Dr David McCallam

BA, MA, PhD

School of Languages and Cultures

Reader in French Eighteenth-Century Studies

d.mccallam@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 2860

Room 3.43, Jessop West

Full contact details

Dr David McCallam
School of Languages and Cultures
Room 3.43
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA

Profile

I specialise in the long eighteenth century in France, covering the French Enlightenment and the French Revolution. I have worked a lot on late eighteenth-century French literature (Chamfort, Laclos, Sade, de Maistre, etc.).

More recently, my research has focused on the environment in eighteenth-century France and Europe, specifically on dynamic geological and meteorological phenomena, such as volcanoes, avalanches and clouds. In 2019 I published a wide-ranging study on the cultural significance of volcanoes in eighteenth-century Europe. In 2022 I was awarded a Fellowship at the Camargo Foundation (Cassis, France) to undertake research into forms of socio-ecological resilience during the Marseille plague of 1720-1722.

Another recent research interest is in the poetry of the late eighteenth century and its translation. My study, André Chénier: Poetry and Revolution 1792-1794 – a bilingual edition of the last poems with new translations – was published by Legenda in 2021.

I also have an active interest in French theatre, running an extra-curricular Molière reading group and directing the annual French play as part of the University of Sheffield’s Modern Languages Drama Festival.

In 2022 I was made a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French state for ‘services rendus à la culture française’.

Qualifications

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

Research interests

Eighteenth-century French literature
Environmental humanities, particularly involving mountainous areas, in eighteenth-century Europe
The French Revolution
Early modern literature and translation

Current Research Projects:

Contagion: New Perspectives on the Marseille Plague 1720-1722
Ethnicity and Empire in the French Illyrian Provinces 1809-1813

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

Gendered and embodied responses to the French Revolution
Environmental humanities, especially in eighteenth-century Europe
Eighteenth-century travel literature, especially in the mountains and in the Adriatic
Late eighteenth-century French literature – Laclos, Sade, de Gouges, Chénier, etc.
Early modern literature and translation

Publications

Books

McCallam D (2021) André Chénier. Modern Humanities Research Association.
McCallam D (2019) Volcanoes in Eighteenth-Century Europe An Essay in Environmental Humanities. Oxford University Studies in t.
Lyle L & McCallam D (2008) Histoires De La Terre: Earth Sciences and French Culture 1740-1940. Rodopi Bv Editions.
Lyle L & McCallam EBLLAD (2008) Histoires De La Terre. Rodopi Bv Editions.
McCallam D (2008) Art de l'équivoque chez Laclos (l'). Geneva: Librarie Droz.
(2004) The Enterprise of Enlightenment. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing Inc..
McCallam D (2002) Chamfort and the [French] Revolution: A Study in Form and Ideology. Oxford, England: Voltaire Foundation.

