Ressources numériques en sciences humaines et sociales OpenEdition Nos plateformes OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypothèses Calenda Bibliothèques OpenEdition Freemium Suivez-nous

“Textured Realities” and Mixed Methodologies in Practice-Led Research: Lessons Learned from Critical Youth Studies

Taylor Still, PhD student in Foreign Languages and Literatures, Université Rennes 2


Abstract

This article assesses the role of mixed or ad-hoc methods when working with youth groups in the context of practice-led research. It relies on the field of critical youth studies by asking how best to incorporate young participants in qualitative research, by carrying out such research with and not on young publics. It also draws on concrete examples from a recent practical case study across France and Ireland in order to illustrate some of the positive outcomes of using mixed research methods with youth groups.


Carrying out participatory research with diverse publics (whether they are human or non-human) involves a number of ethical questions. These might involve the participant’s physical safety, which is often addressed by carrying out a risk assessment and implementing various precautions. Or, they might have to do with a participant’s psychological or emotional well-being which might become endangered, depending on the research topic. Alternatively, they may involve addressing the wider framework at hand, such as the power dynamics between the researcher and their participants – referred to occasionally as the ‘researched 1’.

In both quantitative and qualitative practices, the research participant is traditionally perceived as the subject – to be assessed, examined, quizzed, investigated. This involves a procedure of obtaining consent for participation, and ascertaining that the individual is fully aware of the process and agrees to take part in this novel contribution to science. Alongside this, one is very quick to portray the researcher as the expert, the holder of knowledge; or the educator, in some cases. The respective levels of agency at play here are fixed and distinct: the researcher remains in control of their experiments, and the ‘researched’ in turn feeds information back to the researcher, which becomes data. The researcher experiments upon their participants, who – although often larger in number than the researcher and their team – are increasingly anonymised, and given little (if any) credit for their input afterwards. What happens if we wish to engage the participants on a higher level, so they too can actively become researchers in their own right? How do we attribute our participants more power and agency in research? How might we secure more meaningful engagement on their part? 

Such questions resonate particularly with those of us who engage with young publics in our research. The long-standing dichotomy of researcher-vs.-participant is reinforced when age difference is also at play. How confident can we be of a participant’s genuine and thorough understanding of their engagement in the research process – have they fully grasped what they have signed up for? In the case of minors, parental permission is not only crucial but is in fact obligatory.

It is therefore essential to consider how we might carry out social research 2 with and not on youth participants, allowing them in turn to have more agency and more meaningful engagement in research. The first part of this article offers a brief outline of selected mixed research methodologies which aim to dismantle the current imbalanced power dynamics between the researcher and youth participants. The second part draws on work from scholars in the field of critical youth studies, addressing how ad-hoc or mixed research methodologies can represent the lived reality of youth experiences more accurately. Finally, we illustrate the reality of using such mixed methods in a Franco-Irish case study project which took place from 2021-24.

Youth as passive subjects 

With roots in sociology, psychology, and political science, critical youth studies is an interdisciplinary field seeking to “broaden psychological interpretations of youth by making a distinction between the lives of young people and the way people are categorised and represented in social discourses, cultural practices and policies 3”. Sociologist Andy Furlong noted that in the 1990s and early 2000s, most youth research was linked to policy development, focusing largely on crime and youth (sub-)cultures 4. From the vantage point of sociology, it seems natural that youth have long remained firmly rooted in their roles as more passive research subjects. Research methodologies used on and around them imply little active participation and limited agency on their part. This vision begins to shift, however, in practice-led, practice-based and participatory research 5, and particularly through employing qualitative research methods. 

Education scholars Leanne Taylor and Susan Tilley explore this shift in their article “Qualitative Methods and Respectful Praxis: Researching with Youth 6” (2018). They state that many qualitative researchers working with youth have, in recent years, sought to increasingly distance their work from the “historical paradigm of adult researchers doing research on youth”, instead opting for methods that “move youth from the side-lines (…) to greater involvement in the research process 7”. Researchers are seeking to offer young publics more central, active roles in research, by giving them a greater platform to sufficiently express and convey their own lived experiences. This is achieved by re-configuring the types of methodologies used; better adapting them to participants’ age, abilities and interests, among other things. As we tap in to more equal engagement for both parties (researcher and participants), the research swings from being carried out on to with its participants, and takes on a newfound collaborative dimension.

Likewise, Taylor and Tilley remark how researchers who push to move youth from the research side-lines to the centre actually hold an ultimate goal of “better[ing] the experiences and lives of the youth involved 8”. This also connotes an element of social engagement on behalf of the researcher, and reflects a willingness to thoroughly and accurately portray youth experiences, not just through pure representation, but equally with active participation. The question lies in how best to do this, and which particular research methods or frameworks can facilitate doing so. As Taylor and Tilley debate on the strengths and drawbacks of various research methods, they point out that qualitative research methods –when used within an interpretivist paradigm especially – are indeed best suited to research “focused on understanding youths’ lives and experiences 9”.

Representing “textured realities”

Most basic methods in qualitative research qualify as traditional, whereby it is mostly the researcher who “designs the study, sets the research focus and generates the questions 10”. This includes, for instance, observation of participants, focus group discussions, interviews, and questionnaires. Taylor and Tilley argue however that these traditional methods, when used alone, fall short of capturing the full complexity of youth actions and narrative extent of experiences. Shawn Ginwright, researcher in youth development, advocates for the importance of trying to “capture the mosaic of experiences and textured realities of young people’s lives 11”. Ginwright’s very visual metaphor of textured realities evokes different layers of perspective or experience within a young person’s life – such as their individual experiences with schooling, or their home life; as well as their relationships with their peers or even with politics – with no two lives really ever being the same. Taylor and Tilley compare this to simply representing youth as “having static lives and distorted behaviours 12”–which results not only in a generic and inaccurate portrayal, but also in one with little active participation or meaningful engagement from the youth themselves. In bringing participants to the centre of our research process, would we not also be aligning them with a more faithful and accurate snapshot of these “mosaic(s) of experiences and textured realities 13”?

