Dr Elise Hugueny-Leger

Dr Elise Hugueny-Leger

Senior Lecturer

Researcher profile

Phone
+44 (0)1334 46 3652
Email
esmh@st-andrews.ac.uk
Office
Room 405
Location
Buchanan
Office hours
Monday 9-11

 

Teaching

Dr Hugueny-Léger teaches French language, literature and culture at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She also contributes actively to the School's Comparative Literature programme, coordinating the module ‘Autobiography and the Visual Arts’ (CO4021).

In French, she offers the modules ‘Writing the Self in 20th and 21st-century French Literature’ (FR3078), ‘Intellectuals in Modern France’ (FR3080), 'Creative Writing in French' (FR4150) and ‘Good and Ads: Consumerism in Modern France’ (FR4182) at Honours level.

The module ‘Creative Writing in French’ (FR4150), which is co-taught with other members of the French department, offers an innovative approach to French language and literary creation for learners of French. This module was awarded a University Teaching Excellence Award, and was shortlisted for a Times Higher Education award in the 'Excellence and Innovation in the Arts' category. Its related website, Write in French, features a range of activities, texts and workshops developed through the course.

Research areas

Dr Elise Hugueny-Léger's research interests are in the field of contemporary French literature and culture, with particular emphasis on life-writing, representations of authorship and creative writing processes.

She is the recipient of a Leverhulme International Fellowship to develop a project entitled "Beyond the writing impulse: crafting creative writing research in French" at CY/Cergy-Paris Université in 2022-23.

Her book Projections de soi: identités et images en mouvement dans l’autofiction (Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 2022), examines dialogues between literature and the moving image in processes of self-representation, and media strategies at play in autofiction. As part of her work on life-writing, she has published on a wide range of writers, including Marguerite Duras, Camille Laurens, Sophie Calle, Emmanuel Carrère, Amélie Nothomb, Laurence Tardieu, Didier Eribon, Edouard Louis.

Dr Hugueny-Léger has published extensively on Annie Ernaux. Her monograph Annie Ernaux, une poétique de la transgression (2009) provides a detailed exploration of narrative strategies in the works of Ernaux, and emphasizes the interplay between self and others in her writing. She keeps giving talks and publishing articles on Annie Ernaux on a regular basis, and developed the website www.annie-ernaux.org. This website provides detailed bio-bibliographical material as well as previously unpublished texts by Ernaux, in French with English translations.

Other, broader interests encompass: the place of intellectuals in modern France; the rise of consumerism and its representation in artistic forms; women and their writings in contemporary French society; feminisms. She co-edited the journal special issue Untimely Mourning. Representing Child Death and Parental Mourning in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature and Culture (2019) and the volume Solitaires, Solidaires: Conflict and Confluence in Women's Writings in French (2015).

Dr Hugueny-Léger has supervised doctoral theses on autofiction and gender; mourning in Serge Doubrovsky; time in contemporary fiction; female multilingual autofiction. She welcomes PhD proposals on subjects related to her research interests.

PhD supervision

  • Matilda Nevin

Selected publications

 

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