Dr Margaret Topping – MA, MSt, DPhil (Oxon)
Overview
Telephone: +44(0)29 2087 5603
Fax: +44(0)29 2087 4946
Extension: 75603
Location: Room 2.32, 65-68 Park Place
My research interests span two main areas: the work of Marcel Proust with a particular focus on its metaphorical construction, and textual and visual narratives of travel and migration. Current activities include a large-scale project on francophone travel literature and photography, and, with Dr Rachael Langford, the coordination of a research network on Representing Mobility and Migration in European Cultures (RMMEC). Other research interests include: literature and mythology, literature and religion, and European visual cultures. I am co-editor, with Dr Rachael Langford and Dr Elaine Canning of Swansea University, of the University of Wales Press series, European Visual Cultures.
Selected Publications
'Errant Eyes: Metaphor, Digression and Desire in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time', in Digression in European Literature, A. Grohmann and C. Wells (eds) (London, Palgrave Macmillan, in press)
'Travelling Images, Images of Travel in Nicolas Bouvier's L'Usage du monde', French Studies, special issue on 'New Ekphrastic Poetics' edited by S. Harrow, 64 : 3 (July 2010), 302-16
Beckett’s Proust/Deleuze’s Proust (ed. with Mary Bryden) (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
'Phototextual Journeys: Nicolas Bouvier in Asia', Studies in Travel Writing, special issue on 'Contemporary Travel Writing in French: Tradition, Innovation, Boundaries' edited by C. Forsdick, 13: 4 (2009), 317-34
'Photographic Vision(s) in Marcel Proust's and Raoul Ruiz's Le Temps retrouvé', in Le Temps retrouvé 80 years after : Critical Essays/Essais critiques, A. Watt (ed.), Modern French Identities Series (Oxford, Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 309-21
‘Reframing Identities: Photography and the Cultural Encounter in François Maspero’s Balkans-Transit and Nicolas Bouvier’s Chronique japonaise’, with Claire Gorrara, Journal of Romance Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Spring 2008), 61-75
'Orientalism and Fairytale in Amélie Nothomb's Autofictions', in The Fantastic in Contemporary Women's Writing in French, M.-A. Hutton (ed.) (Oxford, Bern: Peter Lang, 2008), pp. 81-97
Supernatural Proust: Myth and Metaphor in A la recherche du temps perdu (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007)
Selected Projects
Dr M. Topping
Phototextual Journeys: Francophone Travel Literature and the Photographic Gaze
Sponsors: British Academy
Duration: October 2008 –
Dr R. Langford and Dr M. Topping
Title: Representing Migration and Mobility in European Cultures
Sponsors: Cardiff Humanities Research Institute, University of Wales Newport’s European Centre for Photographic Research, Netherlands Embassy, Cardiff University’s Distinguished Visiting Research Fellowship scheme
Duration: 2007 –
Dr R. Langford and Dr M. Topping
Title: ‘Travelling Images: Photographs of Migration and Mobility in the French-Speaking World (1830-present)’ database and portal Sponsors: Cardiff Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme for the pilot phase; external application in progress for an expanded database Duration: 2009 –
Research Unit
Languages, Cultures and Ideologies
Relatd Links
Institute for European Film and Visual Cultures (IVC)
Representing Migration and Mobility in European Cultures (RMMEC)
Publications
Books and edited collections:
Beckett’s Proust/Deleuze’s Proust (ed. with Mary Bryden) (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
Supernatural Proust: Myth and Metaphor in A la recherche du temps perdu (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007), 233 pp.
Eastern Voyages, Western Visions: French Writing and Painting of the Orient (ed.) (Oxford, Bern: Peter Lang, 2004), 395 pp.
Proust’s Gods: Christian and Mythological Figures of Speech in the Works of Marcel Proust (Oxford: OUP, 2000), 244 pp.
