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Prof Timothy Mathews
Emeritus Professor
SELCS
Faculty of Arts & Humanities
- Joined UCL
- 1st Oct 1994
Research summary
Twentieth and twenty-first century French Literature. Comparative literature and comparative approaches. Translation. French poetry from Baudelaire to the present. Avant-Garde Aesthetics 1900-1945. Relations of literature and visual art. Guillaume Apollinaire, Aimé Césaire, Roland Barthes, Michel Houellebecq. W G Sebald, Cees Noteboom, Orhan Pamuk. Max Ernst, Jean Fautrier, Alberto Giacometti. Literary theory, especially issues of the imaginary. Art writing. Creative critical writing. Art, revolt, witness.
Teaching summary
I teach on the following MAs:
-Comparative Literature
-Translation Studies
-Language Culture and History (French).
Current MA courses include:
-To Be Absolutely Modern: Aspects of the Modern European Novel
-Poetry and the City
BA courses include:
-The Legacies of Charles Baudelaire
-Avant-Garde Aesthetics 1900-1945
-Roland Barthes: Theory as Writing.
I invite and enjoy conversation with graduate, doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, and actively welcome proposals in all the areas listed in my Research Summary above.
I am Director of the Creative Critical Writing PhD pathway. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/multidisciplinary-and-intercultural-inquiry/prospective-students/creative-critical-writing-phd
Biography
I was appointed Professor of French at UCL in 1994 and in 2007 I became Professor of French and Comparative Criticism, a change which reflected my growing interest in how one area of specialisation relates to others. In research and teaching I try and think not only about what we know but how we know. In my writing I explore what relating to art can tell us about relating to others.