Maeve McCusker

Source: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/maeve-mccusker/ Parent: https://www.qub.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/anthropology-french-ba-rl16/

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Maeve McCusker

Professor

Professor, School of Arts, English and Languages
Modern Languages

https://orcid.org/0009-0008-6690-7592

Phone+44 (0)28 9097 3680
Emailm.mccusker@qub.ac.uk
Room 02.002 - 11 University Square

United Kingdom

Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

I would be happy to supervise suitably qualified students in the general area of postcolonial writing and theory. I have experience supervising comparative projects (on French and English language writing for example) and on early colonial writings. I would also be happy to supervise students working on contemporary fiction and autobiography.

1997 …Research output 2002: 1Research output 2003: 2Research output 2004: 2Research output 2005: 1Research output 2006: 2Projects 2007: 2Research output 2007: 1Research output 2009: 1Research output 2010: 4Research output 2011: 4Research output 2012: 1Research output 2013: 2Research output 2014: 1Research output 2017: 1Research output 2018: 2Research output 2021: 2Research output 2024: 2Research output 2025: 1Research output 2026: 12026

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Research Interests

Maeve McCusker works mainly on postcolonial writing in French, with a particular interest in the Francophone Caribbean. Maeve’s research takes a number of directions: 1) contemporary postcolonial literature and theory 2) early writings by plantation owners in the French Caribbean and 3) critical race studies. Her key publications include a monograph, Patrick Chamoiseau. Recovering Memory (Liverpool University Press, 2007), the first in English on a major global author from Martinique; an AHRC-funded 2-volume critical edition of an early Creole novel, Outre-mer (Louis de Maynard, Paris, 1835) with a substantial critical introduction; a series of journal articles that continue and expand this exploration of important C19th precursors such as Maynard, Levilloux and Traversay; and a second, British Academy-funded, monograph, Fictions of Whiteness. Imagining the Planter Caste in the French Caribbean Novel (University of Virginia Press, 2021) which is the first study of the planter figure in the French Caribbean imaginary, and also the first to bring this literature into dialogue with Critical Race Studies.

In May 2023, Fictions of Whiteness was awarded the prestigious Gapper Book Prize by the Society for French Studies, for the best monograph published in the UK and Ireland in the previous year. The citation from the judging panel commended the book as follows:

"an impressively sustained and informed work, the first of its kind to undertake an in-depth study of the béké. […]. It is a remarkable work of scholarship and McCusker accomplishes her study with wonderful critical sophistication and sensitivity throughout. The writing style engages the reader — it has wit and the eloquence on display is of an unusually economical kind: it is never showy or remotely fussy, but marvellously controlled, compelling and rich. And perhaps most importantly, to have entered the well-established terrain of postcolonial studies and emerged with something entirely new is an immense achievement deserving of recognition across the field of francophone postcolonial studies and postcolonial studies more widely. We are delighted that this outstanding, original book is the R. Gapper Prize winner for 2022".

Maeve is currently president of the Society for Francophone Postcolonial Studies, and General Editor for the society's book series Francophone Postcolonial Studies (LUP). She is also a member of the editorial board of the major international journal French Studies, and has long experience in a range of editorial positions (inc. membership of editorial board, French Studies Bulletin; Irish Journal of French Studies; Literary Encyclopaedia; Island Studies).

Her research has been funded by the AHRC (a research leave fellowship) and the British Academy (several Small Research Grants and, more recently, a mid-career fellowship).

She is currently Director of Research for AEL.

PhD supervision:

Maeve is an experienced supervisor at MA, MRes and PhD level, having supervised 12 PhDs to successful completion. She welcomes enquiries from students interested in areas related to her research interests. Recent doctoral students have worked on such topics as masculinity in French Caribbean writing, pied noir identity in Algerian culture, slavery in the nineteenth century novel, and transatlantic mobility in the contemporary African novel in French and English. Many of the topics she has supervised adopt an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, and are often comparative in nature.

Teaching

Maeve has established postcolonial texts and approaches as being core to the undergraduate curriculum in French in a range of research-led modules. Students in QUB normally have a postcolonial option at each stage of their UG career. She also teaches more broadly across the range of French Studies (film; autobiography; theory) and has taught language and convened core modules at all levels. She contributes to the Research Methods course (Postcolonial Theory) on the MRes and for many years ran an annual training course with AHSS PGRs on ‘Publishing a Conference Paper’ (2002-18). She has served as External Examiner for French in UCD, UCC and Exeter, and currently serves in Stirling and in Cambridge.

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2 Similar Profiles
Writer Arts and Humanities
Creoles Arts and Humanities
French Caribbean Arts and Humanities
Post-colonial Arts and Humanities
Martinique Arts and Humanities
Criticism Arts and Humanities
French Social Sciences
Fiction Arts and Humanities

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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

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Projects

1 Finished
R1901MOL: Critical Edition of Louis de Maynard's Outre-mer

McCusker, M. (PI)

01/08/2007 → 29/02/2008

Project: Research - ### R1883MOL: Outre-mer by Louis de Maynard - a Critical Edition

McCusker, M. (PI)

01/08/2007 → 27/05/2008

Project: Research

Research output

10 Article
5 Chapter (peer-reviewed)
3 Book
3 Review article
2 More
1 Scholarly edition
1 Book/Film/Article review
1 Special issue
Matters of life and death: Patrick Chamoiseau's The Matter of Absence

McCusker, M., 01 Jan 2026, In: Yale French Studies. 147, p. 43-57 15 p., 2.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Open Access

File

5 Downloads (Pure) - ### Headless horror: writing decapitation in the French Caribbean Plantationocene

McCusker, M., 15 Apr 2025, In: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. 140, 1, p. 88-103 16 p.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Open Access

File

Haitian Revolution

5 Downloads (Pure) - ### Caribbean generations: Special Issue co-edited by Cunningham, Kennedy, McCusker and Munro

Celestin , R., Cunningham , M., Kennedy , L., McCusker, M. (Editor) & Muro , M., 26 Jun 2024, (Early online date) In: Contemporary French and Francophone Studies. 28, 3, p. 325-520

Research output: Contribution to journal › Special issue › peer-review - ### Words, wounds and pre-oedipal oneness: Maryse Condé’s Le Cœur à rire et à pleurer

McCusker, M., 26 Jun 2024, In: Contemporary French and Francophone Studies. 28, 3, p. 338-354 17 p.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Open Access

File