photographist

“My father read to us children aloud every evening, so I loved literature before being able to read. Reading became my favourite activity. When we came back from Germany, where I had spent an extremely happy childhood, literature even became a refuge which helped me successfully deal with my new life environment. Initially, I wanted to become a sociologist. It was an encounter with an absolutely brilliant professor of literature during my early years of studies that led me to choose literature as a professional area. He was in particular effective in conveying the personal dimension of literature. I did my Ph.D. in comparative literature, in a French-German Graduate program. I had always wanted to become a teacher, to be able to reach out to younger people and to tackle contemporary issues through literature. I strongly believe in the crucial social and human function of teachers; they can offer pupils tools to construct themselves.

Gender Studies is a vast field of research. I am particularly interested in the ways cultural artefacts – literature amongst others – participate in constructing and deconstructing representations and clichés, especially when it comes to masculine and feminine identities. These artistic and cultural objects offer alternative ways, spaces of freedom, enabling us to re-configure identities. I work quite a lot on fantasy literature – works by Tolkien and others. Because these objects have a cult status, fans and readers actively receive these imaginary worlds, (re)creating their own fictions with and through them – a vast number of examples can be found on the Internet. I try to make my students aware of the fact that these social and imaginary gender constructions are never essences, neither given nor fixed. They cannot be dissociated from other cultural issues. There are political and ideological agendas behind these construction constructions.”

Anne-Isabelle François
Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Paris 3

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