Dr Brenda Garvey
Senior Lecturer
Dr Brenda Garvey leads the French team at the University of Chester, designing, developing and teaching on undergraduate French modules and works closely with colleagues from other language areas on cultural studies modules. She takes a particular interest in pastoral care and supervision and oversees undergraduate student portfolios and projects. She also leads the MA Language, Cultures and Translation programme and has supervised MA and MRes dissertations on a range of subjects related to language, identity formation and social movements across the French speaking world. Dr Garvey supervises PhD projects on language, literature and culture with particular reference to responses to cultural imperialism and independence.
Dr Garvey teaches on French language and culture modules at all levels and on global cultural studies modules at levels 6 and 7. Her research-based teaching allows for exploration of cultures and societies across central and western Africa where French has had a influence and of social movements in Europe and abroad with a particular focus on young voices.
Dr Garvey researches in contemporary literature from France and West and Central Africa. She has a particular interest in women's writing, young voices, storytelling and orality and the decolonisation of research and cultural currency. Her PhD thesis examined spatio-temporal dynamics in the works of Annie Ernaux, Patrick Modiano, Jean Echenoz and Marie Darrieussecq and she has published on these authors as well as on language and literature in West Africa. Since 2008 she has carried out research in Senegal and Mali where her projects have included collecting migrant stories from Africa and Europe, collaborative workshops with colleagues in Universite Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, on the publication, access and sharing of knowledge, and youth protest particularly through hip hop. Dr Garvey encourages student participation and partnership in research and welcomes expressions of interest from postgraduate students. She is currently supervising a number of PhD theses on topics including literary translation, Algerian cinema, cultural imperialism through food, and linguistic hybridity in West African and Caribbean prose fiction.
Current publication projects include
A co-edited book project on francophone African futures, working title: Decolonising the Future? Challenges for Francophone Africa and the Diaspora including a chapter on gender and migration.
An article on ‘Felwine Sarr’s ‘Ateliers de la pensée’ and new directions towards an Afrotopia’ for a book on Africa in Global Intellectual Thought.
An article on Marie Darrieussecq’s Notre vie dans la forêt for a special edition of L’Esprit Créateur on ‘Challenging Normative Spaces and Gazes : The Body in 20th and 21st Centure Francophone Cultures’.
Publications
2014 - ‘Embodied spaces and out-of-body experiences in Le Pays’ in Marie Darrieussecq, eds. G.Rye and H. Chadderton, Dalhousie French Studies 97.
2013 - ‘Relocating the traditional in the Senegalese classroom’ in Contesting historical divides is French-speaking Africa, ed. C.Griffiths, University of Chester Press.
2013 - ‘Storytelling and Play in a Pular Village’ in Between Work and Play: French and Francophone Women and Leisure, N.Morello and K. Jones (eds.) Nottingham French Studies, vol52, no.1 Spring 2013.
May 2008 - ‘Rhythms, Repetitions and Rewritings in Passion Simple by Annie Ernaux’, in Rhythms. Essays in French Literature, Thought and Culture, eds. E. Linndley & L. McMahon Oxford Peter Lang (Modern French Identities).
April 2005 - co-wrote article Shelving Translation for In Other Words, Summer 2005, No.25, published by the British Centre for Literary Translation.
March 2005 - co-edited Shelving Translation: The role of the translated text in Britain Today A special edition for Brunel University’s on-line journal EnterText.
Conferences, lectures and seminars
November 2018 – Felwine Sarr’s ‘Atelier de la pensée’: New directions towards an ‘Afroptopia’ for the Africa in Global Intellectual Thought conference in Berlin.
May 2018 - Feminism and May ’68 for the ‘May 1968 – Events in France’ public lecture at the Storyhouse, Chester.
September 2017- Exercices de style: Running with Jean Echenoz at the ASMCF conference at the University of Bangor.
January 2016- Voices from the seas, Senegalese Migration to Europe at the Northern Postcolonial Network conference on ‘Asylum, Migration and Refugees’ at the University of Salford, Mediacity.
May 2015 – The Rise and Rise of Urban Wolof: Building New Communities and Identities in 21st Century Senegal at the YASN conference on ‘Family, Community and Livelihoods’ at the University of Sheffield.
June 2013 - Renegotiating social identity in 21st century Senegal at ECAS conference ‘African Dynamics in a Multipolar World’, Lisbon, Portugal.
November 2012 - Language and the renegotiation of social and self-identity in Senegal Modern Languages Dept Research Seminar, University of Chester.
September 2012 - A war of words: Linguistic and Literary Practices in 21st Century Senegal at ASAUK, Leeds University.
December 2011 - An African Voice against Migration: Mbeke mi by Abasse Ndione at RIA Modern Languages Sympopsium, Dublin DIT.
February 2011 - Keepers of Tradition: Storytelling in the Senegalese classroom at LSE conference on Storytelling and Language learning.
October 2010 - Where have I left my body? Embodied spaces and out of body experiences in the work of Marie Darrieussecq at A Decade of Women’s Writing in France conference, Centre for the Study of contemporary Women’s Writing.
September 2010 - co-organised Post-slavery, post-imperial, post-colonial? Contesting historical divides in francophone Africa colloquium at University of Chester presented Reimagining culture in the classroom.
November 2009 - Grandmother’s Tales: Senegalese storytelling as cultural exchange at the Cultural Exchange conference for Royal Irish Academy for Modern Language, Literary and Cultural Studies at trinity College Dublin.
October 2009 - The case of the case des tout petits at Romance Studies conference, New Jersey, USA.
May 2009 - The female griot at ‘Women at Play’ international conference of Women in French at Aston University, Birmingham.
November 2008 - Ta(l)king to the seas at ‘Postcoloniality and Ecology’ International conference at Roehampton University.
March 2008 - three guest lectures at the University of Warwick, Apollinaire;, Baudelaire Sex and the Cit;y Baudelaire and the Making of the Modern.
- BA
- MA
- PhD
- PGCHE