R. Gapper Book Prize
Each year, the Society awards the prestigious R. Gapper book prize for a book in the field of French studies, published for the first time in the previous calendar year, by a scholar based in an institution of higher education in the United Kingdom or Ireland. It includes a cash prize of £2000, and expenses-paid travel to the next annual conference of the Society for French Studies. In addition, the award is publicized in French Studies: A Quarterly Review, in the French Studies Bulletin: A Quarterly Supplement, and on the Society’s website.
The competition is announced each summer for books published the previous year; the shortlist is usually announced the following January and the award made in May. The prize is presented to the winner at the annual conference of the Society for French Studies. The winner is selected by the Gapper Book Prize Jury, appointed by the SFS Executive and chaired by one of their number. Their decision is then proposed to the SFS Executive and to the R. H. Gapper Charitable Trust, who jointly award the prize. The criteria for award of the prize are, broadly, the book’s critical and scholarly distinction and its likely impact on wider critical debate. In assessing these, the following qualities will be taken into account:
- Scope and range
- Intellectual ambition
- Originality
- Coherence and persuasiveness
- Depth of scholarship
- Eloquence
Listen to Maria Scott (Associate Professor of French Literature and Thought, University of Exeter) talk about her experience of winning the R. Gapper book prize:
2024 Recipients
The Society for French Studies is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2024 R. Gapper Book Prize is Edward Welch for his book, Making Space in Post-War France: The Dreams, Realities and Aftermath of State Planning (Legenda). The jury were delighted with this winner and agreed the following statement about the book:
Making Space in Post-War France: The Dreams , Realities and Aftermath of State Planning is an absolutely fascinating and eye-opening read. It is an extremely well-written study of state planning in post-war France, but also a history of Gaullism, of France as it lost its colonies and refocused its military and colonising skills and energies, of twentieth-century cultural theory, and a sensitive analysis of the theme of modern space in film, photography and literary texts as well as of the works of the planners themselves. Welch argues with great momentum that the impulse for post-war French planning came from a concern with the future, itself connected to the new reality of France without colonies and hence reduced to what came to be known from the early 1960s as l’hexagone. He shows that the Gaullist plans, with their military and colonial background and concerns, their focus on the status of France as a continuing power, also contained non-repressive utopian ideals, and where these failed, this was in part owing to the end of Gaullism, the end of the Trente Glorieuses and the end of the growth that had propelled them forward. The book demonstrates great depth of scholarship as it navigates through its complex and demanding material, with every point or illustration relevant. The translations are also excellent – stylish as well as accurate. The jury thought the book would be impactful for a number of different areas, from social and local government history to film studies, but that it also made a powerful argument for the history of state planning to be a major part of French studies.
The Society also offers its congratulations to Emma Campbell, Holly Langstaff and David Loosely, whose respective works completed the shortlist for the prize.
Winner: Edward Welch
| Project | Making Space in Post-War France: The Dreams, Realities and Aftermath of State Planning |
|---|---|
| Institution | Durham University |
| Publication | Legenda |
Previous recipients
2023
The Society for French Studies is delighted to announce that the winner of the R. Gapper Book Prize 2023 is Nikolaj Lübecker, for Twenty-First-Century Symbolism (Liverpool University Press). This was a unanimous decision and the jury agreed on the following statement about the book:
Twenty-First-Century Symbolism offers a series of powerful close readings of selected texts by Verlaine, Baudelaire and Mallarmé as part of a remarkable philosophical and poetic response to the current challenges and realities of the technological age. It demonstrates an impeccable knowledge and understanding of twentieth and early twenty-first century philosophy and critical theory, drawing on (with the lightest of touches) affect theory, ecocriticism, technology studies, media theory, theories of cognition and embodiment, art history, philosophy, cybernetics and gaming. The jury agreed that this book is a model for trans-disciplinary scholarship. It revisits these three poets and asks ‘what they can do for us’ today, reading them against the grain of conventional readings and boldly casting new light on how we are impacted by them.