Orla McGarry, an Irish researcher in youth agency, agrees on this need for more accuracy in depiction of youth in practice-led research. She warns us, however, that participatory methods – typically “associated with authenticity and empowerment 14” – can sometimes actually further “obscure the complex nature of youth experience 15”, and that this must be kept in mind during research design. In a similar vein, sociologist and youth studies scholars Claire McCartan, Dirk Schubotz and Jonathan Murphy also note how these participatory methods are often “positioned by many as a democratic paradigm of qualitative inquiry 16”, but remain nevertheless “fraught with a range of relationships that require negotiation 17”. Such shifting relationships indeed demand constant negotiation, often in relation to the power dynamics between the researcher and the ‘researched’. This is also arguably a trap into which often we fall, distracted by paying excessive attention to the researcher-participant relationship, and forgetting what should be our real focus: correctly and accurately documenting the lives of the youth participants.

In a bid to capture what Ginwright calls “textured realities”, numerous alternative other qualitative methods can be used, such as visual / digital methods, youth-constructed data, and action-oriented methods. Participatory visual / digital methods consist of using a range of artistic mediums to collect or analyse information about participants, such as asking them directly to document a given aspect of their life through creating a photo journal or video blog. Vitality in these methods is important and allows a more meaningful experience for the youth, who (along with the researcher) can engage more deeply in the research process 18, since they begin to put pieces of themselves into it. This method tends to come quite naturally to adolescents, as they are already often familiar with documenting their daily lives through social media via smartphones : channels such as Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are especially popular. Such methods prove useful in international projects too, where questions of intercultural communication may be broached; visual methods in particular can serve as solutions when linguistic barriers might occasionally arise between cross-cultural participant groups.

Action-oriented methods are also well-adapted to research with youth: Taylor and Tilley define them as physically-focused methods seeking to “engage youth in ways that involve their participation in some form of [physical] ‘action’, such as walking and talking about their surroundings, drama activities, small group activities or games 19”. In creative research, for instance, action-oriented methods prove especially valuable since participants can physically create something material, such as an artwork, text or script. The promise of a tangible dimension can also be key to obtaining the youth’s interest in and consent to participation in the research: why would they take part in something seen as rather abstract, if they did not have some sort of tangible and material output from it to keep for themselves afterwards? 

The concrete, tactile action of making and creating texts, videos, images or drama performances, for example, contributes strongly to the young person’s responsibility, as well as a sense of belonging (when achieved in a collaborative group setting). It places the young people at the centre of the research process, where they have a greater deal of both input (of expertise) and control (of the output). In this sense, action-oriented methods are also to be perceived as youth-constructed data, built directly by the youth themselves.

Case study: a Franco-Irish project

The aforementioned examples of methods were experimented during a recent international PhD research project entitled Connexions. It involved a cross-cultural exchange between 2 groups of teenage participants (aged 13-16) based in the urban areas of Rennes (Brittany, France) and Cork (County Cork, Ireland), consisting of a series of creative experiments held both virtually (via an online video platform) and in-person (in the respective cities). Each group was composed of approximately 20-35 individuals, varying in exact numbers throughout the duration of the full project (Aug 2021 – Aug 2024), and all of whom took part on a voluntary basis throughout the school year.

Connexions sought to explore how best to build common ground between international youth groups, using creative media such as theatre, creative writing and performance. It aimed to implement a framework for creative ‘commoning’: defined more broadly here as a common creative practice shared between two distinct groups. Art historian Estelle Zhong Mengual defines commoning in an artistic context as being “based on a system of participation which transforms the creation of an artwork from a practice usually reserved for the individual […] into a collective process 20”.Connexions strove to identify common points between the Franco-Irish groups and foster a space for creative commoning to take place across borders: for instance, by collectively writing short fictional texts or poems, or by devising small pieces of theatre, all based on themes which spoke collectively to both groups.

The Rennes-based group consisted of 35 students from a Baccalauréat Français International class of Seconde at the inner-city Victor & Hélène Basch High School in Villejean, Rennes. The Cork-based group consisted of 20 members of the Pre-Seniors group from Activate Youth Theatre, belonging to Graffiti Theatre Company 21, in Blackpool, Cork City. The group consists of adolescents aged 13-15 from a mix of public and private schools in County Cork (inner-city, suburban and rural), who are fee-paying members of the extra-curricular youth theatre group. The day-to-day running of Connexions was enabled by a team of 6 adult facilitators who worked with the researcher and youth groups in a series of practical workshops.

The fieldwork in Connexions consisted of analysing how the groups navigated collective creations – from a cross-cultural perspective – and their responses to the proposed collaborative exercises. This analysis was part of a larger research objective, which sought to bring literature outside of the traditional classroom space, into more open public spaces; for increased visibilty and empowerment for youth voices in French and Irish societies. From the vantage point of experimental and collective creation, the project hoped to propose an alternative route to the more representational approaches to literature that are currently found in the French and Irish secondary school systems today (such as extended essays or commentaires de texte, for instance).

The school yard at Lycée Victor et Hélène Basch, Rennes, France, 2024.
Photo credit: T. Still
The studio space at Graffiti Theatre Company, Cork, Ireland, 2023.
Photo credit: T. Still

As fieldwork began, it quickly became clear that certain research methods would be less appropriate than anticipated, and thus were swiftly altered. For example: a non-participatory, passive and neutral observation by the researcher had been planned for the in-person workshop sessions in both Rennes and Cork. This turned out, however, to feel rather forced and made both the facilitators and youth groups feel ‘watched’ and somewhat scrutinised. Perhaps unknowingly, the youth groups were sticking to their traditional role as the ‘researched’: remaining very much on the side-lines, despite being the central focus of observation. A new strategy was clearly needed and it was decided that partial-participation 22 during sessions of observation would be better suited. This entails the researcher partly observing (taking mental or written notes), and partly participating in the workshop itself (i.e. working with students in a given exercise). Participants were visibly more at ease and the observer better integrated into the group, despite status as an adult researcher. Witnessing the adult researcher also take part in these action-based methods in workshops appeared to slowly knock down barriers of both status and age between the researcher and the ‘researched’. Spending time talking with participants before, during and after workshops, within a more informal framework, also helped to re-frame the research process as a whole for young publics.

Fieldwork for Connexions with the French youth group in Cork, Ireland, 2024.
Photo credit: T. Still

In Connexions, partial-participation opened up increased accessibility to the researcher – allowing the youth to ask more informal questions about the research and what would come of it afterwards. By stepping closer to the centre of the process, they were able to make comments and suggestions directly to the researcher, rather than remaining on the side-lines. And although using action-oriented methods helped to shift the researcher-participant power dynamics, it is worth noting that this balance was achieved through trial-and-error – the importance of which must not be neglected. The research design was constantly reviewed and methods re-adapted according to field realities, as part of an ongoing, evolving palette of research methods.