Articles/chapters:
'Errant Eyes: Metaphor, Digression and Desire in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time', in Digression in European Literature, A. Grohmann and C. Wells (eds) (London, Palgrave Macmillan, in press)
'Travelling Images, Images of Travel in Nicolas Bouvier's L'Usage du monde', French Studies, special issue on 'New Ekphrastic Poetics' edited by S. Harrow, 64: 3 (July 2010), 302-16
'Phototextual Journeys: Nicolas Bouvier in Asia', Studies in Travel Writing, special issue on 'Contemporary Travel Writing in French: Tradition, Innovation, Boundaries', edited by C. Forsdick, 13: 4 (2009), 317-34
'Photographic Vision(s) in Marcel Proust's and Raoul Ruiz's Le Temps retrouvé', in Le Temps retrouvé 80 years after: Critical Essays/Essais critiques, A. Watt (ed.), Modern French Identities Series (Oxford, Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 309-21
'Proustian Puppetry as Worldly Sign in A la recherche du temps perdu', in Beckett's Proust: Deleuze's Proust, M. Bryden and M. Topping (eds) (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 199-214
'Orientalism and Fairytale in Amélie Nothomb's Autofictions', in The Fantastic in Contemporary Women's Writing in French, M.-A. Hutton (ed.) (Oxford, Bern: Peter Lang, 2008), pp. 81-97
'Reframing Identities: Photography and the Cultural Encounter in François Maspero's Balkans-Transit and Nicolas Bouvier's Chronique japonaise', with Claire Gorrara, Journal of Romance Studies, 8: 1 (Spring 2008), 61-75
Proust Translating/Translating Proust: Reinventions of the Sacred in Text, Image and Film', The Glass, 20 (Spring 2008), 4-18
'Artists and Alchemists in Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu', French Studies, 60: 4 (October 2006), 466-78
'Exoticist Illusion in Pierre Loti's Japan', Artful Deceptions: Verbal and Visual Trickery in French Culture, ed. by C. Emerson and M. Scott (Oxford, Bern: Peter Lang, 2006), pp. 83-96
Writing the Self, Writing the Other in Pierre Loti's Madame Chrysanthème and Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha', Comparative Critical Studies, 1: 3 (October 2004), 309-22
'Proust and Persia', in Eastern Voyages, Western Visions: French Writing and Painting of the Orient (ed. M. Topping) (Oxford, Bern: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 265-87
'Théodore Chassériau', in Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 2 vols (Fitzroy Dearborn, 2004), vol. 1, pp.166-68
'Horace Vernet', in Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 2 vols (Fitzroy Dearborn, 2004), vol. 2, pp.1181-82
'Andromeda's Mysterious Saviour: The Absent Hero in Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu', Dalhousie French Studies, 63 (Summer 2003), 53-58.
'Proust's Orient(alism)', French Studies Bulletin, 84 (Autumn 2002), 10-13
'The Proustian Harem', The Modern Language Review, 97: 2 (April 2002), 300-11
'Proust's Unspoken Muse: A Re-evaluation of the Role of Gustave Moreau's Painting in Proust's Art', French Studies, 53: 1 (January 1999), 23-37
'Les Mille et Une Nuits proustiennes', Essays in French Literature, 35-36 (November 1998/99), 113-30
Journal issues:
‘Migrating Identities in European Textual and Visual Cultures’, special issue of Migration and Identities, (in progress)
‘Writing Difference’ issue of e-journal New Reading 7, ed. with Kathryn Jones and Joanne Sayner (2005), ISSN 1359-7485
‘Alternative Voices in European Cinema’, issue of e-journal New Reading 8, ed. with Guyda Armstrong (2006), ISSN 1359-7485
Other:
I am a regular reviewer for a range of journals, including French Studies and The Modern Languages Review.