The Society congratulates the authors of the four volumes below, which were also shortlisted:
Jane Hiddleston, Frantz Fanon: Literature and Invention (Legenda)
Charlotte Faucher, Propaganda, Gender, and Cultural Power: Projections and Perceptions of France in Britain c1880-1944 (Oxford University Press)
Eric Robertson, Blaise Cendrars: The Invention of Life (Reaktion)
Joseph Harris, Misanthropy in the Age of Reason: Hating Humanity from Shakespeare to Schiller (Oxford University Press)
Winner: Nikolaj Lübecker
| Project | Twenty-First-Century Symbolism: Verlaine, Baudelaire, Mallarmé |
|---|---|
| Institution | St John's College, University of Oxford |
| Publication | Liverpool University Press |
2022
The Society for French Studies is delighted to announce that the winner of the R. Gapper Book Prize 2022 is Maeve McCusker for Fictions of Whiteness. Imagining the Planter Caste in the French Caribbean Novel (Virginia UP). We are delighted that this outstanding, original book is the R. Gapper Prize winner for 2022.
We offer our warmest congratulations to the authors of the following shortlisted books:
Alice Blackhurst, Luxury, Sensation and the Moving Image (Legenda)
Adam Horsley, Libertines and the Law. Subversive Authors and Criminal Justice in Early Seventeenth-Century France (Oxford UP)
Edward J. Hughes, Egalitarian Strangeness. On Class Disturbance and Levelling in Modern and Contemporary French Fiction (Liverpool UP)
Shuangyi Li, Travel, Translation and Transmedia Aesthetics. Franco-Chinese Literature and Visual Arts in a Global Age (Palgrave Macmillan)
Maeve McCusker, Fictions of Whiteness. Imagining the Planter Caste in the French Caribbean Novel (Virginia UP)
Roger Pearson, The Beauty of Baudelaire (Oxford UP)
Macs Smith, Paris and the Parasite. Noise, Health, and Politics in the Media City (MIT Press)
Winner: Maeve McCusker
| Project | Fictions of Whiteness. Imagining the Planter Caste in the French Caribbean Novel |
|---|---|
| Institution | Queen’s University Belfast |
Fictions of Whiteness focuses on the literary construction of whiteness and white culture in the French Antilles through the figure of the béké, the white plantation master. Within this frame of enquiry, McCusker deftly navigates and analyses the critical issue of race and its relationship to gender, biological affiliations and the preservation of white culture. The temporal scope of the study moves from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first century and across different genres of writing. This results in a longitudinal range that makes for an impressively sustained and informed work, the first of its kind to undertake an in-depth study of the béké. The arguments are always persuasive and make a highly authoritative case for the way in which such an analysis can transform our understanding of whiteness within the French Antilles. 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. |
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| Publication | Virginia UP, 2021 |
2021
R. Gapper Book Prize 2021 Competition Results
The Society for French Studies is delighted to announce that the R. Gapper Book Prize for the best book in French Studies published in 2020 is jointly awarded to the following outstanding books:
Colourworks. Chromatic Innovation in Modern French Poetry and Art Writing by Susan Harrow (Bloomsbury)
“This is a bold and intellectually ambitious project both in its scale but also in its agenda of bringing colour studies to the fore. Stimulating, convincing and supremely crafted, Harrow takes three key poets of French modernism — Mallarmé, Valéry and Bonnefoy — and reads their poetry and art writing on art from the Renaissance to the 20th century through the optics of colour. Harrow brings her own creativity to play in working with complex ideas, dense poetic texts and art writings. The book is beautifully produced with some quite gorgeous plates. In so many ways, it is a joy to behold and it is also a call to action. This is the culmination of many years of research and the expertise, erudition and style on display are quite breath-taking.”
