Russell Williams

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Russell Williams

Associate Professor, Director of the Learning Commons and Director of Faculty Development

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Professor Williams came to AUP in 2013 after completing his doctoral studies at the University of London Institute in Paris and teaching at Université Paris-Est (Université Gustave Eiffel). His research focuses primarily on the contemporary novel and with his work, in particular, exploring the poetics, narrative technique and provocations of the French writer Michel Houellebecq. Professor Williams is also Director of the Learning Commons and Director of Faculty Development at AUP. He was awarded the AUP Board of Trustees award for Innovation in Instructional Design at graduation in 2018 and 2020. He shared the 2021 Distinguished Teaching Award with all of his Faculty colleagues and together with Dr Ruth Corran (Computer Science, Mathematics & Science) was awarded the 2022 Award for Innovation in Interdisciplinary Studies. In 2022 he was presented with the Undergraduate Student Council Faculty Recognition Award.

In addition to his ongoing work on Houellebecq and contemporary French writing, Professor Williams’ research concerns American and British literature of the same period, the cultural resonances between French and English language writing, and European detective fiction, particularly the work of néo-polar writers Thierry Jonquet and Jean-Patrick Manchette. He has also published on the relationships between writing, extremity and intoxication and is increasingly interested in the complex relationships between writing, reading, teaching, thinking and technology. As well as literary fiction, Professor Williams is interested in contemporary cinema, TV series, visual art, French pop, experimental music and noise.

Professor Williams has, with Dr Carole Sweeney (Goldsmiths University London), co-edited a special issue of the scholarly journal Modern and Contemporary France on Michel Houellebecq. With Dr Anna-Louise Milne (University of London Institute in Paris), he has co-edited Contemporary Fiction in French, collection of essays examining contemporary writing in French for Cambridge University Press. His book on Houellebecq, Pathos, poetry and politics in Michel Houellebecq's fiction was published in 2019 with Rodopi/Brill. He has recently completed scholarly articles on Houellebecq and terrorism, Houellebecq's supposed 'plagiarism' and how the cultural logic of information management manifests in Houellebecq's literary style. Professor Williams is presently working on his next book, an interdisciplinary project tentatively titled French Weird.

Professor Williams’ journalism and literary criticism regularly appears in publications including the Times Literary Supplement, where he is Consultant Editor for French and Francophone literatures and contributes regularly to the podcast. He has written for the New Statesman, the Los Angeles Review of Books and The Quietus. He also writes for his website, linked above, and tweets at @russwilliams_uk.



Education/Degrees

  • PhD, The University of London Institute in Paris
  • MA, The University of Manchester
  • BA, The University of Liverpool

Publications

Books

  • w/Anna-Louise Milne, Contemporary Fiction in French (Cambridge University Press, January 2021)
  • Pathos, poetry and politics in Michel Houellebecq's fiction, 'Faux Titre' (Leiden: Rodopi-Brill, 2019)
  • w/ Marcela Lacub and Hervé Le Bras, Fourier, Kafka, Houellebecq: trois théories sur l'enfer conjugal (Paris: Descartes et Cie, February 2018)
  • w/ Eugene Brennan, Literature and Intoxication: Writing, Politics and the Experience of Excess (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)
  • w/ Alastair Hemmens, Autour de l’extrême littéraire (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012)

Peer-reviewed articles

  • ‘“Doing a Houellebecq” in the age of screens: trolling, selfies and textual bricolage’, Romance Studies, forthcoming 2022

  • ‘The writer and the terrorist: on Michel Houellebecq’, Textual Practice, 34:9, 2020, 1599-1622, DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2020.1808302

  • ‘Michel Houellebecq, Information Management and Our New Dark Age’. French Cultural Studies, vol. 31, no. 1, Feb. 2020, pp. 46–58, doi:10.1177/0957155819893587
  • 'Uncomfortable proximity. Literary technique, authorial provocations and dog whistles in Michel Houellebecq’s fiction', Modern & Contemporary France, 2019, 27:1, 61-76, DOI: 10.1080/09639489.2018.1557128
  • 'Une poétique de la neutralité : soumission, anomie et inertie dans la fiction de Michel Houellebecq', in Raphaël Baroni & Samuel Estier (eds), Les "voix" de Michel Houellebecq, Actes du Colloque de l'Université de Lausanne 2016, Fabula, <http://www.fabula.org/colloques/sommaire3250.php>
  • ‘Michel Houellebecq and Crime Fiction – between polar and poésie’, in Jean Kaempfer and André Vanoncini (eds.), Revue critique de fixxion française contemporaine, No. 10
  • ‘« La transgression ne m’intéresse pas, pour le dire brutalement ». Michel Houellebecq, critic of transgression’, in Elizabeth Benjamin and Jessica Goodman (eds.), MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities, MHRA, Vol. 9, 2014, pp. 67-83

Book chapters

  • ‘The Franco-American Novel’, in Russell Williams and Anna-Louise Milne (eds), Contemporary Fiction in French (Cambridge University Press, January 2021)

  • 'La vie littéraire inconnue de Michel Houellebecq', in Agathe Novak-Lechevalier (ed), Cahier Houellebecq (Paris: Editions de l'Herne, 2017)

  • ‘Writing and Intoxication: Drunken Philosophers, Crack Addicts and the Perpetual Present’, in Russell Williams and Eugene Brennan (eds.), Literature and Intoxication: Writing, Politics and the Experience of Excess (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 25-48
  • ‘« La souffrance à la fois pénétrante et douce ». Depression in Michel Houellebecq’s fiction’, in Gillian Ni Chellaigh, Laura Jackson and Siobhán McIlvanne (eds.), Quand La Folie Parle (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), pp. 134-150
  • ‘Houellebecq et L’Idiot international : la genèse d’une voix littéraire ?’, in Bruno Viard (ed.), L’Unité de l’œuvre de Michel Houellebecq, (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2014), pp. 337-349
  • ‘Cults, crimes and coprophilia. Subversive 
communities in Richard Morgiève’s Sex Vox Dominam and Thomas Hairmont’s Le Coprophile’, in Alastair Hemmens and Russell Williams (eds.) Autour de l’extrême littéraire, (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012)

