Dr Greg Kerr

  • Senior Lecturer (French)

telephone: 0141 330 5290
email: Greg.Kerr@glasgow.ac.uk

Room 326, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Hetherington Building, Bute Gardens, University of Glasgow, G12 8RS

Import to contacts

ORCID iDhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425

Biography

I studied at Trinity College, Dublin (BA, European Studies & PhD, French Studies) and the University of Cambridge (MPhil, European Literature and Culture). Before coming to Glasgow, I taught at Sciences Po Paris, the University of Oxford and Lancaster University. In 2016-17, I was Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow at the Analyse et Traitement Informatique de la Langue Française (ATILF) research laboratory, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Nancy.

Research interests

My main research interest is in modern poetry in French, and I have written two books in this area. 

Exile, Non-Belonging and Statelessness in Grangaud, Jabès, Lubin and Luca: No man’s language (UCL Press, 2021 - available as free download or in print) discusses four writers of different origins for whom poetry can be linked to a condition of not being at home in any one language, even their mother tongue. With Dr Véronique Montément of the Université de Lorraine, I have co-edited a Modern Languages Open special collection on a related theme, Between borders: French-language poetry and the poetics of statelessness (2019). 

Dream Cities: Utopia and Prose by Poets in Nineteenth-century France (Legenda, 2013) explores the relationship between utopian thinking about cities and the literary genre of the prose poem, through the writings of some canonical poets (Charles Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, Arthur Rimbaud) and figures belonging to the Saint-Simonian movement. 

I am also interested in word-and-image-based approaches to culture, in architecture and urban space, particularly as they relate to literature, and in le rire moderne in late nineteenth-century culture.  

 

orcid_id_imagehttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425

internal postal address:
R326 Level 3
French
Hetherington Building
Glasgow G12 8RS

Publications

List by: Type | Date

Jump to: 2025 | 2024 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008
Number of items: 25.

2025

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2025) Avowal in Bernard Vargaftig: disclosure without closure. French Studies, (Accepted for Publication)

Melkonian, Martin, Malkassian, Gerard, Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425, Arauxo, Emilio and Boyadjian-Malkassian, Rosine (2025) English translation by Dr. Greg Kerr. In: Arménie Noire, Arménie Blanche = Black Armenia, White Armenia, 2nd edition. Editions L'Harmattan. ISBN 9782336511184

2024

Finch-Race, Daniel A., Gosetti, Valentina and Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2024) Forms of unsiting in factory compositions by Leslie Kaplan and Joseph Ponthus. Journal of Cultural Geography, 41(1), pp. 31-51. (doi: 10.1080/08873631.2023.2295591)

2022

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2022) Drawing blanks: word and image at the Expositions des Incohérents. Dix-Neuf, 26(2), pp. 57-73. (doi: 10.1080/14787318.2022.2083924)

2021

Melkonian, Martin, Malkassian, Gerard, Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425, Arauxo, Emilio and Boyadjian-Malkassian, Rosine (2021) English translation by Dr. Greg Kerr. In: Arménie Noire, Arménie Blanche = Black Armenia, White Armenia. Editions L'Harmattan. ISBN 9782343236117

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2021) Exile, Non-Belonging and Statelessness in Grangaud, Jabès, Lubin and Luca: No man’s language. Series: Comparative Literature and Culture. UCL Press: London. ISBN 9781787356733

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2021) Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal. In: Tambling, Jeremy (ed.) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan: Cham. ISBN 9783319625928 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_188-1)

2020

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2020) Laughing matter: Charles Cros, from paléophone to monologue. Nottingham French Studies, 59(1), pp. 34-50. (doi: 10.3366/nfs.2020.0270)

2019

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2019) Shattering the middle ground: violence and the imperatives of reportage in Félix Fénéon’s Nouvelles en trois lignes. Contemporary French Civilization, 44(4), pp. 311-331. (doi: 10.3828/cfc.2019.18)

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 and Montémont, Véronique (2019) Between borders: French-language poetry and the poetics of statelessness. Modern Languages Open, 1, 7. (doi: 10.3828/mlo.v0i0.208)

