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Seth Whidden, The Queen's College

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Faculty webpageNineteenth-Century French Studies

Prof Seth Whidden

Roger Pearson Fellow in French

Senior Tutor

Secretary to the Laming Committee

Introduction

During my undergraduate studies at Union College, I spent a term in France, where I returned to teach after completing my degree. After a Master’s at Ohio State, I did my PhD at Brown, focusing on nineteenth-century French poetry. I came to Queen’s in 2016.

Following my education in non-selective state schools in the U.S., I pursued undergraduate and postgraduate study and taught at both private and public institutions before coming to Oxford. I welcome applications from excellent students from all corners of the globe and from all walks of life. I also share the University’s commitment to an inclusive environment, which ‘promotes equality, values diversity and maintains a working, learning and social environment in which the rights and dignity of all its staff and students are respected.’

Teaching

I teach French language and literature to all years of the French undergraduate course at Queen’s. In addition to translation from French into English and first-year grammar classes, I teach a range of topics of nineteenth- and twentieth-century French literature. I’m happy to supervise graduate work on nineteenth-century French literature, particularly in poetry.

Research

Much of my research has focused on 19th century poetry: specifically, at the intersection of poetic form and underlying tensions within and around a text. I have tended to work on poets of the second half of the century, including Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Krysinska, in my research and in translations as well. I have been the editor of the scholarly journal Nineteenth-Century French Studies since 2014.

Publications

You can find out more about my current research projects, and a list of selected publications, on my Faculty webpage.