Staff profile
Affiliation | Telephone |
---|---|
Professor in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures | +44 (0) 191 33 43444 |
Executive Director in the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies |
Biography
I was born and brought up in London, studied at Oxford (BA, MSt, DPhil), and have taught at the École normale supérieure (Paris) as well as the University of Oxford and Durham University. I moved to Durham in 2019 to take up the Chair in French created, along with two Associate Professorships, by way of succession to Lucille Cairns and John O’Brien. I had spent the previous thirteen years at Oxford as Fellow and Tutor in French at Oriel College and (first) University Lecturer in French and (from 2015 onwards) Professor of French and Comparative Literature. I was Deputy Head in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham in the period 2019-2021. I became Director of Durham’s Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (in a job share with Professor Ita Mac Carthy) in 2023. I am the recipient of a Philip Leverhulme Prize and a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques.
Research Interests
My research interests lie in French and comparative literature, broadly conceived, with a particular emphasis on early modern studies, world literature, translation and transcultural studies, word histories, and questions of critical method.
I am the author of Émigrés: French Words That Turned English (2020); Montaigne and the Art of Free-Thinking (2010); and The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi in Early Modern Europe: Encounters with a Certain Something (2005). Other publications include Thinking with Shakespeare: Comparative and Interdisciplinary Essays (2007); Fiction and the Frontiers of Knowledge in Europe, 1500–1800 (2010); Caribbean Globalizations, 1492 to the Present Day (2015); and Montaigne in Transit: Essays in Honour of Ian Maclean (2016). My work has appeared in several languages and my first two books (2005, 2010) were translated into French.
The inaugural lecture I gave as Professor at Durham took the form of a film, entitled ‘Caprice in the Time of Covid’, which I made during the pandemic with the filmmaker Alan Fentiman. This may be viewed in full on YouTube here.
Current Research
My current research explores responses to Thomas More’s Utopia across the early modern world. It asks what these responses add to our wider understanding of utopianism. Utopian studies tends to overlook the global reception of More’s 1516 landmark work before Bacon's New Atlantis (1627). Yet More's earlier readers decisively shaped the development of utopian literature and thought. Their most important contribution produced a myriad of alternative ways of thinking. This was a border-crossing culture of invention that saw Utopia variously – and controversially – translated, remade, and rewritten.
This project was funded by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2021-2024).
I am developing my work on the project at IMEMS. Inventing Futures (IFs), which I co-direct with Ita Mac Carthy, is a broad programme of interdisciplinary research which emphasizes future-oriented consequences of past-oriented study. The programme draws on our research community’s knowledge of the past to tackle critical global challenges facing humankind today. Generously supported by a signature donation from Joanna and Graham Barker, IMEMS launched three IFs flagship projects in 2024, and we are actively developing further projects across the full range of medieval and early modern studies.
The IFs project I lead is entitled ‘Imagining Alternatives: Utopia in the World’. This proposes that policy makers diminish the communities they serve when they impose blueprints to manage access to limited resources. It explores an alternative approach to problem-solving that harnesses the collective power of the human imagination. Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), first published in Latin and then translated into many European languages in the century after its publication, provides a model for this approach. The project places Utopia among other literary, philosophical, and sociopolitical exercises in alternative world-making. It investigates the early material history of Utopia and related texts from the period in their journey across borders of language, culture, race, gender, class, and sociopolitical allegiance.
I am the founding General Editor of Translatio, a book series published by Durham University IMEMS Press, exploring pre-modern translation in all its guises and a global perspective. I am a member of CEIPPREM (Centre d’études interdisciplinaires sur Pascal, Port-Royal, et l’Europe moderne) led by Alain Cantillon (Université de Paris-III Sorbonne Nouvelle). I have held visiting research positions at several national and international universities and research libraries.
Previous research collaborations
I served as a Member of the Jury du Prix XVIIe siècle (on behalf of La Société d’Étude du XVIIe siècle, France) and of the Editorial Board for the French Renaissance Texts in Translation (FRTT) series published by AMS Press (New York). I am a former Editor of Early Modern French Studies, the journal of the UK Society for Early Modern French Studies.
Other past collaborations include co-directing the international research project Early Modern Keywords; participating as a founding member of Storming Utopia, a research-led theatrical experiment in utopianism directed by Wes Williams and Angharad Arnott Phillips and performed at various locations in Oxford and Venice in 2017; acting as Visiting Fellow on the ERC-funded research project led by Alexander Marr, Genius Before Romanticism (Cambridge); and directing at Oriel College, Oxford, a major collaborative project exploring evolutions of Caribbean cultural identity in the long age of globalization. I created the Oxford-Venice Initiative, a series of collaborations between the Fondazione Giorgio Cini (Venice) and the University of Oxford’s Humanities Division (2014–18). I was a member of the ANR-funded AGÔN research project led by Alexis Tadié (Université de Paris-IV Sorbonne) and Prof. Alain Viala (University of Oxford and Université de Paris-III Sorbonne Nouvelle), investigating cases, quarrels, and controversies in early modern France and England (2010–15). I was Visiting Fellow at the Theorizing Early Modern Studies Collaborative, University of Minnesota (2007). I participated in the interdisciplinary international early modern research group Les Frontières de la modernité (2003–7) at the Maison Française d'Oxford.