To conclude, it is clear that there is no instant or easy solution to obtaining more active participation from youth in research. Trial-and-error is an essential step in identifying and securing the most apt methods for more meaningful youth engagement. A palette of mixed methodologies, both traditional and more youth-focused, are key in facilitating the shift of young participants from research side-lines to its centre, as Taylor and Tilley had duly noted. Ginwright is also right to underline the importance of attempting to accurately portray the mosaic of youth experiences when working with youth groups. We should take note of his insistence on the need to develop better methods to portray the textured realities of young publics in science, and work with, not on them.


Bibliography

BRADLEY, Matt. CAHILL, Caitlin. QUIJADA CERECER, David Alberto. “Toward a Critical Youth Policy Praxis: Critical Youth Studies and Participatory Action Research”, Theory into Practice, Vol. 52 (3), Educational Policy and Youth in the 21st Century, 2013, p.216-223.

BRYMAN, Alan. “Qualitative Research: Ethnography and Participant Observation”, Social Research Methods. 5th edition, New York, Oxford University Press, 2016.

FITZGIBBON, Emilie. Graffiti Theatre Company, CorkIrelandwww.graffiti.ie/, 2024. Accessed 27 February 2024.

FURLONG, Andy. Youth Studies: An Introduction. New York, Routledge, 2013.

GINWRIGHT, Shawn. “Collective Radical Imagination: Youth Participatory Action Research and the Art of Emancipatory Knowledge”, Revolutionizing Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in Motion. Edited by Julio Cammarota & Michelle Fine, New York, Routledge, 2008, p.13-22.

MCCARTAN, Claire. SCHUBOTZ, Dirk. MURPHY, Jonathan. “The Self-Conscious Researcher – Post-Modern Perspectives of Participatory Research with Young People”, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 13 (1), 2012.

MCGARRY, Orla. “Repositioning the Research Encounter: Exploring Power Dynamics and Positionality in Youth Research”, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, Vol. 19 (3), 2015, p.339-354, www.dx.doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2015.1011821. Accessed 4 May 2024. 

TAYLOR, Leanne. TILLEY, Susan. “Qualitative Methods and Respectful Praxis: Researching with Youth”, The Qualitative Report, Vol. 23 (9), 2018, p.2184-2204, www.doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2018.3482. Accessed 12 May 2024.

ZHONG MENGUAL, Estelle. L’art en commun : réinventer les formes du collectif en contexte démocratique, Dijon, Les Presses du Réel, 2020.


Notes:

1 Term used by Belfast-based sociology researchers Claire McCartan, Dirk Schubotz and Jonathan Murphy in their article entitled “The Self-Conscious Researcher – Post-Modern Perspectives of Participatory Research with Young People” in Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 13 (1), 2012.

2 The term refers here to any research involving human participants.

3 BRADLEY, Matt. CAHILL, Caitlin. QUIJADA CERECER, David Alberto. “Toward a Critical Youth Policy Praxis: Critical Youth Studies and Participatory Action Research”, Theory into Practice, Vol. 52 (3), Educational Policy and Youth in the 21st Century, 2013, p. 217.

4 FURLONG, Andy. Youth Studies: An Introduction. New York, Routledge, 2013, p. 4.

5 In Francophone regions, ‘practice-based research’ is typically translated as recherche-création, in which an artistic creation is both central to and forms part of the research itself. ‘Practice-led research’ translates as recherche-action, where the research is rooted in taking action on an issue that has been identified in a practical context. The latter is also closely linked to ‘participatory research’, which calls on collaboration and participation with members of the communities which are directly concerned by the research outputs. 

6 TAYLOR, Leanne. TILLEY, Susan. “Qualitative Methods and Respectful Praxis: Researching with Youth”, The Qualitative Report, Vol. 23 (9), 2018, p. 2184-2204. 

7 TAYLOR, Leanne. TILLEY, Susan. “Qualitative Methods and Respectful Praxis: Researching with Youth”, The Qualitative Report, Vol. 23 (9), 2018, p. 2184.

8 Ibid, p.2188.

9 Ibid, p.2188.

10 Ibid, p.2188.

11 GINWRIGHT, Shawn. “Collective Radical Imagination: Youth Participatory Action Research and the Art of Emancipatory Knowledge”, Revolutionizing Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in Motion. Edited by Julio Cammarota & Michelle Fine, New York, Routledge, 2008, p. 14.

12 TAYLOR, Leanne. TILLEY, Susan. “Qualitative Methods and Respectful Praxis: Researching with Youth”, The Qualitative Report, Vol. 23 (9), 2018, p. 2186.

13 GINWRIGHT, Shawn. “Collective Radical Imagination: Youth Participatory Action Research and the Art of Emancipatory Knowledge”, Revolutionizing Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in Motion. Edited by Julio Cammarota & Michelle Fine, New York, Routledge, 2008, p. 14.

14 MCGARRY, Orla. “Repositioning the Research Encounter: Exploring Power Dynamics and Positionality in Youth Research”, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, Vol. 19 (3), 2015, p. 339.

15 Ibid, p. 339.

16 MCCARTAN, Claire. SCHUBOTZ, Dirk. MURPHY, Jonathan. “The Self-Conscious Researcher – Post-Modern Perspectives of Participatory Research with Young People”, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 13 (1), 2012.

17 Ibid.

18 TAYLOR, Leanne. TILLEY, Susan. “Qualitative Methods and Respectful Praxis: Researching with Youth”, The Qualitative Report, Vol. 23 (9), 2018, p. 2189.

19Ibid, p.2190.

20 ZHONG MENGUAL, Estelle. L’art en commun : réinventer les formes du collectif en contexte démocratique, Dijon, Les Presses du Réel, 2020, p. 12.

21 FITZGIBBON, Emilie. Graffiti Theatre Company, CorkIrelandwww.graffiti.ie/, 2024. Accessed 27 February 2024.

22 BRYMAN, Alan. “Qualitative Research: Ethnography and Participant Observation”, Social Research Methods. 5th edition, New York, Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 436.