Journal articles

McCallam D (2022) Vers une histoire de la résilience : les réponses socio-écologiques en France à l’éruption volcanique du Laki en 1783. Dix-huitième siècle, n° 54(1), 101-114.
McCallam D (2022) Bandits, pirates et hors-la-loi au temps des Lumières . Par Lise Andries. French Studies.
McCallam D (2022) Illyria Remembered. Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques, 48(1), 23-45.
McCallam D (2020) The obverse view: Another look at Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Le 7 décembre 1815, neuf heures du matin [The execution of Marshal Ney] (1868). Dix-Neuf. View this article in WRRO
McCallam D (2019) The Marquise de Merteuil poet?. Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France, 119(1), 95-102. View this article in WRRO
McCallam D (2019) La marquise de Merteuil poète?. Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France, 2019(1). View this article in WRRO
McCallam D (2019) La Marquise de Merteuil poète?. Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de la France, 119(1), 95-249.
McCallam D (2017) Orphée ou la poésie incarnée chez André Chénier. Op. Cit. Revue des Littératures et des Arts, 17(Automne 2017). View this article in WRRO
McCallam D (2017) Movement and Montage in André Chénier's "Ode à Versailles" (1793). Crossways Journal, 1(1). View this article in WRRO
Mccallam D (2015) André Chénier's ‘Dernières poésies’: Animism and the Terror. Forum for Modern Language Studies, 51(3), 304-315. View this article in WRRO
McCallam D (2014) Metrology: The Body as Measure in Les Liaisons dangereuses. Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 27(1), 83-104. View this article in WRRO
McCallam D (2012) Educational Philosophy in the French Enlightenment: From Nature to Second Nature by Natasha Gill. French Studies: a quarterly review, 66.2, 247-248.
McCallam D (2012) The terrorist Earth? Some thoughts on Sade and Baudrillard. French Cultural Studies, 23(3), 215-224.
McCallam D (2011) Chamfort Theater: 'The Young Indian' (1764); 'The Market of Smyrne' (1770); Mustapha Zeangir (1776). FR STUD, 65(2), 248-249.
McCallam D (2011) The invention of the catastrophe in the XVIII century: from divine punishment to natural disaster. J EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY, 34(1), 132-134.
McCallam D (2011) (Ac)claiming Illyria: Eighteenth-century Istria and Dalmatia in Fortis, Cassas, and Lavallée. Central Europe, 9(2), 125-141.
McCallam D (2010) L'Evénement climatique et ses représentations (XVIIe-XIXe siècle): histoire, littérature, musique et peinture - Edited by E. Le Roy Ladurie, J. Berchtold and J.-P. Sermain. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 33(3), 404-405.
McCallam D (2010) The climatic event and its representations (seventeenth-nineteenth century): history, literature, music and painting. J EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY, 33(3), 404-405.
McCallam D (2010) Credit and Credulity in Montesquieu's 'Lettres presanes'. Lumen, 28, 107-116.
McCallam D (2009) Picnic on the volcano: a cultural practice from Winckelmann to Sade. FR STUD, 63(3), 259-270.
McCallam D (2009) Tragedy Walks the Streets: The French Revolution and the Making of Modern Drama.. J EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY, 32(2), 257-258.
McCallam D (2009) Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution. FR STUD, 63(1), 94-95.
McCallam D (2007) Chamfort entre mémoires, récits de voyage et littérature moraliste. Cahiers de l'Association internationale des études francaises, 59(1), 207-220.
McCallam D (2006) Sexing 'La mode': Gender, fashion and commercial culture in old regime France.. FR STUD, 60(4), 513-514.
McCallam D (2006) Les modalités du désir dans Les Liaisons dangereuses. Dix-huitième siècle, 38(1), 589-589.
McCallam D (2006) Exploring volcanoes in the late French Enlightenment: The savant and the sublime. British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 29(1).
McCallam D (2006) The volcano: From enlightenment to revolution. NOTTINGHAM FR STUD, 45(1), 52-68.
McCallam D (2005) Destroying to build: Morale and architecture in Chamfort. Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 2005(7), 327-338.
McCallam D (2005) Jean-Francois Marmontel: an exemplary intellectual in the Age of Enlightenment.. FR STUD, 59(1), 97-98.
McCallam D (2004) Passion, politics and philosophie: Rediscovering J.-P. Brissot. FR STUD, 58(2), 265-266.
McCallam D (2004) Stendhal, Sieyès and the literary aristocracy. French Studies Bulletin, 25(91), 10-12.
McCallam D (2003) The nature of libertine promises in Laclos's Les 'Liaisons Dangereuses'. MOD LANG REV, 98, 857-869. View this article in WRRO
McCallam D (2003) 'Emile' or the figures of fiction. FR STUD, 57(3), 393-394.
McCallam D (2003) Encountering and countering the 'uncanny' in Descartes's 'Meditations'. FR STUD, 57(2), 135-147.
McCallam D (2003) Forging Rousseau: Print, commerce and cultural manipulation in the late Enlightenment. FR STUD, 57(1), 88-90.
McCallam D (2002) Une forme frondeuse: the function of discontinuity in La Rochefoucauld's maximes.. Seventeenth Century Fr Stud, 24, 239-248. View this article in WRRO
McCallam D (2002) Three deaths and Enlightenment thought: Hume, Johnson, Marat. FR STUD, 56(4), 528-528.
McCallam D (2002) Jean-Francois Marmontel (1723-1799): ten studies. FR STUD, 56(3), 405-406.
McCallam D (2002) Waxing revolutionary: Reflections on a raid on a waxworks at the outbreak of the French revolution. French History, 16(2), 153-173. View this article in WRRO
Mccallam D (2002) Chamfort, doctor of morals: The maxim and the medical aphorism in late eighteenth-century France. British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 25(1), 103-111. View this article in WRRO
MCCALLAM D (2001) REVIEWS. French Studies, LV(4), 546-547.
McCallam D (2001) Vauvenargues: the philosophy of active force - Criticism and anthropology. FR STUD, 55(4), 546-547.
MCCALLAM D (2001) REVIEWS. French Studies, LV(3), 439-440.
McCallam D (2001) Outline of literary semiotics. FR STUD, 55(3), 439-440.
McCallam D (2001) Interpretations of Condorcet: Symbols and concepts (1794-1894). MOD LANG REV, 96, 828-828.
MCCALLAM D (2001) REVIEWS. French Studies, LV(2), 289-289.
McCallam D (2001) Paradox in linguistics and in literature. FR STUD, 55(2), 289-289.
McCallam D (2001) Cast in a new light: Clichés in Proust's 'Combray'. French Studies Bulletin, 22(78), 15-17.
McCallam D (2000) Les « petites phrases » dans la politique anglo-saxonne. Communication et langages, 126(1), 52-59.
MCCALLAM D (2000) REVIEWS. French Studies, LIV(1), 109-110.
McCallam D (2000) From authority to authorship: Chamfort's maxims and the transferral of power in late eighteenth-century France. TRIVIUM, 32, 45-58.
McCallam D (2000) Tradition and modernity of the aphorism: Cioran, Reverdy, Scutenaire, Jourdan, Chazal. FR STUD, 54(1), 109-110.
McCallam D () Politics in the Marketplace: Work, Gender, and Citizenship in Revolutionary France. By Katie Jarvis. French Studies.
McCallam D () Teaching Representations of the French Revolution. Edited by Julia Douthwaite Viglione, Antoinette Sol, and Catriona Seth. French Studies.

