ProfessorMary Gallagher

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO TEACH 'FRENCH' AT UNIVERSITY-LEVEL?

As a literary critic interested primarily in trans-Atlantic, cross-Mediterranean and trans-Pacific writing in French, I work most especially on the cultural ethics, poetics and politics of globalisation. This research interest in Post-Colonial Studies and in World Writing has led me to reflect not just in my writing, but also through my teaching and supervision, on the core educational purpose of the university. I'm especially interested in how the university's relation with some of the higher order principles of education (respect for linguistic/cultural diversity and equality) is realised in teaching practice. I'm also interested in how the discipline of Modern Languages interfaces in practice with the university's core strategy of internationalisation and of European and global engagement (including global competition for students).

It is not as a researcher or as an author of books in both French and English, or even as a translator (from French) that I make my main contribution to students in UCD; it is rather as a facilitator of advanced linguistic and cultural literacy in French. I’ve been responsible for many years for one or other of the two semester-long, final-year core French language programmes. I have also been coordinator on many occasions of one or other of the two core 1Y 'Reading French' programmes. I still love the stimulation of studying the detail and depth of the French language with small groups of students, not just in in dedicated ‘language classes’, but also in literary or ‘reading’ seminars, where the study of language intersects most intensely with the study of thought, of the world and of the meaning of life and of death.

*  Specialist Undergrad Courses 

In addition to these team-taught courses, I have also coordinated and taught courses on my areas of special expertise. These have included 3/4Y American Writing in French; 3/4Y Modernist Introspection; 3/4Y Feminine Writing; 3/4Y Canadian and Caribbean Literature. I have also co-taught final-year or Masters courses on Proust and on Caribbean autobiography, and initiated and co-taught an MA module on Literary Translation. A further privilege involved teaching or co-teaching (with Prof. Michael Brophy) a graduate module on Migrant Writing and some graduate course units on Postcolonialism (in UCD SLCL and in UCD Sociology) though I have also been happy and privileged to contribute course units on anti- , post- or de-colonial thought on a variety of undergraduate degree programmes. 

* Research Modules

My teaching practice was greatly enriched and my research practice greatly energised by my involvement as supervisor and, between 2017 and 2022, as co-ordinator, of the 3/4Y undergraduate French module ‘Research in French’. 

It was also a privilege (as a direct result of teaching or co-teaching for over fifteen years (until 2021) an MA module on 'Migrant Writing in French') to supervise nine Masters dissertations in this area during that time. 

* International Teaching/Research Partnerships - Erasmus +

Thanks mainly to my interest in wider French-language culture (beyond Europe), especially in Francophone transatlantic and cross-mediterranean connectivity, I have developed an Erasmus (linguistic and literary) exchange between UCD and the University of the Antilles (French Caribbean) and another Erasmus+ -funded exchange with the University of Tunis. A further ICM exchange with the National University of Vietnam, coordinated by a colleague in UCD Geography, Dr Christine Bonnin, has allowed a Comparative Literature partnership to develop. The mobility project with Tunis has also involved inward and outward Tunis-Dublin research and teaching mobility for two colleagues from UCD History and for PhD students from UCD's Schools of Education (two), History (one) and Geography (one), while the Vietnam project involved outward mobility of a Comparative Lliterature PhD student from UCD's SLCL and inward mobility of a colleague from Hanoi. 

The opportunities for teaching/and for UG and PG research exchanges with these three spaces offer exciting new opportunities for students of French to develop their intellectual interest in areas of great strategic importance for UCD (especially in the areas of Post-Colonial studies and World Writing).