hungary for two years (1993-95). On my return to Britain, I completed an MPhil in European Literature at the University of Cambridge (1996). Specializing in late eighteenth-century French literature and politics, I completed my PhD, also at Cambridge, in 2000. I joined the Department of French at Sheffield in 1999.

Research Interests

Eighteenth-century French literature
Cultural history in late eighteenth-century France
Mountain exploration, particularly involving volcanoes and avalanches, in eighteenth-century Europe
The French Revolution, conceptions of Terror, representations of the guillotine
The French moralist tradition, from La Rochefoucauld to Cioran
History of ideas in the eighteenth century

Current and Recent Research Projects

Le Mauvais Succès: ou ce que signifie l’échec dans la fiction française du XVIIIe siècle – essai, focussing on conceptions of failure in eighteenth-century French literature, with case studies of texts by Montesquieu, Voltaire and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (to be completed 2014/15)
Mountains of Fire: Volcanoes in Eighteenth-Century European Culture – monograph, (to be completed 2013)
Performance of a highly abridged version of La Fausse Suivante (1724) by Marivaux, followed by round-table discussion, as part of the ‘colloque-festival’ ‘La Scène de reconnaissance dans les théâtres français et anglais XVIe-XVIIIe siècles’, Université de Montpellier III, 4-6 April 2012
Research paper informed by this student-based performance for the Society for French Studies annual conference, University of Exeter, 2-4 July 2012

Key Recent Publications

‘Eighteenth-Century French Studies : A Special Virtual Issue’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (April 2012)
‘Face à la mort blanche: conceptions du froid extrême dans les avalanches et dans les neiges au XVIIIe siècle’, in Canicules et froids extrêmes. L’Événement climatique et ses représentations, ed. Jacques Berchtold et al (Paris : Éditions Hermann, 2012), pp. 97-108
‘(Ac)claiming Illyria: Eighteenth-Century Istria and Dalmatia in Fortis, Cassas, and Lavallée’, Central Europe, 9:2 (Nov 2011), 125-141
‘A Manifesto for the Arts and Humanities: The Example of Candide’, 'Atelier de théorie littéraire', Fabula (mars 2011)
‘Credit and Credulity in Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes’, Lumen, 28 (2010), 107-116
‘Pique-niquer sur le volcan: une pratique culturelle de Winckelmann à Sade’, French Studies, 63:3 (July 2009), 259-270
L’Art de l’équivoque chez Laclos (Genève : Droz, 2008)

Full list of publications

Professional Activities

Member of the Editorial Board of French Studies (2009-)
Member of the Executive Committee of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (2006-2009)
Member of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Member of the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
External Examiner for PhD Thesis, Queen’s Belfast, Edinburgh/Paris III Sorbonne-Nouvelle
External Examiner for French, University of Cambridge (2011-)

Postgraduate Research

I would be interested in supervising postgraduate research in the following areas:

The French Revolution, notions of 'Terror', libertine responses to the Revolution
Eighteenth-century earth sciences and mountain exploration
Eighteenth-century travel literature, especially in the Alps, Pyrenees or Balkans
Late eighteenth-century French literature – Laclos, Sade, Mercier, Chénier, etc.
Cultural history and the history of ideas in eighteenth-century France

Teaching

Postgraduate

HSTT53 MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies (French Revolution)
MDL6006 MA in European Gender Studies: From Feminism to Gender Studies
FRE6663/4 MA in French Studies: Constructions of the Body
FRE6700 MA in French Studies: Advanced Translation from French
MDL6003 Dissertation/Thesis Support

Undergraduate

FRE105 Classic French Narratives in Translation, Les Liaisons dangereuses
FRE108 - Lectures on Voltaire, Candide
FRE109/110 French Language and Communication Skills
FRE239/240 Actualités françaises
FRE247/248 Writing the Revolution I & II
FRE301/302 French Language and Communication Skills
FRE363/364 Le Siècle des Lumières I & II