The Atheist’s Bible. Diderot and the Éléments de physiologie by Caroline Warman (Open Book Publishers)
“This a very substantial book which examines the writing and reception of Diderot’s neglected Éléments de physiologie and is a pleasure to read. The study is based on exhilarating detective work and the breadth of scholarship to elucidate how Diderot was engaging with other thinkers of his time and, indeed, they with him, is simply outstanding. Early in the text Warman writes ‘As Diderot comments with a witty and virtuoso command of rhythm and onomatopeia, ‘un plat ouvrage nous endort comme le murmure monotone d’un ruisseau’. Warman’s prose and research does not produce a ‘flat piece of work’ - it jumps and marvels, it entertains and deeply enlightens.”
For the 2021 Prize, the R. Gapper Prize Jury received 47 titles — the highest number since the Prize was inaugurated — and the subject matter ranged from the medieval to the contemporary. The standard was impressive, and eight titles were short-listed for the final round. We offer our warmest congratulations to the authors of the other shortlisted books:
Medieval French Literary Culture Abroad by Jane Gilbert, Simon Gaunt, and William Burgwinkle (Oxford University Press)
Nathalie Sarraute. A Life Between by Ann Jefferson (Princeton University Press and Oxford)
Born to Write Literary Families and Social Hierarchy in Early Modern France by Neil Kenny (Oxford University Press)
Yves Bonnefoy and Jean-Luc Nancy. Ontological Performance by Emily McLaughlin (Oxford University Press)
Tragedy and nation in the age of Napoleon, Clare Siviter (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment)
The Purchase of the Past. Collecting Culture in Post-Revolutionary Paris c. 1790-1890 by Tom Stammers (Cambridge University Press)
The Society would like to acknowledge the ongoing and very generous support of the Gapper family and the hard work of the Jury.
Winner: Susan Harrow
| Project | Colourworks. Chromatic Innovation in Modern French Poetry and Art Writing |
|---|---|
| Institution | University of Bristol |
| Publication | Bloomsbury, 2020 |
Winner: Caroline Warman
| Project | The Atheist’s Bible. Diderot and the 'Éléments de physiologie' |
|---|---|
| Institution | University of Oxford |
| Publication | Open Book Publishers, 2020 |
2020
The Society for French Studies is delighted to announce that the R. Gapper Book Prize for the best book in French Studies published in 2019 is awarded to the following book:
Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary African Cinema. The Politics of Beauty by James S. Williams, (published by Bloomsbury).
This deeply impressive work of scholarship represents a major contribution to the study of African cinema in French. It provides both a clear contextualisation of the legacies of film-making in sub-Saharan Africa and detailed engagement with the work of a new generation of filmmakers. The book offers a compelling reworking of the role of aesthetics and configurations of beauty in contemporary African cinema. Meticulously researched and referenced, it moves between context and theory and offers close and utterly persuasive readings. The book constructs a strikingly original critical framework and provides a welcome and important new approach to African cinema in French that will have a real impact within the field and beyond.
The Jury adjudged The Powers of Sound and Song in Early Modern Paris by Nicholas Hammond (published by Penn State University Press) to be the runner up.
The members were very much impressed by its elegance of style, by the excitement generated by its topic, by its delicious unfolding of meticulous research and by the application of sonic theories to 18th-century French culture and society.
Jeff Barda’s monograph, Experimentation and the Lyric in Contemporary French Poetry (Palgrave) was highly commended as an excellent thesis successfully transformed into an outstanding book on contemporary poetry.
The Jury and Society offers warmest congratulations to the authors of the three other shortlisted books:
Thomas Baldwin, Roland Barthes: The Proust Variations (Liverpool University Press)
Ian James, The Technique of Thought. Nancy, Laruelle, Malabou, and Stiegler after Naturalism (University of Minnesota Press)
Siobhán McIlvanney, Figurations of the Feminine in the Early French Women’s Press 1758-1848 (Liverpool University Press).
The Society thanks the members of the Jury: Dr. Patrick Crowley (Chair), Prof. Julia Dobson, Prof. Susan Harrow, Prof. Catriona Seth, and Prof. Margaret Topping.
It would like to note its sincere thanks to Prof. Susan Harrow who is stepping down from the R. Gapper Book Prize jury this year. Her eye for detail, her erudition and her collegiality, were much appreciated.
