Marion Schmid (LèsL Sorbonne Nouvelle, PhD Cantab, Habilitation à diriger les recherches)

Professor of French Literature and Film

Biography

Background

A graduate of the Sorbonne Nouvelle (LèsL) and of the University of Cambridge (PhD), and a former Junior Research Fellow at Christ’s College Cambridge, Marion joined French and Francophone Studies at the University of Edinburgh in 1997. She has held Visiting Professorships at the École des Arts de la Sorbonne, Université Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne (Easter 2023), in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of São Paulo (Summer 2013), and in the Comparative Literature Department at the Université François Rabelais, Tours (Winter Semester 2003). She became a Professor of French Literature and Film in 2012.

Marion has published extensively on French and Francophone literature and visual culture of the modern and contemporary period, with a particular focus on the work of Marcel Proust, New Wave and post-New Wave cinema, screen adaptation and intermediality.  She is the author of Intermedial Dialogues: The French New Wave and the Other Arts (2019), Chantal Akerman (2010), Proust dans la décadence (2008), Proust at the Movies (2005, with Martine Beugnet) and Processes of Literary Creation: Flaubert and Proust (1998).

Together with Prof Hugues Azérad (University of Cambridge) she co-edits the book series European Connections: Studies in Comparative Literature, Intermediality and Aesthetics:

https://www.peterlang.com/view/serial/EC

With Dr Kim Knowles (Aberystwyth University) she leads the International Research Network 'Film and the Other Arts: Intermediality, Medium Specificity, Creativity' (AHRC-funded, 2015-17). The project explores new directions for the study of cinematic intermediality, focusing on the ways in which the moving image is shaped and revitalised by artistic cross-fertilisation.

Project website: http://www.filmandarts-network.hss.ed.ac.uk

Together with Dr Fabien Arribert-Narce she co-directs the MSc Intermediality: Literature, Film and the Arts in Dialogue, the PhD Intermediality, and the Research Strand Intermediality at the University of Edinburgh:

https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/intermediality/

Marion is a member of the international Proust research group at the Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris), a member of the Réseau Pôle Proust (CRAL, CNRS-EHESS), and a founding member of the Franco-Scottish Research Network in the Humanities and Social Sciences. She serves on the editorial board of Modern Languages Open as well as on the advisory board of the Center for Cinematic Intermediality and Visual Culture (Sapientia University, Cluj-Napoca). She has been British correspondent for the Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France (2004-2014),  has served on the editorial board of French Studies (2009-19), and has been a member of the Academic Council for the Cultural Studies in Literary Interzones PhD programme, the first Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate Programme selected and funded by the EU for its innovative and challenging approach to the Humanities (2009-2017). She is an international expert for the Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.- FNRS), Belgium.

She is currently Vice-President of the Association of University Professors and Heads of French+ (AUPHF+), after stepping down from her role as President (2018-2021). Between 2010 and 2014, and again in the second semester of 2015/16, she was Head of French at Edinburgh.

In 2016 she was named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes académiques by the French government in recognition of her services to French culture.

Undergraduate teaching

Regular contribution to pre-Honours French and Francophone literature, culture and language courses

Specialist Honours Option Courses:​

  • Literature and Film: The Challenge of Adaptation
  • The French New Wave
  • The Cinema of Chantal Akerman: Memory, History, Desire
  • Proust and the Art of Being Modern

DELC Common course

'Migration, Diaspora, Exile: The Politics of Representation' (team-taught)

 

Postgraduate teaching

MSc Intermediality and MSc Comparative Literature

  • Specialist Option 'Film and the Other Arts' (team-taught)
  • Specialist Option 'Decadence in European Art and Literature, 1857-1914'
  • Lectures and Seminars for 'Theories of Intermediality', 'Research Methods in Intermediality' and 'Theories and Methods of Literary Study'

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Areas of interest for supervision

Having long experience in MSc and PhD supervision, Marion particularly welcomes postgraduate applications relating to her research interests in French and Francophone literature and film, Intermediality, Adaptation Studies, the French New Wave and post-New Wave, Marcel Proust and Chantal Akerman. 