Threatening Landscapes, Treacherous Women: Power, Gender, and the Land in Claire Keegan’s Walk the Blue Fields

Camille Pinettes, PhD student in contemporary Irish literature, Université Rennes 2

The girl did not look back and kept her head down when the sergeant passed. The sergeant knew her mother, a widow who gave him butter and rhubarb in the summertime but all she had was a rough acre behind the house. As it turned out, there was hardly a woman in the entire district with land 1.

Claire Keegan, Walk the Blue Fields
Tableau "Trees at Howth » de William Orpen à la National Gallery of Ireland. Il représente un promeneur et son chien sur un chemin de forêt.
William Orpen (1878-1931), “Trees at Howth”, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

The above excerpt from Claire Keegan’s short story “Surrender” lays emphasis on the female characters’ restricted access to land ownership. For the sergeant, a stern, ominous figure in the story, unmarried and widowed women are defined by what they do not own. Notions of authority and possession are at the heart of men’s relationship to the land, but women are excluded from those dynamics. Keegan, who first came to critical attention with her 1999 collection of short stories, Antarctica, frequently addresses themes of gender, place and powerlessness in her work. Her second short story collection Walk the Blue Fields, first published in 2007, encapsulates the various attitudes to nature that are common in modern-day Ireland. Most of Keegan’s characters live in the Irish countryside: some are farmers, others are not; many reside in remote villages or in rural areas in County Wicklow, County Cavan, and County Clare. 

While many of the women in Keegan’s fiction do not own the land they live on, they still engage with it on a daily basis; their relationship to the land is particularly complex and multifaceted. Ecofeminist critics have argued that depicting women who are engaging in peaceful and harmonious interactions with the land can be problematic. According to the feminist philosopher Val Plumwood in her volume Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, “the sphere of women and nature” is often portrayed as separate from the androcentric and culturally superior “sphere of reason, humanity and culture” (33). In her essay “Naturalized Woman and Feminized Nature”, Kate Soper remarks that women are “naturalised” by depictions that overemphasise their bodies’ reproductive abilities (141). In this article, I will argue that Keegan’s collection of short stories subverts the traditional trope that associates women with a peaceable, biological connection to nature by portraying women that compete with men’s domination of the land. In Walk the Blue Fields, Keegan offers a nuanced critique of patriarchal values, echoing ecofeminist voices in an original, thought-provoking way.

From Spirituality to Profit: Contrasting Perceptions of the Landscape in Keegan’s Collection

Walk the Blue Fields reflects two incompatible views of nature. Some – often comically naïve – characters are mesmerised by the landscape’s spiritual value, while others cynically regard it as a means of obtaining power. In the title story, a Catholic priest seems to have a religious epiphany as he gazes at the landscape, and concludes that “God is nature” (38). Spirituality plays a large role in several characters’ connection to nature, which is hardly surprising in a historically Catholic country that has seen several waves of pagan revivalism. Literary scholar Oona Frawley argues that depictions of the natural world were frequently imbued with symbolic, folkloric or mystical elements during the Irish Literary Revival (“Nature and Nostalgia” 274-275 2). In the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century, revivalist writers insisted on Ireland’s pagan roots and promoted a romanticised idea of the landscape, which, in many ways, was portrayed as a repository for Irish folklore. In a number of revivalist texts, the Irish landscape and the myths and stories associated with it became the locus of Irish national identity. Keegan’s collection sometimes seems to acknowledge the revivalist movement, but, as Eoghan Smith has noted, it is by no means a neo-revivalist text (Smith 195). In the collection, these spiritual attitudes to nature are not the norm: a number of stories give expression to a far more secular view of the landscape. 

Like the sergeant in “Surrender”, who remarks that “there was hardly a woman in the entire district with land”, many of Keegan’s characters tend to regard the land as potential for economic power (111). In a paper entitled “Woodcock for a Farthing: The Irish Experience of Nature”, Michael Viney writes that “Utility remains the benchmark of Irish rural attitudes to nature, and the straight line of gladioli down the tarmacadamed drive a firm statement of landscape policy” (Viney 63). Viney comments on Henry Glassie’s depiction of the way Ulster farmers regarded their land. In a volume entitled Passing the Time in Ballymenone, Glassie wrote: 

When they look over the land and proclaim it lovely, … what appeals to them is not nature but reflections of their work. … Banished to the mountains, imprisoned in hedges, nature is conceptually and actually subservient to farming (Glassie, qtd. in Viney 63 3). 

From an economic standpoint, the notion of landscape is far less relevant than the concept of land. Gazing at the landscape for the sake of aesthetic or spiritual fulfilment is not the same thing as working the land to make a living. This is a question Keegan explores at length in her short stories. Unlike the priest who finds a reflection of his religious beliefs in nature, many of Keegan’s characters are farmers whose livelihood depends on the productivity of the land. She highlights this through a number of passing comments. For instance, the main character in “Dark Horses” sees the landscape in a competitive light: “he makes out the figure of a man walking through fields greener than his own” (41). Similarly, the farmer in “The Forester’s Daughter” dreams that the leaves of the trees that surround his house are turning into “twenty-pound notes” (67).

Patriarchal Attitudes to the Land

Because it is such a valuable resource, the land is the locus of an array of power dynamics. Turning the land into profit means taming, domesticating it, and suppressing any unruly tendencies it may have. The relationship between humans and the land is often agonistic: conflict plays a large role in human/non-human interactions. The forces of nature are perceived either as a threat humans must protect themselves from or as a resource the characters are determined to exploit and appropriate. Keegan frequently uses violent images to describe the landscape’s domineering attitude: in the title-story, for instance, the walls of the house are “choked in ivy” (32). In a story entitled “The Forester’s Daughter”, which focuses on the Deegans, a farming family in Wicklow, the most striking example of the destruction of human achievements by non-human forces is the fire that reduces the family’s house to ashes. The crossing of boundaries is a central motif in the description of the fire. The flames “cross the ceiling boards” and “leap out” of the “parlour window”, erasing the dividing line that separates the downstairs from the upstairs and the indoors from the outdoors (Keegan 89). The crossing of these human-made boundaries makes the space indeterminate and signals the end of the Deegans’ reign over the landscape. Smoke “crawls through the rooms”, and “fills up the house” (88-9): both phrases are suggestive of the flames’ appropriation of the human space. As the Deegans watch their house go up in flames, their cows stand close to the fire to “warm themselves” (89), as if to bask in the glory of their triumph over their human landlords. This image comically mirrors previous scenes in which the Deegans warmed themselves around the hearth, suggesting that the non-human world has fully re-claimed its ownership of the family’s stretch of land. 