Winner: James S. Williams
| Project | Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary African Cinema. The Politics of Beauty |
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| Institution | Royal Holloway, University of London |
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| Publication | Bloomsbury, 2019 |
Runner up: Nicholas Hammond
| Project | The Powers of Sound and Song in Early Modern Paris |
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| Institution | University of Cambridge |
| Publication | Penn State University Press, 2019 |
2019
The Society for French Studies is delighted to announce that the R. Gapper Book Prize for the best book in French Studies published in 2018 is awarded jointly to the following two books:
Peter Dayan, The Music of Dada: A Lesson in Intermediality for our Times (London: Routledge, 2018)
Derek Offord, Vladislav Rjeoutski and Gésine Argent, The French Language in Russia: A Social, Political, Cultural and Literary History (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2018)
Peter Dayan’s study represents a world-leading contribution to Dadaist studies, to musicology, to intermedial modernism studies, and to intermedial aesthetics more generally – an adventurous interdisciplinary work of the highest order.
Derek Offord, Gésine Argent, and Vladislav Rjéoutski’s work is not only a model of co-authorship, but a ground-breaking study of immense scholarly distinction which makes a real contribution to the wider debate about what Francophonie is and was.
While we have not been able to celebrate the award of the prize at the Annual Conference which was due to take place in Bath, we hope to welcome our winners to the 2021 Annual Conference at Queen’s University Belfast.
A total of 22 books were received for the prize this year, and 7 were shortlisted. The shortlisted books were all of exceptional quality and we offer our warmest congratulations to those authors:
Sam Ferguson, Diaries Real and Fictional in Twentieth-Century French Writing (Oxford University Press)
Marine Ganofsky, Night in French Libertine Fiction (Liverpool University Press)
Charlotte Hammond, Entangled Otherness: Cross-Gender Fabrications in the Francophone Caribbean (Liverpool University Press)
Diana Holmes, Middlebrow Matters: Women's Reading and the Literary Canon in France since the Belle Époque (Liverpool University Press)
Gavin Parkinson, Enchanted Ground: André Breton, Modernism and Surrealist Appraisal of Fin-de-Siècle Painting (Bloomsbury)
Finally, the Society would also like to note its sincere thanks to Professor Jean Duffy and Professor John O’Brien, who are stepping down from the Gapper Book Prize jury this year, for their wisdom, insights and collegiality as members of the panel.
Winner: Peter Dayan
| Project | The Music of Dada: A Lesson in Intermediality for our Times |
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| Publication | (London: Routledge, 2018) |
Winner: Derek Offord, Vladislav Rjeoutski and Gésine Argent
| Project | The French Language in Russia: A Social, Political, Cultural and Literary History |
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| Publication | (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2018) |
2018
The Society is delighted to announce that the R. Gapper Book Prize for the best book in French Studies published in 2017 has been awarded to Professor Julian Swann of Birkbeck College, University of London, for his monograph:
Exile, Imprisonment or Death: The Politics of Disgrace in Bourbon France, 1610-1789 (Oxford University Press)
Details of the book can be found at: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/exile-imprisonment-or-death-9780198788690?cc=gb&lang=en&
We also offer our warmest congratulations to the authors of the other shortlisted books:
Conan Fischer, A Vision of Europe: Franco-German Relations during the Great Depression, 1929-1932 (OUP)
Tom Hamilton, Pierre de L'Estoile and his World in the Wars of Religion (OUP)
Shirley Jordan, Marie Ndiaye: Inhospitable Fictions (Legenda)
Winner: Julian Swann
| Project | Exile, Imprisonment or Death: The Politics of Disgrace in Bourbon France, 1610-1789 |
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| Institution | Birkbeck College, University of London |
| Publication | Oxford University Press |
2017
Winner: Roger Pearson
| Project | Unacknowledged Legislators: The Poet as Lawgiver in Post-Revolutionary France |
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| Institution | The Queen's College, Oxford |
| Publication | Oxford University Press, 2016 |
Runner up: Helen Swift
| Project | Representing the Dead: Epitaph Fictions in Late-Medieval France |
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| Institution | St Hilda's College, Oxford |