Postgraduate Supervision
I have supervised PhD students working in French and Francophone literature, comparative and world literature, translation studies, word histories, interdisciplinary early modern studies, and cultural and intellectual history. Research topics I am currently supervising or have recently supervised include the place of women in the early modern Italian utopian tradition (Laura Mattioli), the afterlives of François Rabelais on the nineteenth-century Parisian lyric stage (Zak Eastop), and the relations between language standardization and constructions of gender in early modern France (Jess Allen). I would welcome enquiries from students who wish to pursue PhDs in all fields related to my research interests.
Research interests
- French and comparative literature
- Early modern studies
- Utopian studies
- Translation studies
- Word histories
- Cultural and intellectual history
- Critical methodologies
Publications
Authored book
- Scholar, R. (2020). Émigrés: French Words That Turned English. Princeton University Press
- Scholar, R. (2010). Montaigne and the Art of Free-Thinking. Peter Lang Oxford
- Scholar, R. (2005). The 'Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi' in Early Modern Europe: Encounters with a Certain Something. Oxford University Press
Chapter in book
- Scholar, R. (2023). Inventing Utopia: The Case of Early Modern France. In C. Shrank, & P. Withington (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Thomas More’s Utopia. Oxford University Press
- Scholar, R. (2021). Montaigne’s Essais, Shakespeare’s Trials, and other Experiments of Moment. In L. Engle, P. Gray, & W. M. Hamlin (Eds.), Shakespeare and Montaigne (282-295). Edinburgh University Press
- Scholar, R. (2021). Dans les marges de l'utopie: le Commentario d’Ortensio Lando. In T. Reeser, & D. LaGuardia (Eds.), Théories critiques et littérature de la Renaissance: mélanges offerts à Lawrence Kritzman (91-98). Classiques Garnier
- Scholar, R. (2017). Montaigne on Free-Thinking. In P. Desan (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Montaigne (434-452). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190215330.013.23
- Scholar, R. (2015). The Archipelago Goes Global: Late Glissant and the Early Modern Isolario. In E. Sansavior, & R. Scholar (Eds.), Caribbean Globalizations, 1492 to the Present Day (33-57). Liverpool University Press
Edited book
- Scholar, R., Kenny, N., & Williams, W. (Eds.). (2016). Montaigne in Transit: Essays in Honour of Ian Maclean. Legenda
- Scholar, R., & Sansavior, E. (Eds.). (2015). Caribbean Globalizations, 1492 to the Present Day. Liverpool University Press
- Scholar, R., & Tadié, A. (Eds.). (2010). Fiction and the Frontiers of Knowledge in Europe, 1500-1800. Ashgate Publishing
- Scholar, R., & Holland, A. (Eds.). (2009). Pre-Histories and Afterlives: Studies in Critical Method. Legenda
Journal Article
- Scholar, R. (2023). Utopias and temporo-spatial invention: reading More with Marin. Early Modern French Studies, 45(1), 22-29. https://doi.org/10.1080/20563035.2023.2200410
- Scholar, R. (2016). Montaigne et la “vanité” des utopies. Revue de Synthèse, 137(3-4), 321-343. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11873-016-0305-7
- Scholar, R. (2013). Epilogue: Co-operations. Seventeenth-century French studies, 35(2 - Special issue Pascal’s Écrits sur la gràce), 179-86. https://doi.org/10.1179/0265106813z.00000000033
- Scholar, R. (2013). De la dispute utopienne à la controverse religieuse: deux querelles signées Thomas More. Littératures classiques (Toulouse), 81, 37-49. https://doi.org/10.3917/licla.081.0037
- Scholar, R. (2006). Two Cheers for Free-Thinking. Paragraph, 29(Theory and the Early Modern), 40-53. https://doi.org/10.3366/prg.2006.0008
- Scholar, R. (2003). "Je Ne Sais Quelle Grâce": Esther before Assuérus. French Studies, 56, 317-27. https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/56.3.317
- Scholar, R. (1998). Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: A Case-Study in Translation?. Translation and Literature, 7, 42-55
Scholarly Edition
- Pigeard de Gurbert, G., & Scholar, R. (2006). Alice au jardin d’enfants
- Pascal, B., & Scholar, R. (2003). Entretien avec Sacy sur la philosophie: extrait des Mémoires de Fontaine
- O'Brien, F.-J., Pigeard de Gurbert, G., & Scholar, R. (1998). Qu’était-ce ?
- Pigeard de Gurbert, G., & Scholar, R. (1997). L’Étrange Affaire du Dr Jekyll et de Mr Hyde