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Institute in Paris

Dr Catriona MacLeod

Senior Lecturer in French Studies

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Country

France

Summary of research interests and expertise 

  • Bande Dessinée
  • Graphic Novels
  • Gender Studies
  • Feminist Visual Theory
  • Migration
  • French Guiana 

My principal research interests concern the representation of women in French-language graphic novels (bande dessinée) and the work of contemporary female bande dessinée artists. Both of these interests are reflected in my first monograph, Invisible Presence: The Representation of Women in French-Language Comics, published by Intellect in September 2021. 

A further research interest concerns French Guiana, a département d’outre-mer known as Guyane in French, in particular the social and cultural plurality of this under-studied region. This interest became the focus of Locating Guyane, a volume published by Liverpool University Press in 2018, which I co-edited with Sarah Wood. 

My current research project returns to the question of women in bande dessinée, considering how contemporary female artists are using the form to break entrenched female bodily ‘taboos’, both in their depictions of women’s bodies and their reflection on questions of reproductive health. 

In addition to my lecturing role at ULIP, I sit on the steering committee of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing, and I am reviews co-editor for the European Comic Art journal. 

Research projects & supervisions

  • ‘Re-drawing the Ideal: Women Artists and Extreme Female Bodies’ (starting 2020) 

Qualifications

MA in French Studies and Philosophy; MLitt in Reading European Cultures; PhD in French Studies (Glasgow) 

Publications

  • Invisible Presence: The Representation of Women in French-Language Comics, Intellect, September 2021. 
  • ‘Tracing the Trauma of Clandestine Migration in the Bande Dessinée’ in Immigrants and Comics: Graphic Spaces of Remembrance, Transaction, and Mimesis, N. L. Serrano (ed.), Routledge, 2019. 
  • Locating Guyane, co-edited with Dr Sarah Wood, Liverpool University Press, 2018 
  • ‘Performing and Parading Gender in French Guiana’s Carnival’ in Locating Guyane, C. MacLeod and S. Wood (eds.), Liverpool University Press, 2018, pp.183-200 
  • ‘Centre Stage on the Page: Women in, on and Making Comics’ in Studies in Comics, special issue, 7:2, 2017, co-edited with Sarah Lightman 
  • ‘From Wandering Women to Fixed Females: Relations of Gendered Movement through Post-Colonial Space in Lettres d’Outremer and Le Bar du vieux Français’ in Comic Book Geographies, J.Dittmer (ed.), Franz Verlag Steiner, 2014, pp. 75-90. 
  • ‘Sex and Death in Quebec: Female AutobioBD and Julie Doucet’s Changements d’Adresses’ in European Comic Art, 5:1, July 2012, pp. 57-70 
  • ‘L’Eugénisme pour les enfants: Heroes, Villains and Racial Purity in Le Téméraire’ in L’Esprit Createur, 52:2, Summer 2012, pp. 59-74 
  • ‘Adopting and Adapting: Ethnic Minority Women’s Quest for Identity in the Bande Dessinée’ in Adaptation: Studies in French and Francophone Culture, N. Archer & A. Weisl-Shaw (eds.), Peter Lang, Modern French Identities series (Peter Collier, ed.), 2012, pp. 207-218 
  • ‘(Post)-Colonial Persistence: The Presence of the “Black Venus” in the Work of Warnauts and Raives’ in Contemporary French Civilisation, 36:3, November 2011, pp. 287-302