Chapters

McCallam D (2020) The Enlightenment Redux: Autonomy in Todorov, Glucksmann, and Onfray (pp. 55-73). Boydell and Brewer Limited
McCallam D (2019) The Continent of History, The Cambridge History of French Thought (pp. 249-255). Cambridge University Press
McCallam D (2017) From Analogies to Patterns: Images in French and British Geological Texts (1760-1800) In Beck L & Ionescu C (Ed.), Visualizing the Text: From Manuscript Culture to the Age of Caricature University of Delaware Press View this article in WRRO
McCallam D (2017) Third Person Singular: the Liberation of the Marquise de Sade, 1789-1790, Gender and Politics in the Age if Letter-Writing, 1750–2000 (pp. 55-66). Routledge
McCallam D (2016) Dangerous Connections, 1784 : et si traduire c’était séduire, Laclos après Laclos (pp. 11-20). Hermann
McCallam D (2012) Xavier de Maistre and Angelology In Oergel M (Ed.), (Re-)Writing the Radical: Enlightenment, Revolution and Cultural Transfer in 1790s Britain, France and Germany Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
McCallam D (2012) L'avalance au tournant des Lumieres In Astbury K & Seth C (Ed.), Le Tournant des Lumieres (pp. 17-32). Paris: Classiques Garnier.
McCallam D (2012) Face à la mort blanche: conceptions du froid extrême dans les avalanches et dans les neiges au XVIIIe siècle In Berchtold J, Sermain JP, Vasak A & Le Roy Ladurie E (Ed.), Canicules et froids extrêmes. L’évènement climatique et ses représentations (pp. 97-108). Paris: Editions Hermann.
McCallam D (2011) Quelques réflexions sur la figure de la chaîne au XVIIIe siècle: en théorie et en pratique In Kobi V (Ed.), De la théorie à l'action. Les savoirs et leur mise en œuvre au siècle des Lumières (pp. 123-134). Geneva: Slaktine.
McCallam D (2009) Concevoir l'Europe au XVIIIe siècle selon sa géologie: le cas des volcans In Piccardo L (Ed.), L'idée d'Europe au XVIIIe siècle (pp. 231-242). Honoré Champion
McCallam D & Rotherham ID (2008) Peat Bogs, Marshes and Fen as Disputed Landscapes in Late Eighteenth-Century France and England In Lyle L & McCallam D (Ed.), Histoires De La Terre (pp. 75-88). Rodopi Bv Editions
McCallam D (2008) Physiocrats and barbarians: moral economies in Chamfort's comedies In Cronk N & Renwick J (Ed.), Voltaire and the 1760s (pp. 65-75). Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.
McCallam D (2008) Encountering and Countering the 'Uncanny' in Descartes's Méditations, Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, Volume 150 (pp. 107-114). Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale.
McCallam D (2006) Anecdote et Lumières: Le Cas de Chamfort, Interdisciplinarity-Qu'est-ce que les Lumières?-La reconnaissance au dix-huitième siècle (pp. 185-217). Oxford, England: Voltaire Foundation.
McCallam D (2005) Démolir pour édifier: Morale et architecture chez Chamfort, Correspondence-Dialogue-History of Ideas (pp. 327-338). Oxford, England: Voltaire Foundation.
McCallam D (2000) The Significance of Scars in Some Writings of La Rochefoucauld, Corporeal Practices: (Re)figuring the Body in French Studies (pp. 33-43). Oxford, England: Peter Lang Publishing Inc..

Book reviews

McCallam D (2015) Choosing Terror: Virtue, Friendship, and Authenticity in the French Revolution, by Marisa Linton. The English Historical Review, 130(543), 468-469.

Conference proceedings papers

McCallam D (2017) Nuages et Nuances révolutionnaires: la Fête de la Fédération, le 14 juillet 1790. Les Nuages, du tournant des Lumières au crépuscule du Romantisme (pp 67-81). Paris, 11 April 2017 - 16 April 2017. View this article in WRRO

Research group

Isabel Richardson (part-time 2018-): Comparative translation study of French-English translations of Twelfth-Century French texts (c.1915-2015)

Rebecca Herd (part-time 2016-): ‘Gender and Violence in Works by Seventeenth-Century French Women Playwrights’

Harsh Trivedi (2017-2022): ‘Les chefs-d’œuvre inconnus: une étude des œuvres fictives dans La Comédie humaine’. Successful completion.