Research
Dr M. Topping
Title: Phototextual Journeys: Francophone Travel Literature and Photography
Sponsors: British Academy
Duration: October 2008 –
Overview:
While critics have explored travel writing’s inherent ‘intergenericity’, the extension of francophone travel literature into the domain of the ‘interaesthetic’ has been granted scant critical attention. Yet for many francophone travel writers, the sketch pad and camera have been as much a part of their travelling project as the notebook and pen. The status of these visual artefacts varies according to the dominant generic alignment of the narrative, but critical discourse on francophone travel literature has commonly relegated these sketches and photographs to some dark corner as mere ‘aide-mémoire’. This project brings the photographic image back into focus. Its key objective is to investigate how the photographic image informs, mediates or modifies textual representations of intercultural contact. It thus sets out to consider photographic images not as documentary or aesthetic products in their own right, but in their relationships of complementarity, tension, ludic interplay, or ideological disjuncture with the textual narratives whose creation they parallel or precede. In adopting this approach, the project will examine, more broadly, how the interaction of text and photograph creates ‘liminal spaces’ for a (re)consideration of ‘in-between’ identities and ideologies, for a destabilizing of monolithic perceptions of self and other, and for an analysis of the contexts and conditions for representing/preserving alterity in the global age.
Dr R. Langford and Dr M. Topping
Title: ‘Representing Migration and Mobility in European Cultures’ (RMMEC) research network
Sponsors: Cardiff Humanities Research Institute, University of Wales Newport’s European Centre for Photographic Research, Netherlands Embassy, Cardiff University’s Distinguished Visiting Research Fellowship scheme
Duration: 2007 –
Overview:
This cross-disciplinary research network focuses on the interrelationship of different forms of visual, textual and/or performed representations of mobility and migration produced by, or with reference to, European cultures. The network engages with methodological issues in Humanities research, such as the obstacles to researching representations of migration and mobility by the historical, cultural, generic or aesthetic specificity of the available theoretical models. A key aim of the network is thus to extend disciplinary and theoretical boundaries and the critical discourses on which they rely. In this respect - and beyond the intrinsic value of investigating questions of geographical (and thus cultural and ideological) mobility - the figure of physical movement offers suggestive spatial metaphors and critical frames by which to extend understanding of the generic and inter-aesthetic mobility inherent in many narratives of travel.
RMMEC colleagues are currently collaborating with Prof. Mieke Bal of the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis during her tenure, from 2009 to 2011, as Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow with the network.
Dr R. Langford and Dr M. Topping
Title: Travelling Images: Photographs of Migration and Mobility in the French-Speaking World (1830-present)
Sponsors: Cardiff Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme for the pilot phase; external application in progress for expanded site
Duration: 2009 –
Overview
'Travelling Images' is an online portal and database of photographs of migration and mobility taken between 1830 and the present day by photographers based in the French-speaking world. Currently existing in a pilot phase, the database emerges out of the activities of the RMMEC interdisciplinary research network which is hosted by the Institute for the Study of Visual Cultures (IVC).
The database provides a sample of images of migration and mobility which foreground the centrality, and the complexity of, notions of travel, intercultural dialogue, and home/belonging within the visual cultures of the French-speaking world, showing these to be linked and simultaneous cultural traffic and transactions rather than fixed tropes. The sample encompasses representations that range from the multiple, complex experiences of migration, displacement and exile to the various forms of encounter and/or dialogue that mark the interactions between such groups as coloniser and colonised, photojournalist and subject, traveller and 'travellee'.
Created for research and teaching purposes, the database is designed to allow users to explore the representation of migration and mobility from inside and outside migrant communities. It provides a tool for engagement with the ideological dynamics of travel between cultures and with the related debates on multiculturalism, integration, exile, diaspora and alterity. In the longer term, we aim to expand the database to a pan-European corpus and to instances where the photographic eye is trained on Europe by its 'others',
Biography
Career profile
I completed my undergraduate and postgraduate studies at Oxford University, gaining a Joint Honours degree in French and Spanish (1994); an MSt in Research Methods (1995); and a DPhil (1998). From 1998-2002, I was Lecturer in French at the University of Wales Bangor. I joined the School of European Studies at Cardiff in January 2002 and became Senior Lecturer in 2004 and Reader in 2009.
