Dr Renate Günther

Senior Lecturer

Telephone: (0114) 222 2861

Email : r.gunther@sheffield.ac.uk

Qualifications

BA in French and Spanish (Bradford), PhD (Lancaster)

Biography

Originally from Germany, I have lived in the UK since 1974. After working as a translator for a number of years, I completed my first degree in French and Spanish at the University of Bradford in 1982. I was subsequently appointed lectrice d’anglais at the University of Toulouse-LeMirail where I taught for a year, before embarking on my PhD thesis on the work of Marguerite Duras. I was a temporary lecturer at Bradford in 1988 and joined the French Department at Sheffield in 1989.

Research Interests

My main research interests include:

• the novels and films of Marguerite Duras
• Contemporary French cinema
• French feminist theories, in particular Irigaray and Wittig

Current and Recent Research Projects

• Psychoanalytic studies of Duras, with particular emphasis on
  Jung and Klein
• representations of ageing in contemporary French cinema
• the relationship between fiction and theory in the work of Monique Wittig

Key Recent Publications

Books:

• Marguerite Duras, French Film Directors, MUP, 2002
• Marguerite Duras: Le Ravissement de Lol V Stein and L’Amant, Grant & Cutler, 1993

Book Chapters and Journal Articles :

• ‘Etrangers à nous-mêmes: Identity as Alterity in the Work of Marguerite Duras’, in:
  B. Lebrun & J. Lovecy (eds), Une et Divisible? Plural Identities in Modern France, Peter Lang,
  2010, pp. 211-222.
• ‘Images archétypes et voix archaïques : les origines du cinéma de Marguerite Duras’,
  in : M. El Maizi & G. Stimpson (eds), Marguerite Duras: l’écriture dans tous ses états,
  Special Issue on M. Duras, Ed. Minard, Série Lettres Modernes, Paris, 2007.
• Une femme qui boit, c’est scandaleux : Duras and female alcoholism’, in : M. Allison &
  Y. Rocheron (eds), The Resilient Female Body : Health and Malaise in Twentieth-Century
  France, Peter Lang, 2007, pp. 87-100.
• ‘Archetypal figures in Marguerite Duras’s India Song: A Jungian Perspective, Studies in French Cinema, Vol. 3, no. 2, Winter 2003, pp. 83-92.
• ‘Fluid Boundaries: The Violence of non-Identity in Marguerite Duras’s Representations of Female Relationships’, South Central Review (Texas A & M. University, USA), Vol. 19, no. 4,
  Spring 2003, pp. 85-102.

Full List of Publications

Professional Activities

• External Examiner at the University of Leicester, 2009-

Postgraduate Research

• 2006 Joanna Elfving-Huang: ‘An Irigarayan Reading of Korean Women’s Writing’
• 2002 Sophie Bélot: ‘Representations of Gender in French Advertising’

Projects for postgraduate research:

• Fiction and theory in the work of Monique Wittig
• Psychoanalytic readings of the novels and films of Marguerite Duras
• Representations of Ageing in Contemporary French Cinema

Teaching

Postgraduate

• MA in European Gender Studies: Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘Le Deuxième sexe’
• MA in French Studies, core module Gender Theories II : the work of Beauvoir, Irigaray, Wittig and Kristeva

Undergraduate

• FRE109/110 French Language and Communication I & II
• MDL103 European Cinema
• FRE301/302 French Language and Communication V & VI
• FRE223/224 Twentieth Century French Literature and Thought
• FRE229/330 Actualités Françaises
• FRE329/330 Feminism in Contemporary French Culture
• FRE305/306 Film Studies