Staff profile
Dr Géraldine Crahay
Lecturer (Teaching) - French
B.A.; M.A.; Ph.D.

Affiliation | Room number | Telephone |
---|---|---|
Lecturer (Teaching) - French in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures | A5, Elvet Riverside I | +44 (0) 191 33 44352 |
Biography
I come from Liège, in the French speaking part of Belgium. As an undergraduate, I studied Romance languages and literature at the University of Liège. I spent one semester as an Erasmus student in Padua (Università degli Studi di Padova). I studied for a M.A. in French literature at the University of Liège, with a special focus on the nineteenth-century. Following this, I completed a teacher training degree at the same university and taught French in a Belgian secondary school for a year.
In 2011, I undertook a Ph.D. in French studies at Bangor University whilst working as a graduate teaching assistant. My research focused on the representation of a masculine malaise, sexual and gender ambiguities in narratives of the July Monarchy (1830-48) and scientific texts of that time.
In 2015, I started to work at the Centre for Foreign Language Study at Durham University as an Assistant Teaching Fellow in French. I have been teaching a variety of levels and students since then.
I have been a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy since 2015 and a certified DELF-DALF examiner since 2017.
In 2019, I have launched the project Ballet workshops in French, which has been funded by the first DCAD collaborative grant.
With French colleagues from the CFLS and MLAC, I have created the pedagogical toolbox Pratiques créatives de l'enseignement du français à l'université on the online platform IFProfs. We have also organised online creative writing workshops and masterclasses for learners and teachers of French, and launched creative writing contests in French.
Research interests
- Relations between science and literature
- Language learning and dancing
- Creative writing in language learning
- Gender identities
- Language teaching and literature
- Teaching heterogeneous groups
Publications
Authored book
- (2022). The Hermaphrodite, the Effete and the Butch: Sexual and Gender Ambiguities in Nineteenth-Century French Narratives. Peter Lang.
Chapter in book
- Crahay, Géraldine (2020). French creative theatre in a course for beginners: The case of Finissez vos phrases! by Jean Tardieu. In Literature in Language Learning: New Approaches. Almeida, Ana Bela Bavendiek, Ulrike & Biasini, Rosalba Research-publishing.net. 77-84.
- Crahay, Géraldine (2018). ‘“Voyez les femmes les plus hommasses, ces viragines audacieuses” La domestication de la femme masculine dans les traités savants de la première moitié du dix-neuvième siècle’. In Medicine and Maladies: Representing Affliction in Nineteenth-Century France. Leroy, Sophie (ed.) Brill-Rodopi. 19-40.
Journal Article
- (2017). ‘Serenity’s Operative and Les Misérables’s Inspector Javert: The Masculinity of Scrupulous Civil Servants’. Slayage: The Journal of the Whedon Studies Association 15(1).
- (2017). Théophile Gautier: Mademoiselle de Maupin. The Literary Encyclopedia
- (2017). Victor Hugo: Han d'Islande [Han of Iceland]. The Literary Encyclopedia
- (2016). ‘“Oh! non, je ne pourrai jamais te le dire… j’aime un homme!” Hermaphrodite et l’esthétisation de l’homosexualité dans Mademoiselle de Maupin'. Nineteenth-Century French Studies 45(1-2): 17-32.
- (2013). ‘Valorising Genitalia: Homosexuality and Hermaphroditism in French Scientific Writings in the Nineteenth Century. Harts & Minds 1(2).