Current PhD students supervised

Julia Larsen, 'The Monster, the Body, and the Medium: Reimagining Monstrosity for Post-Millennial America'

Lucy McMillan, 'The Femme Fatale in Contemporary Literature and the Moving Image: Adaptation, Intersectionality, Intermediality'

Sirui Xu, ‘Art as Life, Life as Art: Screening the Lives and Works of Artists (1968-2023)’

Qingru Yang, 'Film Noir and Adaptation: Influence, Reimagination, Hybridisation'

Yufeng Li, 'Beyond the Human: Posthumanism in Contemporary Cinema'

Matthis Hervieux, 'Franco-Japanese Intermedial Encounters in Roland Barthes, Michel Butor and Dany Laferrière'

Xingtong Zhou: 'Intermedial Life (Re-)Writing: Photography in Eileen Chang, Yoko Tawada, and Marguerite Duras'

Benoît Loiret, 'Music in Yves Bonnefoy'

 

 

 

Past PhD students supervised

Recent Students Supervised

Qianzhi Shan, 'The Chinese Sixth Generation as a Type of New Wave Cinema: Influences, Reworkings, New Openings'

Beata Migut, 'Exophonic Word-and-Image Relations in Vladimir Nabokov, Yoko Tawada and Bruno Schulz'

François Giraud, 'Gesture in Post-New Wave Cinema'

Shuang Li, 'The Young Proust and the Visual Arts: Vision, Perception, Aesthetics'

Shuangyi Li, ‘Proust in China: Translation, Reception, Rewriting’

Research summary

Marion's main research interests include modern French literature, New Wave and post-New Wave cinema, the intersections between film, literature and the visual arts, the adaptation of literary works for the screen and stage, literature and art of the fin de siècle, as well as the process of artistic creation. She has published extensively on French and Francophone literature and film, with a special focus on Proust, Chantal Akerman and the New Wave. 

 

Her books include 

- Intermedial Dialogues: The French New Wave and the Other Arts (Edinburgh University Press, 2019)

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-intermedial-dialogues.html

https://doi.org/10.1080/17411548.2020.1851988

- Chantal Akerman (Manchester University Press, 2010)

- Proust dans la décadence (Champion, 2008)

- Proust at the Movies (Ashgate, 2005, co-authored with Martine Beugnet)

- Processes of Literary Creation: Flaubert and Proust (Legenda, 1998).

 

She has co-edited the following special journal numbers and collections of essays:

- 'Marcel Proust e la significazione', E|C - Rivista dell'Associazione Italiana di Studi Semiotici, 33 (2021)

https://mimesisjournals.com/ojs/index.php/ec

- Cinematic Intermediality: Theory and Practice (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021)

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-cinematic-intermediality.html

- Chantal Akerman: Afterlives (Cambridge: Legenda, 2019)

http://www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Chantal-Akerman

- Au seuil de la modernité: Proust, Literature and the Arts. Essays in Memory of Richard Bales (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011)

- La Création en acte: devenir de la critique génétique (Rodopi, 2007)

 

 

Knowledge exchange

She regularly introduces film screenings and conducts Q&As.

Together with colleagues at the University Paris 8, in 2022 she co-organised a retrospective and conference on the 'secret child of the New Wave', Guy Gilles:

https://www-8etdemi.univ-paris8.fr/je-croyais-que-la-vie-etait-un-poeme-guy-gilles/

In November 2012, she curated a retrospective of Chantal Akerman’s films for the 20thanniversary edition of the French Film Festival UK in participating cinemas in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London. Marion introduced screenings in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London, hosted a live Skype Q&A with the director at Filmhouse, and led audience debates at Glasgow Film Theatre and Ciné Lumière. The retrospective closed with a Writing Competition sponsored by the Brussels and Wallonia Tourist Office and judged by a panel from the University of Edinburgh. The prize winners, Ashvin Devasundaram and Jacqueline Thompson, were each awarded a trip to the Namur International Festival of French-Speaking Film.

Affiliated research centres

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