Kirsty Hemsworth (2013-2017): ‘Translation and/as Empathy: Mapping Translation Shifts in 9/11 Fiction’. Successful completion.

Morgane Guinard (2013-2016): ‘La Parabole du Savoir Interdit, ou les interdits philosophiques et religieux sur la connaissance en France au XVIIIe siècle’. Successful completion.

Carla Almanza-Galvez (2012-2016): ‘Utopian Narrative in Eighteenth-Century Spain: Generic Frameworks and Social Reformism’. Successful completion. Winner of the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland Postgraduate Publication Prize 2017.

Anna Jenkin (2012-2015): 'Perceptions of the Murderess in London and Paris, 1674-1789'. Successful completion.

I have also supervised numerous MA Dissertations on various topics including science/superstition in Maupassant (Liz Trueman, Winner Maria A Salgado Essay Prize 2017), women’s practices of imitation in the French Revolution, the figure of Robespierre in post-revolutionary memoirs, Gothic intermediality, historical and contemporary translation studies.

Teaching activities

Postgraduate:

MDL6048 Advanced Translation from French
MDL622 Research Methods in Modern Languages

Undergraduate:

MDL115 Intersections: Text, Image, Thought in the French-Speaking World
MDL107 Understanding Modern France
FRE21001 Writing the French Revolution
MDL319 Littérature et environnement en France aux 18e-19e siècles

Professional activities

Member of the Executive Board of the Society for Early Modern French Studies (2021-)
Member of the Editorial Board of Eighteenth-Century Fiction (2016-2020)
Member of the Executive Board of the Society for French Studies (2014-2020)
Member of the Voltaire Foundation Board of Management, University of Oxford (2013-2016)
Member of the Editorial Board, Journal Arrêt sur scène/Scene Focus, Université de Montpellier-III (2012-)
Member of the Editorial Board of French Studies (2009-18)
Member of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Member of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Member of the European Society for Environmental History
External Examiner for PhD Thesis: Queen’s University Belfast; University of Edinburgh/Paris III Sorbonne-Nouvelle; Murdoch University, Australia; King's College London (x 2); Université de Lorraine
External Examiner for French, University of Edinburgh (2008-2011), University of Cambridge (2011-2014), King's College London (2014-18); University of St-Andrews (2021-)
Referee for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)

Outreach activities

Invited online talk for Museums Sheffield about a late nineteenth-century French painting held in their collections, Narcisse Chaillou’s intriguing Le Dépeceur de rats (1871):

https://www.museums-sheffield.org.uk/whats-on/events/2020/11/lunchtime-talk-modernity-and-myth

Participation in a podcast for The Conversation, tackling the issue of how societies recover from major crises or shocks. In this case, the terrible Lisbon Earthquake of November 1755:

https://theconversation.com/the-earthquake-that-shocked-europe-how-lisbon-recovered-after-1755-recovery-podcast-series-part-two-140358

A vidcast made with Beth Evans (BA, MA in Screen Translation, Sheffield) and her creative subtitling start-up Subtxt:

Vidcast on the function of foreign languages in James Bond novels

A video made with Dr Amanda Crawley-Jackson and the Graves Gallery, Sheffield, on their artwork, Le 7 décembre 1815, neuf heures du matin [The Execution of Marshal Ney] by Jean-Léon Gérôme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=0Pih8m5ievs

Participation in the Radio 4 programme In Our Time on Marie-Antoinette:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000117y

Co-scripting of a video for The School of Life on the Romanian-French philosopher Emil Cioran:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMOM34XEi2k&t=1s

A poetry translation workshop entitled ‘Smash the Text’, run by the award-winning poet, Eleanor Brown, involving second - and final-year students in group translations of André Chénier poems written in the Terror.

The British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Teaching Prize (2013) for an innovative production of a short play by Marivaux, performed by students reading the text as part of my final-year module ‘Le Siècle des Lumières’. Performances in Sheffield and Montpellier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6cK0hokfZs&t=1

Scripting, directing and recording a student production of Maupassant’s Boule de suif (1880) as a radio play in close collaboration with Paul Henderson of the Sheffield-based TheFatCadillac Ranch Studio:

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/slc/news/students-create-radio-play-maupassants-boule-de-suif

Invited online talk for Museums Sheffield about a late nineteenth-century French painting held in their collections: Narcisse Chaillou’s intriguing Le Dépeceur de rats (1871), depicting a young boy selling rat meat in the Siege of Paris of 1870:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTl3LdcSmgM&t=1s