In the face of the land’s reluctance to submit to human power, the male characters emulate the patriarchal ideal of man. This makes Keegan’s collection particularly well-suited to an ecofeminist reading, as it explores the relationship between male domination and human domination. In the words of Mark Schlenz, “issues of race, class, and gender inevitably intersect in complex and multi-faceted ways with issues of natural resource exploitation and conservation” (12). Parallels can indeed be drawn between the “degradation, subjection, and exploitation of women” and the way our cultures exploit and degrade non-human beings (Estévez-Saá and Lorenzo-Modia 2). The landscapes in Keegan’s collection undergo dramatic changes at the hands of men. Victor Deegan takes pleasure in “put[ting] electric fences round the land” and in “tak[ing] out the spade” to “plant more oaks on the land” (Keegan 51, 57); in “The Parting Gift”, men are seen “turning the rows”, “gathering” bales of straw “with pitchforks”, and “knock[ing] … meadows” (4, 8). Keegan’s vocabulary highlights the impact of the men’s work on the materiality of the land and alludes to the patriarchal fantasy of physical omnipotence. By contrast, women are almost never seen working in the fields, and Mrs Rudd’s only contribution to her sons’ work is to “bring out the flask, the salad” (4) for them to eat their fill after a day’s work. In Keegan’s collection, agricultural work is unequivocally masculine.

According to literary scholar Eoghan Smith, the politics of land ownership “is portrayed time and again in Keegan as male economic power over women through their historical ownership of the land” (Smith 199). He analyses the protagonists’ surnames: throughout the collection, Keegan often gives her male characters surnames that are common in their area (such as “Brady and McQuaid in the Cavan of ‘Dark Horses’” and “Lawlor and Brennan in the Wicklow of ‘Walk the Blue Fields’”, Smith 199). To Smith, “Locally found surnames carried through the male line root these characters to their specific place” (Smith 199). By contrast, the women in Keegan’s fiction bear names that are not local: though “Night of the Quicken Trees” is set in County Clare, Margaret’s surname, “Flusk”, originates from south Wicklow and Wexford. This leads Smith to conclude that, unlike women, men remain physically attached to their families’ ancestral lands. Fittingly, they are the ones who bequeath their names to their children (Smith 199). 

This idea finds expression in a passage in “The Parting Gift” in which we learn that the daughters have all left the family’s land, which makes the narrator’s brother the last child remaining on the parents’ farm. As the narrator prepares to leave her family home, she mentions “the books [her] sisters left behind”, indicating that all her sisters have also left (10). Though, later in the story, her brother expresses a desire to leave (“I’m giving up the land. They can keep it” 11), the narrator knows that he feels compelled to stay: “Already the winter barley’s turning. September will bring more work, old duties to the land. … You know he will never leave the fields” (12). Laura Sydora and Eoghan Smith have both remarked that the idea of “old duties to the land” is a reference to the ancestral bloodline that keeps him rooted where his family is (Smith 200, Sydora 126). In this sentence, the “land” is a metonymy for his male ancestors, whom he must honour (“duties”) by keeping the land in the family (12).

Male bloodlines are also an important theme in “The Forester’s Daughter”. The short story’s title, which focuses on Victor Deegan’s “daughter” rather than his sons, signals to the reader that the family’s male line has been disrupted. The question of male ancestry is brought to our attention early on in the story: “The line of oaks on Aghowle’s lane were planted by his great-grandfather. No matter how hard or high his children swung, those limbs would never break” (57). The unbreakable “limbs” of the great-grandfather’s oaks are a metaphor for the Deegan bloodline. A few lines later, the forester dreams about the future of his estate: “The eldest boy will marry, have children, and carry on the name” (57). However, as it turns out, neither of his sons are prepared to rise to the challenge. The eldest shows little interest in the land: “The boy, a shrill young fellow, grew tall but it soon became apparent that he had no grá for farming” (55). The use of an Irish word (“grá”, which, in this case, means “passion” or “love” for something) can be read as another allusion to the characters’ roots, making it sound as though the Deegans’ ancestors are saying the words, judging the eldest for his lack of skill and interest in farm work. Victor’s younger son is labelled a “simpleton” by his parents, which, in their eyes, makes him unfit for the job. In spite of this, he is seen building a miniature farm in the living room: “The simpleton heads off to the parlour, gets down on his knees and sets to work on his farm. So far he’s built a boundary with dead fir cones and marked out the fields” (64). His work on the miniature farm (“mark[ing] out the fields”) is reminiscent of his father’s work (“[Victor] put electric fences round the land” 51), making him his symbolic – though disregarded – heir.

It later becomes clear that the family’s efforts have come to naught: the boy accidentally sets the house on fire at the end of the story. The narrator reveals that, though he was on the brink of paying off his mortgage, Victor Deegan neglected to take out a home insurance policy: the Deegans end up losing the entire estate. Symbolically, the men themselves are the ones who destroy their family’s ties to the land. Nature’s retaliation reaches its peak when Keegan mentions that “It looks as though the oaks, too, could catch fire” (90). The oaks, which were planted by Victor’s great-grandfather, represent the androcentric ownership of the land: their potential destruction marks the symbolic intersection of feminist and ecological activism. As the oaks burn, the non-human (in this case, the fire) puts an end to the male bloodline.

Women and the Land: From Treachery to Domination

In a paper entitled “Irish Women Evicted: The Rural Home and the Gendered Politics of Economic Morality in Claire Keegan’s Walk the Blue Fields”, the scholar Laura Sydora offers a feminist reading of two of Keegan’s short stories, “The Parting Gift” and “Night of the Quicken Trees”, in which the female protagonists end up leaving their homes. She comments on “women’s simultaneously threatened and threatening relationship to land, property, and the rural home” (Sydora 134). Sydora makes a convincing point, which is worth exploring further through an ecocritical – and ecofeminist – lens. Like the non-human elements in the narrative, Keegan’s women are constantly tempted to rebel against the roles they have been assigned. Several female characters feel uncomfortable in the domestic sphere and are mostly seen outside of the house. Margaret Flusk, for instance, “always felt marginally safer when she was outside” (Keegan 133). This motif is further developed in “The Forester’s Daughter”, in which Martha, the mother, symbolically sabotages the domestic sphere. Early on, the narrator indicates that she “planted the rosebushes deep in rows at either side of the hall door where she could train them to climb up around the windows” (54). The roses can be interpreted as a sign of Martha’s subversion of femininity. Instead of being symbols of her demureness, they become the instruments of her control over the house: she “plants” them and “trains” them to do as she pleases. Later in the story, Keegan indicates that “Martha’s roses have, through the years, crawled up along the walls and, in the wind, paw the windows” (70). In this powerful image, the roses threaten to break the characters’ windows, as if to foreshadow the housefire that marks the eventual destruction of the Deegans’ home. In this instance, however, the roses’ presence is the result of the human character’s intentional pruning of the plant. In this example, Martha undermines the domestic sphere; instead of acting like a traditional housewife and staying confined inside the house, she domesticates nature – like her husband would – and physically threatens the structure of the house. Like Margaret Flusk, Martha Deegan feels more at home outside. She puts little effort into her cooking because she prefers to spend her time outdoors:

He’d stoop and find the big enamel plate with fried potatoes and a pair of eggs dried out in the oven. Martha preferred to be out in wellingtons lifting a drill for onions or slashing the nettles along the lane (53).

In her own way, she too is working the land (“slashing the nettles along the lane”), wearing unfeminine boots (“out in wellingtons”) and refusing to perform her duties as a wife (53). 

This is because, while the women in Keegan’s fiction do not directly challenge the men’s status as landowners, they tend to emulate their behaviour on an implicit level: in the collection, female resistance to patriarchy takes the form of the woman stepping into the man’s domineering role. Later in “The Forester’s Daughter”, this pattern emerges more fully:

Martha takes her tea out to the yard where things always seem a fraction easier. She looks down the lane. The oaks are losing their leaves so quickly now. She drinks her tea, takes the stake off the henhouse door and opens it wide. Her fowl rush past in a sweep of red feathers and dust, racing for the feed and the open air. She stoops and reaches into their nests for eggs. She strides back in to make the breakfast, feeling treacherous. She often feels treacherous in the mornings. She wishes her husband and her children were gone for the day (63).

Keegan challenges the traditional division of space that makes the indoors women’s territory as, contrary to expectations, Martha finds things “easier” outdoors (63). Like her husband, she goes outside to gaze at the landscape (“she looks down the lane” 63) and secretly plays the part of the landowner. In this scene, she seems to have switched roles with the hens. She is no longer the child bearer; instead, she is the one collecting the hens’ eggs. Similarly, she becomes a symbolic landowner by holding the keys to henhouse. The metaphorical usurpation of Victor’s role is later confirmed by Martha’s feeling of guilt (“feeling treacherous” 63), which suggests that she has indeed been breaking stereotypical rules. This passage plays on the polysemic ambiguity contained within the adjective “treacherous”, which could signal that Martha has failed to fulfil her role as a wife, but also that she might be more of a threat than first meets the eye.

Keegan’s collection offers an abundance of anecdotes in which female characters imitate men’s appropriation of the land. One of the most striking examples of this takes place in “Night of the Quicken Trees”, when Margaret Flusk urinates around the borders of her land: “When it got dark at five o’clock, she went outside and lifted her skirt and squatted in the grass. She wanted to pass water on every blade of grass around her house” (127). By choosing the words “lift[ing] her skirt” to refer to urination, Keegan astutely hints at female clothing to stress that Margaret is also subverting gender norms and prohibitions. This passage ridicules androcentric, territorial attitudes to the land (and to women) by transposing the image of the male dog to the human woman. It is worth noting that, in each of the examples listed above, the woman only acts in discreet or subversive ways, suggesting that the norms that dictate how women should act towards the land are only at work in the public sphere. Away from prying eyes, these female characters manage to symbolically dominate the land, emulating men’s appropriation of space by urinating on the borders, training their roses or taking their hens’ eggs.

This, I would argue, is part of what makes Keegan’s collection a nuanced reflection of ecofeminist discourse. Though it acknowledges the difficulties women face in today’s society, Walk the Blue Fields does not portray them as meek or powerless. By depicting female characters that are men’s metaphorical rivals, the book challenges the idea that women, as opposed to men, enjoy an innate, harmonious bond with nature and cannot engage in dynamics of domination or appropriation. Keegan’s women are not always attuned to nature and rarely act in the interest of the non-human: several of them see the land as property, or as the locus of power struggles. These examples show that Walk the Blue Fields does not put women on par with nature, as the object of male domination. Instead, Keegan’s portrayal of women is nuanced enough to suggest that modes of resistance to patriarchal authority often involve reproducing the same power dynamics. This allows the author to emphasise women’s agency while also showcasing humanity’s domineering attitude to the land.


  1.  Keegan, Claire. Walk the Blue Fields. 1st ed., Faber and Faber, 2007, p. 110-111. ↩︎
  2.  In the case of Ireland, this went hand in hand with the construction of a national identity: “The Revival is characterized by this tremendous nostalgia for the past, and its reliance on past myths and metaphors to ascribe meaning to Irish culture” (Frawley, “Nature and Nostalgia” 274). See also Frawley’s monograph Irish Pastoral: Nostalgia and Twentieth Century Irish Literature. ↩︎
  3. On this subject, the literary critic Eoghan Smith notes that “the magical or eccentric elements of Keegan’s work” are not “presented as a nostalgic, mystical neo-Revivalist retreat from the conservative drudgery of twentieth-century Irish life or a longing for Gaelic authenticity during the peak of urban excess of the Celtic Tiger years” (195). ↩︎

WORKS CITED

Estévez-Saá, Margarita, and María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia. The Ethics and Aesthetics of Eco-Caring: Contemporary Debates on Ecofeminism(s). Routledge, 2018.

Frawley, Oona. Irish Pastoral: Nostalgia and Twentieth Century Irish Literature, Irish Academic Press, 2005.

—. ‘Nature and Nostalgia in Irish Literature’. Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, vol. 18/19, Department of Celtic Languages & Literatures, Harvard University, 1998, pp. 268–77.

Glassie, Henry. Passing the Time in Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Ulster Community. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.

Keegan, Claire. Walk the Blue Fields. 1st ed., Faber and Faber, 2007.

Plumwood, Val. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. Routledge, 1993.

Schlenz, Mark. ‘Survival Stories: Toward an Ecology of Literary Criticism’. 1994 Western Literature Association Meeting, Oct. 1994.

