I have worked at ULIP since retiring from Glasgow in 2011. I had the opportunity in an earlier job to teach French cinema at a time when courses in this area were still quite rare, which enabled me to turn a hobby, and later a personal obsession, into a major area of research. Paris is self-evidently the best place to study and work on French cinema, and my early attraction to the city was reinforced and developed by this. To have the opportunity, at the end of my career, to share this interest with English-speaking students based in Paris is a great privilege.
Paris is a great walking city whose compactness makes it all but unrivalled in this regard. The intellectual and gastronomic life there may no longer reign quite so supreme as thirty or so years ago, but it still takes a deal of beating.
Teaching specialisms
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French cinema
Qualifications
First degree from Cambridge and doctorate from Oxford, on nineteenth-century French fiction (Stendhal).
Professional Memberships and Activities
- Society for French Studies
- Studies in French Cinema
- Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France
Research
My interest in cinema and in critical theory is nowadays supplemented by a passion for cultural topography and the writing of cities, especially Paris. Publications on Robert Bresson, Jean Renoir and the Marais area of Paris - all locatable via Google – attest to this. My current project is a monograph on the Marais quartier of Paris. My current research, in retirement, is largely self-funded, though I have benefited from UK and French funding bodies in earlier incarnations.
Books
- Reader, K. (2010) La règle du jeu : (Jean Renoir, 1939). I.B. Tauris.
- Reader, K. (2006) The abject object: avatars of the phallus in contemporary French theory, literature and film. Series: Chiasma, 17. Rodopi. ISBN 9042017295
- Reader, K. (2003) French cinema: a student's guide. Hodder Arnold. ISBN 0340760044
- Reader, K., and Edwards, R. (2001) The Papin sisters. Series: Oxford studies in modern European culture. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198160100
Book sections
- Reader, K. (2010) Cultural topography: a new growth area? In:Lebrun, B. and Lovecy, J. (eds.) Une et divisible? : Plural Identities in Modern France. Peter Lang. ISBN 9783034301237
- Reader, K. (2007) Godard and asynchrony. In: Temple, M., Williams, J. S. and Witt, M. (eds.) For Ever Godard. Black Dog Publishing, pp. 72-93. ISBN 1901033694
- Dauncey, H., and Reader, K. (2003) Consumer culture: food, drink and fashion. In: Hewitt, N. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Modern French Culture. Series: Cambridge companions to culture. Cambridge University Press, pp. 104-124. ISBN 9780521794657
- Reader, K. (2003) Flaubert's sparrow, or the Bovary of Belleville? In:Cannon, S. and Dauncey, H. (eds.) Popular Music in France from Chanson to Techno: Culture, Identity and Society. Series: Ashgate popular and folk music series. Ashgate Publishing, pp. 205-224. ISBN 0754608492
- Reader, K. (2001) Mon cul est intersexuel. In: Hughes, A. andWilliams, J. (eds.) Gender and French Cinema. Berg, pp. 63-76. ISBN 1859735703
- Reader, K. (2000) Belgian film comedy and national identity. In:Andrew, J., Crook, M., Holmes, D. and Kolinsky, E. (eds.) Why Europe? Problems of Culture and Identity. St. Martin's Press: New York, USA. ISBN 9780333724446
- Reader, K. (2000) Subtext: the Paris of Alexandre Trauner. In:Konstantaralos, M. (ed.) Spaces in European Cinema. Series: Intellect European studies series. Intellect Press: Exeter, UK. ISBN 9781841500041
- Reader, K. (1999) Phédre and the construction of 'Racine'. In:Wygant, A. (ed.) Towards a Cultural Philology: Phèdre and the Construction of 'Racine'. Legenda. ISBN 9781900755146
Articles
- Reader, K. (2010) Writing the city, writing the quartier: work-in-progress on the Bastille area of Paris. Contemporary French Civilization(34), pp. 49-66.
- Drake, D., and Reader, K. (2008) Introduction. Modern and Contemporary France, 16(2), p. 123.(doi:10.1080/09639480801975859)
- Reader, K. (2008) Another Deleuzian Resnais: l'année dernière à Marienbad as conflict between sadism and masochism. Studies in French Cinema, 8(2), pp. 149-158. (doi:10.1386/sfc.8.2.149_1)
- Reader, K. (2005) The policing of desire in the Gabrielle Russier affair. Studies in French Cinema, 6(1), pp. 5-20.(doi:10.1177/0957155805049563)
- Reader, K. (2004) Survey (état présent) of French cinema during the occupation years. French Studies, 58(3), pp. 385-389.(doi:10.1093/fs/58.3.385)
- Reader, K. (2002) "If I were a girl - and I am not": cross-dressing in Alain Berliner's Ma vie en rose and Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion. Esprit créateur, 42(3), pp. 50-59.
- Reader, K. (2002) Leaner, meaner, recycled. Contemporary French Civilization,
- Reader, K. (2001) Jouissance at the margins: Phillippe Harel's Extension du domaine de la lutte/Whatever. Studies in French Cinema, 1(2), pp. 118-125. (doi:10.1386/sfci.1.2.118)
- Reader, K. (1997) The mother the whore & the dandy. Sight and Sound, 7(10), pp. 28-30.