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Staff profile

Overview

Dr Dominique Carlini Versini

Assistant Professor

Affiliations
Affiliation
Assistant Professor in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures

Biography

Prior to joining Durham in 2019, I completed two BA degrees (English and Lettres Modernes) at Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle and an MA in French and Comparative Literature (Sorbonne Nouvelle/Kent), as well as a PhD in French Studies (Kent) in 2018. I was also a pensionnaire at the Ecole normale supérieure and taught French language and culture at various universities including the University of Kent, the University of London Institute in Paris and the University of Limerick in Ireland.

Teaching and Scholarship

At MLAC, I primarily teach French language modules at undergraduate level. I convene the first-year module French Language 1 and co-convene our newly established ab initio French programme. Creativity is at the centre of my teaching and scholarship. I believe the study of language is a point of entry in the culture, which is why I’m committed to a blended approach to language and culture teaching. Since 2021, I have been part of a project on creative writing in the French language classroom with CFLS colleagues Géraldine Crahay, Anna Johnston and Cynthia Tavars. We co-organised a series of creative writing workshops and seminars aimed at teachers and students. We also run a yearly creative writing contest open to undergraduate students in French in the UK.

I am also chairing a working group investigating the teaching and assessment of gender-inclusive language to ensure linguistic and cultural inclusivity in our curriculum. This initiative benefits students by fostering an understanding of diverse identities and promoting equitable communication practices, essential for global citizenship and intercultural competence. The group focuses on areas such as the evolution of gender-neutral pronouns across languages, strategies for integrating inclusive language in grammar instruction, and methods for assessing students' ability to use such language authentically.

My research on women writing also informs my teaching and I look at the notion of désenchantement in Marie Darrieussecq’s Truismes in a series of lectures for the second-year module Modern and Disenchantment in 19th and 20th century French Literature and Culture.

Another dimension of my ongoing scholarship is the study of the use of AI in language learning. I am part of a research team investigating the potential implications of Generative AI on learning, teaching and assessment in the Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) context within MLaC. This project directly informs my teaching in our core language modules as well as in our specialised MA in Translation studies.

Research

I primarily research the work of contemporary French women writers and filmmakers. I’m keenly interested in New Extreme cinema or cinéma du corps, the exploration of sensory experiences in text and film and haptic aesthetics. My monograph, Figures de l'excès chez Marie Darrieussecq, Virginie Despentes et Marina de Van : Ecrire et filmer le corps-frontière (Brill, Faux Titre series, 2023), focuses on extreme representations of the body in contemporary texts and films by women. In the book, I think about excess and the body through and beyond the representation of sex and violence, which allows to question corporeal boundaries as well as the intersections between text and film.

I am also interested in the intersection of literature, and more broadly the humanities, with other fields. I co-guest edited a special issue on the various ways in which Marie Darrieussecq’s oeuvre engages with sciences, which appeared in Dalhousie French Studies in 2020. As part of my most recent research project, I examine abortion narratives from a transdisciplinary perspective. As part of this work, I co-edited a special issue with Caroline Verdier on "Abortion in Contemporary Francophone Women's Writing" (L'Esprit Créateur, Fall 2024). I'm editing another special issue on the topic, L’avortement dans la littérature et le cinéma français contemporains, which will appear in Modern & Contempory France in 2025.

In September 2021, I co-organised a conference on “Feminism(s) in the Age of Covid-19 and Beyond” in collaboration with Mylène Branco at the University of Luxembourg, which reflected on the diversity and the creativity of feminist expression and activism during the pandemic. Following the conference, a special issue will be published in the Journal of Gender Studies (2025, issue 3), for which I interviewed, with my co-editor, the author Juliet Jacques.

I co-convene the research group Living Texts with Prof Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze. The group seeks to explore the life of texts in all its significant aspects, from creation to reception. As part of the Living Texts seminar series, we notably welcomed Belgian writer Caroline Lamarche in June 2022, as well as translator Katherine Gregor and Héloïse Press founder Aina Marti for the publication the English translation of Lamarche’s The Memory of the Air; French writer Marie Darrieussecq in collaboration with Collected Books in October 2023; French writer Michaël Ferrier in March 2024 and Swiss writer Sarah Jolien-Fardel in November 2024.

Teaching and Academic Roles

Teaching and module convening

  • FREN1011 French Language 1A (Teaching and module convenorship)
  • FREN1012 French Language 1B (Teaching and module convenorship)
  • FREN2051 French Language 2A (Teaching)
  • FREN2011 French Langauge 2B (Teaching and module convenorship)
  • FREN2011 Modernity and Disenchantment: 19th and 20th Century French Literature and Culture (Teaching)
  • FREN3041 French Language 4 (Teaching) 
  • MELA41830 Specialised Translation Fr-Eng (Teaching and module convenorship)

Other academic and administrative roles

  • Final year dissertation supervisor
  • Language Provision Committee Co-Chair
  • French Year Abroad Co-Officer
  • Co-convenor of the Living Texts research group

Research interests

  • Contemporary French/francophone literature and film
  • Creative writing
  • Embodiment, gender and sexuality
  • Feminist activism and theory
  • Gender and power in French language and culture
  • Translation studies

Esteem Indicators

Publications

Authored book

Chapter in book

Conference Paper

Edited book

Journal Article

Other (Print)

Supervision students

Tamzin Elliott

Contracts Administrator