Smith, Eoghan. ‘Autonomy, Naturalism, and Folklore in Claire Keegan’s Walk the Blue Fields’. The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, vol. 42, 2019, pp. 192–208.

Soper, Kate. ‘Naturalized Woman and Feminized Nature’. The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism, edited by Laurence Coupe, Routledge, 2000, pp. 139-143.

Sydora, Laura. ‘Irish Women Evicted: The Rural Home and the Gendered Politics of Economic Morality in Claire Keegan’s Walk the Blue Fields’, Review of Irish Studies in Europe, 3, no.1, 2019, pp 123-136.

Viney, Michael. ‘Woodcock for a Farthing: The Irish Experience of Nature’. The Irish Review, no. 1, Cork University Press, 1986, pp 58–64.

IL Y A MATIÈRE / MATTER THAT MATTERS

Lundi 20 janvier 2025, Rennes.

Appel à communications

Cette journée d’étude sera l’occasion d’interroger les différentes façons dont la matière se manifeste : elle est douée d’agentivité, elle est constamment en mouvement (K. Barad) et elle produit des effets, autant sur nos pratiques créatives que sur la façon dont nous faisons l’expérience de l’espace public. 

L’héritage des dualismes cartésiens amène à penser la matérialité comme un concept isolé qui serait distinct d’autres « sphères », comme celle de l’esprit, ou encore celle de la forme. Cette distinction conceptuelle entre le matériel et l’immatériel conduit souvent à l’idée selon laquelle la matière serait une substance passive, plus ou moins digne d’intérêt, et soumise à notre volonté. Nous avons tendance à entretenir avec la matière un rapport d’exploitation et de domination (K. Soper). Depuis une vingtaine d’années, plusieurs mouvements de pensée sont venus souligner le fait que la matière n’est pas seulement passive, mais qu’elle produit des effets, lesquels sont parfois inattendus et difficiles à contrôler (D. Coole et S. Frost) : ainsi, les problèmes de gestion des déchets et les mécanismes biologiques, chimiques et géologiques résultant des émissions de gaz à effet de serre sont autant de façons dont la matière nous affecte collectivement.

Cette journée d’étude sera l’occasion d’interroger les différentes façons dont la matière se manifeste : elle est douée d’agentivité, elle est constamment en mouvement (K. Barad) et elle produit des effets, autant sur nos pratiques créatives que sur la façon dont nous faisons l’expérience de l’espace public. 

En art, les notions de transmission et de matérialité suscitent des questionnements particulièrement complexes à une époque marquée par l’omniprésence des supports numériques et le transfert de contenus artistiques traditionnels vers de nouveaux espaces plus immatériels (e-book, tablettes graphiques, streaming). Il apparaît alors urgent de ré-interroger, de toutes les manières possibles, nos conceptions classiques de la matérialité de l’art : redécouvrir des sensorialités souvent ignorées ou dénigrées (odeur et grain du papier, obscurité et aspect communautaire de la salle de cinéma) ; interroger la réalité ontologique des contenus purement informatiques (art par I.A., art produit et stocké sur tablette, etc.) ; faire jouer les interactions intermédiatiques (support hybride, franchise médiatique, univers étendus et produits dérivés)…

Depuis le XXème siècle, fragments, matières déchues et rebuts sont autant de matériaux dont les artistes « collecteurs » s’emparent pour nous parler du monde et de nos rapports à ce dernier. Issus de l’espace public ou domestique, ces matériaux réagencés par les artistes apparaissent tour à tour comme indice et témoin d’une situation présente, support mémoriel ou comme agent d’une poétique de l’ordinaire et du commun. De Kurt Schwitters à Gabriel Orozco, ces pratiques interrogent et transfigurent le statut même du rebut et des hiérarchies qui lui sont associées, dans une perspective à la fois herméneutique et critique. Dans une optique de sensibilisation écologique, c’est aussi par le biais du rebut et d’un processus de collecte et d’accumulation, que des artistes tels que Hans Haacke (Beach pollution) ou Tadashi Tonoshiki (Gathering Trash) mettent en exergue la circulation du déchet via les espaces maritimes. Loin de la conception de l’objet inerte, ces œuvres mettent en lumière l’extrême mobilité de ces objets délaissés et leurs interactions avec le milieu maritime. Au regard de ces éléments, nous pourrons nous demander si cet art « des petits riens » peut être un espace pour penser nos relations aux agents et acteurs qui modèlent nos mondes, inventer de nouvelles cohabitations ou encore imaginer d’autres rapports de production qui ne seraient pas dominés par l’idéologie du « tout jetable ».

La perception dichotomique qui sépare strictement les sphères matérielles et immatérielles vient aussi nourrir une hiérarchisation des formes artistiques. Une telle vision a parfois pu participer à la dévalorisation de médias considérés comme intrinsèquement plus ancrés dans la matérialité (comme le film) que d’autres supports artistiques plus évanescents et transsensuels tels que la littérature (R. Stam). Ce point de vue, cependant, semble aujourd’hui bien contestable ; par-delà le texte pur, l’œuvre littéraire, par exemple, s’inscrit dans un support bien matériel dont les spécificités tangibles influent sur la présentation typographique et la mise en page qui, en retour, modifie la perception de son contenu textuel (M. B. Sørensen). 

En ce qui concerne la critique littéraire, le tournant linguistique tel qu’il a été théorisé a révélé des interconnexions entre le constructionnisme social, la connaissance et le pouvoir. Certains courants du féminisme, de même que l’approche posthumaniste ou encore celle des nouveaux matérialistes ont en commun de chercher à redéfinir le corps, et soulignent qu’une telle redéfinition doit passer par une déconstruction du dualisme entre le discursif et le matériel. Tous ces champs de la réflexion théorique postulent qu’une pensée binaire ne permet pas de réunir matérialité et littérature. Aujourd’hui, les chercheurs abordent la littérature sous l’angle de la matérialité : typographie, méthodes d’impression et conception des livres. Par ailleurs, la matière en littérature met en jeu la question de la représentation : Thomas Bremer déclare qu’en littérature, il s’agit de représenter une matière “qui caractérise une personne, une situation, un environnement social.” (2020, 352)

La question de la matérialité concerne aussi tous les arts de la scène. Utiliser son corps pour danser ou chanter induit un autre rapport au matériel. Comment transmettre l’art de l’interprétation ? La danse et la musique se transmettent en interprétant ou improvisant une suite de mouvements ou de notes qui se passent parfois de notation matérielle. L’ethnomusicologie fait la preuve depuis longtemps que des formes musicales complexes sont interprétées et transmises sans passer par l’écriture. En revanche, l’instrument, les instruments (cordes, bois, cuivres, percussions,…) sont autant de moyens, parfois de dispositifs, conçus matériellement pour interpréter ces musiques. La danse est également un art qui s’écrit ou s’improvise. Sans matériel, la danse et la musique existent grâce au seul corps humain. La voix en particulier est le premier instrument capable de transmettre des sons organisés selon des rythmes et des hauteurs définis.

