Véronique carries out research in three main areas: North American and European modern literatures, translation theory, and medical humanities.
Recent publications include a monograph establishing how the works of nineteenth and twentieth-century French authors, from Arthur Rimbaud and André Gide to Jean Genet and Henri Michaux, shaped the novels and poems of William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac in US America, and a special issue of Translation and Literature she edited on ‘literary back-translations’.
Her second monograph, which is under contract with Edinburgh University Press, offers a comparative analysis of works by seven modernist writers-translators who experienced mental health issues: Friedrich Hölderlin, Gérard de Nerval, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, T.S. Eliot, Hilda Doolittle, and Antonin Artaud. It theorizes translation as a form of introspection affecting the identity and the literary work of writers-translators.
Her current research project investigates the therapeutic value of the translation process for professional literary translators and NHS patients.
19th and 20th French Literature and Drama, Modernism and Postmodernism, French Critical Thought, Francophone Literature and Culture (Quebec), Literary Translation, Translation Theory, Narratives of Illness, Medical Humanities
I have been lecturing in French and Translation Studies at Lancaster since 2017. Prior to Lancaster, I have taught French Critical Thought for the Vassar-Wesleyan Program in Paris while completing my PhD on modern playwrights Antonin Artaud and Jean Genet at the University of Paris VII. I have also taught French and Comparative Literature as Visiting Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University in the US and have been Postdoctoral Fellow in the Research Institute for the Humanities at Keele University (2012-14).
At Lancaster, I teach the first-year context submodule on "The Great War and The Avant-Gardes"; final-year translation seminars (French into English); and a specialist final-year module, "French Modernisms and Madness." I also lecture on the MA in Translation Studies and supervise MAs and PhDs. I have served as Director of Studies, Convenor of the department’s final-year dissertation module, as well as Lead Reviewer for the Faculty’s Research Ethics Committee.
I have published several articles and book chapters on Guillaume Apollinaire, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Jean Genet, and Antonin Artaud, and am the author of The French Genealogy of The Beat Generation: William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac’s Appropriations of Modern Literature, from Rimbaud to Michaux (Bloomsbury, 2017).
Recent publications include journal articles in two special issues I have edited: "French and Beat Literatures: A History of Mutual Appropriation, Reception, and Translation" (L'Esprit Créateur, vol. 58, no. 4, 2018), and "Literary Back-Translations" (Translation and Literature, vol. 29, no. 3, 2020).
At the intersection of Comparative Literature, Translation Studies, and Medical Humanities, my current research projects include the co-organisation with Liz Brewster of a conference opening a dialogue between mental health practitioners and literary translators, and the publication of my second monograph, The Therapeutic Value of Literary Translation: Artaud, Eliot, H.D., Hölderlin, Nerval, Proust and Woolf (forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press).
2012-14: Postdoctoral Fellowship, awarded by the SSHRC (Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council)
2010: Research Grant, awarded by the McMahon Memorial Fund of Wesleyan University, for the organization of the colloquium Jean Genet politique, une éthique de l’imposture, Paris, Théâtre de l’Odéon
2009-10: Doctoral Scholarship, awarded by the FQRSC (Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Société et la Culture)
2007-10: Doctoral Scholarship, awarded by the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères à Paris
2007-10: Doctoral Scholarship, awarded by the SSHRC (Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council)
FREN101: The Great War and The Avant-Gardes
FREN101: French oral seminars
FREN301: Translation (French into English)
DELC320: Final Year Dissertation (convenor)
DELC349: French Modernisms and Madness
DELC416: MA Academic and Practical Methods in Translation
DELC420: MA Translation Project
I convene the undergraduate final-year dissertation module, and have supervised several MA dissertations and translation projects.
I am currently co-supervising two PhD theses: "Translating Invented Languages: Anthony Burgess' Nadsat in A Clockwork Orange" and "The Body Divine: Constructing Female Identity Through Mythological Imagery and Intersemiotism in Surrealism" (funded by the AHRC through the NWCDTP).