2018

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2018) Statelessness. In: Kolocotroni, Vassiliki and Taxidou, Olga (eds.) The Edinburgh Dictionary of Modernism. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, pp. 353-354. ISBN 9780748637027

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2018) Word and image. In: Kolocotroni, Vassiliki and Taxidou, Olga (eds.) The Edinburgh Dictionary of Modernism. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, pp. 397-399. ISBN 9780748637027

2016

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2016) French studies: the post-Romantic era. Year's Work in Modern Language Studies, 76, pp. 68-81. (doi: 10.5699/yearworkmodlang.76.2014.0068)

2015

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2015) Peter Rice: Performing Instability. [Website]

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2015) French studies: the post-Romantic era. Year's Work in Modern Language Studies, 75, pp. 82-95. (doi: 10.5699/yearworkmodlang.75.2013.0082)

2014

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2014) 'Travail d’abolition': illness and statelessness in Armen Lubin. Irish Journal of French Studies, 14, pp. 39-53. (doi: 10.7173/164913314814213748)

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2014) Racialisation du discours dans l’Histoire de l’habitation humaine d’Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. Romantisme, 166(4), pp. 82-94.

2013

Kerr, G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2013) Dream Cities: Utopia and Prose by Poets in Nineteenth-Century France. Legenda: Oxford, UK. ISBN 9781907975530

2012

Kerr, G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2012) Utopia and iconicity: reading Saint-Simonian texts. Word and Image, 28(3), pp. 317-330. (doi: 10.1080/02666286.2012.734494)

2011

Kerr, G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2011) Gautier, Boileau and Chenavard: Utopian architectures of the temple in mid-nineteenth-century France. In: Coleman, N. (ed.) Imagining and Making the World: Reconsidering Architecture and Utopia. Series: Ralahine Utopian Studies (8). Peter Lang: Oxford, UK, pp. 57-80. ISBN 9783034301206

2010

Kerr, G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2010) Rhetorics of transformation in Rimbaud’s Illuminations. Dix-Neuf, 14(1), pp. 20-32. (doi: 10.1179/147873110X12669226709990)

2009

Connon, D., Jein, G. and Kerr, G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (Eds.) (2009) Aesthetics of Dislocation in French and Francophone Literature and Art: Strategies of Representation. Edwin Mellen Press: Lewiston, NY, USA. ISBN 9780773449190

Kerr, G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2009) The modern urban in the journalistic prose of Théophile Gautier: Crayonnons à la hâte…. In: Connon, D., Jein, G. and Kerr, G. (eds.) Aesthetics of Dislocation in French and Francophone Literature and Art: Strategies of Representation. Series: Hors série. Edwin Mellen Press: Oxford, UK, pp. 165-182. ISBN 9780773449190

Kerr, G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2009) Introduction. In: Connon, D., Jein, G. and Kerr, G. (eds.) Aesthetics of Dislocation in French and Francophone Literature and Art: Strategies of Representation. Edwin Mellen Press: Lewiston, NY, USA, pp. 1-14. ISBN 9780773449190

2008

Kerr, G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2008) Nous avons enlacé le globe de nos réseaux…: spatial structure in Saint-Simonian poetics. In: Lyle, L. and McCallam, D. (eds.) Histoires de la terre earth sciences and French culture 1740-1940. Rodopi: Amsterdam, Netherlands, pp. 91-104. ISBN 9781435695290

This list was generated on Tue Oct 7 18:15:56 2025 BST.
Jump to: Articles | Books | Book Sections | Edited Books | Website
Number of items: 25.

Articles

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2025) Avowal in Bernard Vargaftig: disclosure without closure. French Studies, (Accepted for Publication)

Finch-Race, Daniel A., Gosetti, Valentina and Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2024) Forms of unsiting in factory compositions by Leslie Kaplan and Joseph Ponthus. Journal of Cultural Geography, 41(1), pp. 31-51. (doi: 10.1080/08873631.2023.2295591)

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2022) Drawing blanks: word and image at the Expositions des Incohérents. Dix-Neuf, 26(2), pp. 57-73. (doi: 10.1080/14787318.2022.2083924)

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2020) Laughing matter: Charles Cros, from paléophone to monologue. Nottingham French Studies, 59(1), pp. 34-50. (doi: 10.3366/nfs.2020.0270)

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2019) Shattering the middle ground: violence and the imperatives of reportage in Félix Fénéon’s Nouvelles en trois lignes. Contemporary French Civilization, 44(4), pp. 311-331. (doi: 10.3828/cfc.2019.18)

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 and Montémont, Véronique (2019) Between borders: French-language poetry and the poetics of statelessness. Modern Languages Open, 1, 7. (doi: 10.3828/mlo.v0i0.208)

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2016) French studies: the post-Romantic era. Year's Work in Modern Language Studies, 76, pp. 68-81. (doi: 10.5699/yearworkmodlang.76.2014.0068)

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2015) French studies: the post-Romantic era. Year's Work in Modern Language Studies, 75, pp. 82-95. (doi: 10.5699/yearworkmodlang.75.2013.0082)

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2014) 'Travail d’abolition': illness and statelessness in Armen Lubin. Irish Journal of French Studies, 14, pp. 39-53. (doi: 10.7173/164913314814213748)

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2014) Racialisation du discours dans l’Histoire de l’habitation humaine d’Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. Romantisme, 166(4), pp. 82-94.

Kerr, G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2012) Utopia and iconicity: reading Saint-Simonian texts. Word and Image, 28(3), pp. 317-330. (doi: 10.1080/02666286.2012.734494)

Kerr, G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2010) Rhetorics of transformation in Rimbaud’s Illuminations. Dix-Neuf, 14(1), pp. 20-32. (doi: 10.1179/147873110X12669226709990)

Books

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2021) Exile, Non-Belonging and Statelessness in Grangaud, Jabès, Lubin and Luca: No man’s language. Series: Comparative Literature and Culture. UCL Press: London. ISBN 9781787356733

Kerr, G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2013) Dream Cities: Utopia and Prose by Poets in Nineteenth-Century France. Legenda: Oxford, UK. ISBN 9781907975530

Book Sections

Melkonian, Martin, Malkassian, Gerard, Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425, Arauxo, Emilio and Boyadjian-Malkassian, Rosine (2025) English translation by Dr. Greg Kerr. In: Arménie Noire, Arménie Blanche = Black Armenia, White Armenia, 2nd edition. Editions L'Harmattan. ISBN 9782336511184

Melkonian, Martin, Malkassian, Gerard, Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425, Arauxo, Emilio and Boyadjian-Malkassian, Rosine (2021) English translation by Dr. Greg Kerr. In: Arménie Noire, Arménie Blanche = Black Armenia, White Armenia. Editions L'Harmattan. ISBN 9782343236117

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2021) Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal. In: Tambling, Jeremy (ed.) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan: Cham. ISBN 9783319625928 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_188-1)

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2018) Statelessness. In: Kolocotroni, Vassiliki and Taxidou, Olga (eds.) The Edinburgh Dictionary of Modernism. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, pp. 353-354. ISBN 9780748637027

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2018) Word and image. In: Kolocotroni, Vassiliki and Taxidou, Olga (eds.) The Edinburgh Dictionary of Modernism. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, pp. 397-399. ISBN 9780748637027

Kerr, G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2011) Gautier, Boileau and Chenavard: Utopian architectures of the temple in mid-nineteenth-century France. In: Coleman, N. (ed.) Imagining and Making the World: Reconsidering Architecture and Utopia. Series: Ralahine Utopian Studies (8). Peter Lang: Oxford, UK, pp. 57-80. ISBN 9783034301206

Kerr, G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2009) The modern urban in the journalistic prose of Théophile Gautier: Crayonnons à la hâte…. In: Connon, D., Jein, G. and Kerr, G. (eds.) Aesthetics of Dislocation in French and Francophone Literature and Art: Strategies of Representation. Series: Hors série. Edwin Mellen Press: Oxford, UK, pp. 165-182. ISBN 9780773449190

Kerr, G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2009) Introduction. In: Connon, D., Jein, G. and Kerr, G. (eds.) Aesthetics of Dislocation in French and Francophone Literature and Art: Strategies of Representation. Edwin Mellen Press: Lewiston, NY, USA, pp. 1-14. ISBN 9780773449190

Kerr, G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2008) Nous avons enlacé le globe de nos réseaux…: spatial structure in Saint-Simonian poetics. In: Lyle, L. and McCallam, D. (eds.) Histoires de la terre earth sciences and French culture 1740-1940. Rodopi: Amsterdam, Netherlands, pp. 91-104. ISBN 9781435695290

Edited Books

Connon, D., Jein, G. and Kerr, G. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (Eds.) (2009) Aesthetics of Dislocation in French and Francophone Literature and Art: Strategies of Representation. Edwin Mellen Press: Lewiston, NY, USA. ISBN 9780773449190

Website

Kerr, Greg ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9515-9425 (2015) Peter Rice: Performing Instability. [Website]

This list was generated on Tue Oct 7 18:15:56 2025 BST.

Grants

2016-17

POSE (Poetics of Statelessness in Twentieth-Century France and Europe), Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, Analyse et Traitement Informatique de la Langue Française (ATILF) research laboratory, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Nancy, France, € 86538. 

2013

Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland publication grant for Dream Cities: Utopia and Prose by Poets in Nineteenth-Century France (March 2013), £1000.

Supervision

I am happy to hear from prospective research students about your ideas for projects on 19th- and 20th-century French literature and culture, Comparative Literature, and Text/Image Studies and always keen to support applications for doctoral funding (AHRC/SGSAH, Carnegie, College of Arts doctoral funding).

Projects in the following areas are especially welcome:

Poetry

The literature of exile/non-belonging/statelessness

Exophonic and postmonolingual writing

Utopian Studies

Literature and the urban environment

Text/Image Studies

I have previously supervised projects at the levels of PhD and MPhil by research on nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century topics. A number of these have been funded by College of Arts PhD scholarships or SMLC's Peter Davies research scholarships in French and Modern Languages. They include:

  • Kristina Astrom, ‘Interart mediations: Between text and image in the works of Mallarmé and Whistler’ (lead supervisor), PhD, 2020-2025
  • Amanda Nizich, ‘What we can learn from 150-year-old jokes: A comparative study of visual satire and how it exposed the flaws of Napoleon III and Donald Trump’ (lead supervisor), PhD 2019-2022
  • Nicola Angelini, ‘A comparison of the poetry of Giorgio Caproni and Vittorio Sereni’, PhD, 2015-18
  • Gareth Hughes, ‘Within (and without) the nation: Reconfiguring community in the Oulipian poetry of urban transit’, MPhil by research, 2021
  • Aidan, Martin, ‘Le Corps au combat: the body as a site of symbolic combat in republican newspaper satire in the late Second Empire and early Third Republic, c. 1867-1873’, MPhil by research, 2021

I am currently co-supervising doctoral projects on twentieth-century autofiction and the work of Jacques Rancière.

I have experience of and would also welcome further supervision of international visiting research students for short research stays at SMLC.

Teaching

Programme Design

I have led the design of the new undergraduate programme in Liberal Arts offered by the College of Arts and Humanities, commencing September 2026.

Learning, Teaching and Student Experience Leadership

SMLC Learning, Teaching and Student Experience Convenor (2023-). With Prof. Stephen Forcer, I co-authored SMLC's 2025 Periodic Subject Review, which takes place every six years. 

Teaching and convenorship

• French Culture (Level 1 lectures and seminars 'Cities' theme)

• Convenor of Honours-level options ‘Text/Image Cultures: Theory and Practice’ and 'Modern French Poetry and Poetics'.

• Convenor of Senior Honours French Written Language and Spoken Language programmes.  

Additional information

Additional Information

Editorial

Discipline Leadership

External examining (French)

  • School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Galway (2020-2024).
  • School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music, University of Birmingham (2025-2029).

Public engagement

  • Co-curator (with Anne Dulau Beveridge) of The Truest Mirror of Life, a display of nineteenth-century French caricature drawn from the holdings of the Hunterian Art Gallery (8 August 2017- 21 January 2018). 
  • Member of the Board of Directors of the Alliance Française de Glasgow, (2015-2020) and co-organiser (with Joan Lefever, University of Strathclyde) of joutes oratoires intervarsity debates. 

Book reviews

Further Qualifications

  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice (CAP).