| Publication | Boydell & Brewer, 2016 |
2016
Winner: Neil Kenny
| Project | Death and Tenses: Posthumous Presence in Early Modern France |
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| Institution | University of Oxford |
| Publication | Oxford: OUP, 2015 |
Winner: Patrick McGuinness
| Project | Poetry and Radical Politics in fin de siècle France: From Anarchism to Action Française |
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| Institution | University of Oxford |
| Publication | Oxford: OUP, 2015 |
2015
Winner: Robert Mills
| Project | Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages |
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| Institution | UCL |
| Publication | University of Chicago Press, 2015 |
Runner up: Mairéad Hanrahan
| Project | Cixous’s Semi-Fictions |
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| Institution | UCL |
| Publication | Edinburgh University Press, 2015 |
Runner up: Joseph Harris
| Project | Inventing the Spectator |
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| Institution | Royal Holloway |
| Publication | Oxford University Press, 2015 |
Runner up: Ann Jefferson
| Project | Genius in France: an Idea and its Uses |
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| Institution | University of Oxford |
| Publication | Princeton University Press, 2015 |
2014
Winner: Christopher Prendergast
| Project | Mirages and Mad Beliefs: Proust the Skeptic |
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| Publication | Princeton University Press, 2014 |
2013
Winner: Siân Reynolds
| Project | Marriage and Revolution: Monsieur & Madame Roland |
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| Publication | Oxford University Press, 2013 |
2012
Winner: Michael Moriarty
| Project | Disguised Vices: Theories of Virtue in Early Modern French Thought |
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| Publication | Oxford University Press, 2012 |
2011
Winner: Judith Still
| Project | Derrida and Hospitality: Theory and Practice |
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| Publication | Edinburgh University Press, 2011 |
2010
Winner: Ardis Butterfield
| Project | The Familiar Enemy: Chaucer, Language and Nation in the Hundred Years War |
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| Publication | Oxford University Press, 2010 |
2009
Winner: Alain Viala
| Project | La France galante |
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| Publication | Presses universitaires de France, 2009 |
2008
Winner: Mark Greengrass
| Project | Governing Passions. Peace and Reform in the French Kingdom, 1576-1585 |
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: (Oxford University Press). |
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| Publication | Oxford University Press, 2008 |
Winner: Christopher Prendergast
| Project | The Classic. Sainte-Beuve and the Nineteenth-Century Culture Wars |
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| Publication | Oxford University Press, 2008 |
2007
Winner: Eric Robertson
| Project | Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor |
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| Publication | Yale University Press, 2007 |
2006
Winner: Maria C. Scott
| Project | Baudelaire’s ‘Le Spleen de Paris’ : Shifting Perspectives |
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| Publication | Ashgate, 2006 |
2005
Winner: Roger Pearson
| Project | Mallarmé and Circumstance: The Translation of Silence |
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| Publication | Oxford University Press, 2005 |
2004
Winner: Sylvia Huot
| Project | Madness in Medieval French Literature: Identities Lost and Found |
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| Publication | Oxford University Press, 2004 |
2003
Winner: Clive Scott
| Project | Channel Crossings: French and English Poetry in Dialogue 1550-2000 |
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| Publication | Legenda, 2002 |
2002
Winner: Stephen Bann
| Project | Parallel Lines: Printmakers, Painters and Photographers in Nineteenth-Century France |
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| Publication | Yale University Press, 2001 |
2001
Winner: David Baguley
| Project | Napoléon III and his Régime: An Extravaganza |
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| Publication | Louisiana State University Press, 2000 |
2000
Winner: Alex Hughes
| Project | Heterographies: Sexual Difference in French Autobiography |
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| Publication | Berg, 1999 |
Professor Nina Parish
Professor Nina Parish, SFHEA (she/her)
Head of Division of Literature and Languages
Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Pathfoot Building
University of Stirling
Stirling
FK9 4LA
Scotland