Memberships / External activities
Editor, with Dr Elaine Canning (Swansea University) and Dr Rachael Langford (Cardiff University) of the University of Wales Press European Visual Cultures series
Member of the editorial board for the journals Studies in European Cinema and Assuming Gender
Member of the Society for French Studies Executive Committee and Conference Officer
External Examiner at Sussex University (2006-2009)
Presentations
‘Images qui voyagent, images du voyage dans L’Usage du monde de Nicolas Bouvier’, Cultures littéraires, invited conference paper, University of Aveiro, Portugal, October, 2008
‘Travelling Images, Images of Travel in Nicolas Bouvier’s L’Usage du monde’, Sublimely Visual conference, University of Bristol, September 2008
‘Francophone Travel Literature and Photography: Bringing the ‘Aide-Mémoire’ into Focus’, Australian Society for French Studies Annual Conference, University of Melbourne, Australia, July 2008
‘Time, Travel and the Phototextual Narrative: Nicolas Bouvier and Ella Maillart in Asia’, Seuils et traverses/Borders and Crossings, University of Melbourne, Australia, July 2008
‘Liminal Spaces in Nicolas Bouvier’s Asia’, Francographies, Edinburgh University, March 2008
‘Photography and the Cultural Encounter: Nicolas Bouvier’s Japanese Chronicles and François Maspero’s Balkans-Transit’, invited seminar paper, Swansea University, February 2008
‘Photographic vision(s) in Marcel Proust’s and Raoul Ruiz’s Le Temps retrouvé’, ‘Le Temps retrouvé’ 80 years on/80 ans après, Royal Holloway, University of London, December 2007.
‘Translating Proust's Translations: The Bible in Text, Image and Film', Lost and Found: Literary Translation conference, Oxford, November 2007, keynote address.
Orientalism and the Fantastic: Narratives of (Dis)enchantment in Amélie Nothomb’s Stupeur et tremblements’, The Fantastic in Contemporary French Literature conference, IGRS, September 2007
‘Visualizing Otherness: Nicolas Bouvier in Japan’, Invitation au voyage: The Exotic in French Art and Literature since 1800 conference, Centre for the Study of Visual and Literary Cultures in France, Bristol University, March 2007
‘Cultural Encounters: Framing Identities in Francophone Travel Writing’, IGRS Seminar Series on Photography, Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, London, December 2006
‘Proustian Puppetry as Worldly Sign in A la recherche du temps perdu’, Beckett’s Proust: Deleuze’s Proust conference, Cardiff University, March 2006
‘Bodily Spheres in Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu’, 24th Annual Romance Languages and Literatures conference (special session on Marcel Proust), University of Cincinnati, May 2004
‘Exoticist Illusion in Pierre Loti’s Japan’, Artful Deceptions conference, National University of Ireland Galway, April 2004
‘Writing the Self, Writing the Other in Pierre Loti’s Madame Chrysanthème and Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha’, British Comparative Literature Association Autobiografictions conference, Goldsmiths College London, September 2003
‘Hemispheres of Inversion in Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu’, Hemispheres conference, University College Cork, May 2002
‘Proust: Orientalizing the West’, French Reinventions of the Orient colloquium, University of Wales Bangor, April 2000
‘The Gods’ Watch-Chains: Deification and Deflation in Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu’, British Comparative Literature Association Legenda conference, Lancaster University, July 1998
Forthcoming presenations include:
'Adaptation in the Contact Zone: Cultural Migration and Aesthetic Mobility in Francophone Narratives of Travel', invited seminar paper for the ARTT series, Swansea University.
Teaching profile
My teaching responsibilities involve contact with students in all years of study:
Year 1: I am part of the teaching team for Modern France: War, Revolution and Culture I & II.
Year 2: I offer an optional module on Contemporary French Travel Writing & am part of the teaching team for European Fictionand Year 2 Version.
Year 4: I offer an optional module on The Orient in French Literature and coordinate final-year ‘version’.
At postgraduate level, I teach on a range of modules on the
- • MA Literature in European Cultures
- • MA European Studies
- • MA Translation Studies (which I also co-coordinate)
With Dr Rachael Langford, I offer a workshop on Migration for Cardiff's Research and Graduate School in the Humanities.
Adminstrative responsibilities
Current administrative responsibilities within the School of European Studies include:
- Deputy Director of Teaching and Learning
- Chair of the Histories, Memories and Fictions of Europe Research Unit
- Co-Director of the Institute for the Study of Visual Cultures
