Dr David McCallam
BA, MA, PhD
School of Languages and Cultures
Reader in French Eighteenth-Century Studies

+44 114 222 2860
Full contact details
School of Languages and Cultures
Room 3.43
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
- Profile
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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
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- MPhil, PhD (Cambridge)
- MA (Warwick)
- BA (London Metropolitan)
- Research interests
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- 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
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Books
- André Chénier. Modern Humanities Research Association.
Journal articles
- 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.
- Bandits, pirates et hors-la-loi au temps des Lumières . Par Lise Andries. French Studies.
- Illyria Remembered. Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques, 48(1), 23-45.
- 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
- The Marquise de Merteuil poet?. Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France, 119(1), 95-102. View this article in WRRO
- View this article in WRRO
- La Marquise de Merteuil poète?. Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de la France, 119(1), 95-249.
- View this article in WRRO
- View this article in WRRO
- André Chénier's ‘Dernières poésies’: Animism and the Terror. Forum for Modern Language Studies, 51(3), 304-315. View this article in WRRO
- Metrology: The Body as Measure in Les Liaisons dangereuses. Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 27(1), 83-104. View this article in WRRO
- Educational Philosophy in the French Enlightenment: From Nature to Second Nature by Natasha Gill. French Studies: a quarterly review, 66.2, 247-248.
- The terrorist Earth? Some thoughts on Sade and Baudrillard. French Cultural Studies, 23(3), 215-224.
- Chamfort Theater: 'The Young Indian' (1764); 'The Market of Smyrne' (1770); Mustapha Zeangir (1776). FR STUD, 65(2), 248-249.
- The invention of the catastrophe in the XVIII century: from divine punishment to natural disaster. J EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY, 34(1), 132-134.
- (Ac)claiming Illyria: Eighteenth-century Istria and Dalmatia in Fortis, Cassas, and Lavallée. Central Europe, 9(2), 125-141.
- 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.
- Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution. FR STUD, 63(1), 94-95.
- Chamfort entre mémoires, récits de voyage et littérature moraliste. Cahiers de l'Association internationale des études francaises, 59(1), 207-220.
- Sexing 'La mode': Gender, fashion and commercial culture in old regime France.. FR STUD, 60(4), 513-514.
- Les modalités du désir dans Les Liaisons dangereuses. Dix-huitième siècle, 38(1), 589-589.
- Exploring volcanoes in the late French Enlightenment: The savant and the sublime. British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 29(1).
- Jean-Francois Marmontel: an exemplary intellectual in the Age of Enlightenment.. FR STUD, 59(1), 97-98.
- Stendhal, Sieyès and the literary aristocracy. French Studies Bulletin, 25(91), 10-12.
- View this article in WRRO
- View this article in WRRO
- 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
- 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
- REVIEWS. French Studies, LV(4), 546-547.
- REVIEWS. French Studies, LV(3), 439-440.
- REVIEWS. French Studies, LV(2), 289-289.
- Cast in a new light: Clichés in Proust's 'Combray'. French Studies Bulletin, 22(78), 15-17.
- Les « petites phrases » dans la politique anglo-saxonne. Communication et langages, 126(1), 52-59.
- REVIEWS. French Studies, LIV(1), 109-110.
- Politics in the Marketplace: Work, Gender, and Citizenship in Revolutionary France. By Katie Jarvis. French Studies.
- Teaching Representations of the French Revolution. Edited by Julia Douthwaite Viglione, Antoinette Sol, and Catriona Seth. French Studies.
Chapters
- The Enlightenment Redux: Autonomy in Todorov, Glucksmann, and Onfray (pp. 55-73). Boydell and Brewer Limited
- The Continent of History, The Cambridge History of French Thought (pp. 249-255). Cambridge University Press
- View this article in WRRO
- 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
- Dangerous Connections, 1784 : et si traduire c’était séduire, Laclos après Laclos (pp. 11-20). Hermann
Book reviews
- Choosing Terror: Virtue, Friendship, and Authenticity in the French Revolution, by Marisa Linton. The English Historical Review, 130(543), 468-469.
Conference proceedings papers
- View this article in WRRO
- André Chénier. Modern Humanities Research Association.
- Research group
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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
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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
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- 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:
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: