Reading Kate Chopin through contemporary French feminist theory

Book description: Although she enjoyed only modest success during her lifetime, Kate Chopin is now recognised as a unique voice in American literature. Her seminal novel, The Awakening, published in 1899, explored new and startling territory, and stunned readers with its frank depiction of the limits of marriage and motherhood. Chopin's aesthetic tastes and cultural influences were drawn from both the European and American traditions, and her manipulation of her 'foreignness' contributed to the composition of a complex voice that was strikingly different to that of her contemporaries. The essays in this Companion treat a wide range of Chopin's stories and novels, drawing her relationship with other writers, genres and literary developments, and pay close attention to the transatlantic dimension of her work. The result is a collection that brings a fresh perspective to Chopin's writing, one that will appeal to researchers and students of American, nineteenth-century, and feminist literature. • Covers all of Chopin’s oeuvre in its historical and international literary context • Offers a variety of theoretical approaches to reading her work • Emphasises for the first time the transatlantic dimension of her fictio

'White' by Marie Darrieussecq: a review

My name is white: Michael Worton is enthralled by Marie Darrieussecq's Antarctic meditations

Of models and metrics: the UK debate on assessing humanities research

Professor Michael Worton (UCL) is the Chair of an expert group set up in July 2006 by the Arts & Humanities Research Council to examine alternative ways to assess research. The group has developed a complex metrics-based system using quantitative information about a university department’s research activity and research outcomes to determine how to distribute billions of pounds in research funding distributed to UK Universities in the future. This paper, on the background to the group's work, was presented to a conference on Peer Review hosted by the European Science Foundation (ESF), the European Heads of Research Councils (EuroHORCs) and the Czech Science Foundation (Grantová agentura eské republiky, GA R), held in Prague on 12-13 October 2006. See also UCL News, 9 September 2006. Arts metrics plan revealed. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/inthenews/itn06091

We need to put the case for languages, and universities should lead the way

Michael Worton, who has chronicled the beleaguered state of modern languages, argues that in an age of global citizenship it must be revitalised

New challenges in education

Book description: Dialogue is a privileged method in Luce Irigaray’s work. Covering all the key topics that have been central to her work in the last thirty years, this book offers an essential insight into Irigaray’s career as one of the world’s most important contemporary thinkers. Topics and theorists approached include: philosophy, in particular Hegel, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze; language as information, communication-between and artistic expression; universality and difference; natural and cultural identities; motherhood and gendered subjectivities; cultivation of desire and love; building houses and sharing lives; being two and being in community; the other and others; relational identity and education; globalisation and ethics; politics and human rights; spirituality and religion; practice and culture of Yoga; and, of course, being and becoming woman. Ideal for students seeking an overview of Irigaray’s thought, as well as those already familiar with her work, this collection brings together for the first time Irigaray’s conversations over the years with the people who have been involved in studying and researching her enormous contribution to Continental Philosophy, Spirituality, Cultural Theory and Feminism