Review articles and encyclopedia entries

Conferences & Lectures

  • Invited chair, Discussion about Edward Chisholm’s book A Waiter in Paris, American Library in Paris, December 12, 2023. Recording available at, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duA6pJFFl3c
  • Invited chair, Discussion on The Attention Economy/In Search of the Third Bird with Justin EH Smith and Graham Burnett, American Library in Paris, October 19, 2023. Recording available at, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb3GR4Lbbsg&t=63s
  • Invited panel member, Discussion with novelists Shumona Sinha and Maylis de Kerangal, Institut Français, London, September 27, 2022. Recording available at, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lYPLI2uOWY&t=1s
  • Invited talk, ‘Lire Anéantir’, Séminaire Michel Houellebecq, Université Paris Nanterre/Sorbonne Université, April 7, 2022
  • Invited paper, ‘Michel Houellebecq’s New Dark Age: Information Overload, Appropriation, Extremity’, Houellebecq in Focus conference, Villanova University, March 2021, Online conference. Recording available at, https://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/artsci/houellebecq.html
  • Invited talk, ‘La France, ce n’est pas Michel Houellebecq’, AUP Forum francophone interdépartemental de Recherches et d’enseignement, Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, March 28, 2019
  • Invited Speaker, 'Uncomfortable Proximity', Launch of a special issue of Modern and Contemporary France: ‘La France ce n'est pas Michel Houellebecq’, Goldsmiths University London,  February 14, 2019
  • Invited speaker, 'Michel Houellebecq: Uncreative Writer', Houellebecq's Cultural Transgressions conference, Institute of Modern Language Research, Senate House, University of London, September 29, 2018
  • 'Houellebecq’s « Soumission »: a contemporary « Dog Whistle » novel?’, Society of French Studies conference, University College Cork, July 2, 2018
  • Invited panel chair, Literature and Reality in the 21st Century study day (IMLR/Paris-Nanterre), University of London Institute in Paris, June 8, 2018
  • ‘Houellebecq’s « Soumission »: a contemporary « Dog Whistle » novel?’, Words That Kill conference, AUP, May 28, 2018
  • Invited speaker, 'Houellebecq et le sacrifice du soi', Séminaire Droit, histoire et littérature, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, March 5, 2018
  • Invited speaker, 'Houellebecq et le terrorisme', Séminaire Droit, histoire et littérature, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, February 6, 2017
  • Invited speaker, ‘Houellebecq et la crise du couple’, Conference on ‘la Fin du couple’, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, December 2, 2016
  • Co-organizer (with Alice Craven) and panel chair, Noire is the New Noire, conference on the Gallimard Série Noire including the participation of Aurélien Masson (Gallimard) and Dominque Manotti (novelist), American University of Paris, November 5, 2016
  • Panel member and organiser, ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, panel discussion featuring Édouard Louis, author and Hannah Westley, AUP Global Communications, American University of Paris, September 28, 2016,
  • ‘Je n’aurais rien à regretter’, a discussion with Louis Betty (University of Wisconsin-Whitewater), Berkeley Books, Paris, June 28, 2016
  • ‘In conversation’ with photographer John Minihan, École Normale Supérieure, Paris, Paris Beckett Festival 2016, March 18, 2016.
  • Panel member and organiser, ‘Translating Houellebecq’, panel discussion featuring Lorin Stein, The Paris Review and Nelly Kaprièlian, Les Inrockuptibles, American University of Paris, March 15, 2016.
  • ‘Une poétique de la neutralité: soumission, anomie et inertie dans la fiction de Michel Houellebecq’, International Conference, Les « voix » de Michel Houellebecq, Université de Lausanne, March 3, 2016.
  • ‘The ‘Rebranding’ of Michel Houellebecq: Persona, Authorial Presence and Narrative Voice, Society for French Studies conference, Cardiff, June 30, 2015.
  • ‘Michel Houellebecq and the roman noir – between détournement and homage’, Society for French Studies conference, Nottingham, July 2, 2013.
  • Chair and event organiser, ‘Does Paris Own Psychogeography?’, panel discussion with Andrew Hussey and novelist Will Self, University of London Institute in Paris, April 22, 2013.
  • ‘In conversation’ with novelist Aurélien Bellanger, University of London Institute in Paris, March 22, 2013
  • ‘La voix poétique et critique dans les romans de Michel Houellebecq’, L’Unité de l’œuvre de Michel Houellebecq, Université de Provence, May 4, 2012. 
  • ‘Michel Houellebecq (and) the depressive subject’, London French Postgraduate Conference 2011, IGRS London, November 14, 2011.
  • ‘Experiences of transgression in Michel Houellebecq's fiction’, Transgression(s), Université de Provence/Association des Études Françaises et Francophones d’Irlande, October 21, 2011.
  • ‘Cults, crimes and coprophilia. Subversive communities in Richard Morgiève’s Sex Vox Dominam and Thomas Hairmont’s Le Coprophile’, Autour de l’extrême littéraire, University of London Institute in Paris, June 3, 2011.
  • ‘Michel Houellebecq: celebrity, pop star, transgressor’, Interfaces conference, University of Exeter, January 29, 2011.

Research Areas

Michel Houellebecq, contemporary French fiction, detective fiction, the néo-polar, the Franco-American novel, Thierry Jonquet, Jean-Patrick Manchette, French popular culture