Plusieurs disciplines peuvent ainsi s’emparer de la question de la matérialité afin de mieux l’interroger. Pour Antoine Picon, la matérialité concerne les relations qu’entretiennent les êtres humains avec la matière, elle apparaît « comme un régime d’être au monde qui gouverne les rapports entre l’homme et l’ensemble des choses et des phénomènes considérés comme matériels » (2018, 68). Cela se joue notamment dans notre façon d’appréhender l’espace public, dont les conditions matérielles nous affectent au quotidien. Qu’il s’agisse d’urbanisme, de mobilier urbain, d’architecture ou d’agencement, notre rapport à l’espace public est soumis à de nombreuses influences, nous incitant à l’utiliser, à nous en détourner (environnement provoquant un sentiment de danger, stratégies d’évitement), voire à l’interdire (architecture hostile par exemple). Quelle place la matérialité peut-elle prendre dans ces espaces et comment modifie-t-elle nos usages de ces derniers ? 

Cette journée d’étude vise à interroger les termes et les concepts de matérialité, de matière et de matériel sous toutes leurs formes et dans une perspective résolument transdisciplinaire. Des propositions de communication dans une pluralité de domaines de spécialité et d’approches critiques seront donc les bienvenues. 

Modalités pratiques : 
Nous vous invitons à envoyer vos propositions de communication par mail à l’adresse suivante : camille[point]pinettes[arobase]univ-rennes2.fr, avant le 15 septembre 2024, au format suivant : proposition de 300 mots environ + note biographique de 100 mots environ.

Chaque communication durera 20 minutes.

La journée d’étude se déroulera à Rennes le lundi 20 janvier 2025.

Comité scientifique : 
Priscilla Bittencourt Biassi, doctorante en Architecture, GRIEF, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’architecture de Bretagne – ENSAB
Estelle Boucheron, doctorante en Arts Plastiques, PTAC, Rennes 2
Mona Dahdouh Recordier, doctorante en Arts du spectacle, APP, Rennes 2
Anne Goarzin, PR littérature et culture irlandaises, ACE, Rennes 2
Emeline Jaret, MCF histoire de l’art contemporain, PTAC, Rennes 2
Tristan Le Foll, doctorant en littérature américaine, ACE, Rennes 2
Rebecca Lesgoirres, doctorante en musicologie, APP, Rennes 2

Comité d’organisation : 
Gül Eroglu, doctorante en littérature américaine, ACE, Rennes 2 
Camille Pinettes, doctorante en études irlandaises, ACE, Rennes 2
Mathilde Vaillant, doctorante en Arts Plastiques, PTAC, Rennes 2
Gaëlle Yacoubi, doctorante en Arts Plastiques, PTAC, Rennes 2

Bibliographie sélective :

BARAD, Karen. “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter”. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 2003, vol. 28, n° 3, p. 801–31.

BENNETT, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham : Duke University Press, 2010.

BERTOLINI, Gérard. Art et déchet : Le Déchet, matière d’artistes. Lentilly : Aprede, Angers : Le Polygraphe, 2002.

BREMER, Thomas. “Materiality and Literature: An Introduction”. Neohelicon. Décembre 2020, 47, n° 2. p. 349–356.

COOLE, Diana, FROST Samantha. Introducing the New Materialisms. New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Durham : Duke University Press, 2010.

DAGOGNET, François. Des Détritus, des déchets, de l’abject : Une Philosophie écologique. Le Plessis-Robinson : Institut Synthélabo, « Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond », 1997.

DAVILA, Thierry. Marcher, Créer. Déplacements, flâneries, dérives dans l’art de la fin du XXe siècle. Paris : Editions du Regard, 2002.

GAMBLE, Christopher N., HANAN, Joshua S., NAIL Thomas. “What Is New Materialism?” Angelaki Journal of Theoretical Humanities. Novembre 2019, 24(6), p. 111-134.

PICON, Antoine. La matérialité de l’architecture. Marseille : Editions Parenthèses, 2018.

RAMADE, Bénédicte. Médiation artistique du déchet à travers les œuvres de Mierle Laderman Ukeles. In HAMEZ, Grégory, TABEAUD, Martine. Les métamorphoses du déchet. Paris : Éditions de la Sorbonne, « Géographie », 2000, p. 75-88.

SOPER, Kate. Naturalized Woman and Feminized Nature. In COUPE, Laurence. The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism. New York : Routledge, 2000.

SØRENSEN, Mette Bill. “Material translation: How do variations in form and materiality influence the ways we read translated editions of a book?”. Orbis Litterarum. 15 Avril 2022, vol. 77, n° 4, p. 252-267.

STAM, Robert. Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation. In RAENGO, Alessandra, STAM, Robert. Literature and Film : A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation. Oxford : Blackwell Publishing, 2005, p. 1-53.

TAÏEB, Lucie. « Un récit sans morale : de certaines vertus de la littérature face à la question environnementale des déchets ». Revue de littérature comparée. 2023, vol. 386, n° 2, p. 146-155.

Continuer la lecture de « IL Y A MATIÈRE / MATTER THAT MATTERS »

Hello world!

Workshop À la rue ! avec Santiago Morilla · Bois Perrin novembre 2021

Bonjour, nous vous souhaitons la bienvenue sur le carnet Hypothèses de l’École universitaire de recherche Creative approaches to public space (EUR CAPS).

Ce carnet présente les événements et les travaux de recherche des membres de l’école. Il vise à valoriser les activités des enseignant.es, chercheur.es, doctorant·es et masterant·es du parcours CAPS, dédiées aux pratiques créatives de l’espace public. Son lancement est l’occasion de publier trois premiers articles écrits par une partie des doctorantes de l’école.