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. The award commends books of critical and scholarly distinction which have a clear impact on the wider critical debate. 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, in the French Studies Bulletin, and on the Society’s website.
The award is usually made in February of each year and 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:
2021 Entries
Entries for 2021 are open now. The closing date is 27 August 2021.
Submissions are now welcome for the R. Gapper Book Prize for the best book published in French Studies in 2020. Submissions should be sent to the Chair of the Jury, Dr Patrick Crowley, by Friday 27 August 2021, at the following address:
Dr Patrick Crowley, Head of School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, O’Rahilly Building, University College Cork, College Road, Cork T12 K8AF, Ireland
Submission is by publishers. No cover letter is required. Please send one hard copy of the book (hardback or softback) as well as a PDF version for the initial stage of assessment.
Previous recipients
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 |
|---|---|
| Institution | Royal Holloway, University of London |
|
|
| Publication | Bloomsbury, 2019 |
Runner up: Nicholas Hammond
| Project | The Powers of Sound and Song in Early Modern Paris |
|---|---|
| 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 |
|---|---|
| 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 |
|---|---|
| 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 |
|---|---|
| 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 |
|---|---|
| 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 |
|---|---|
| Institution | St Hilda's College, Oxford |
| Publication | Boydell & Brewer, 2016 |
2016
Winner: Neil Kenny
| Project | Death and Tenses: Posthumous Presence in Early Modern France |
|---|---|
| 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 |
|---|---|
| Institution | University of Oxford |
| Publication | Oxford: OUP, 2015 |
2015
Winner: Robert Mills
| Project | Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages |
|---|---|
| Institution | UCL |
| Publication | University of Chicago Press, 2015 |
Runner up: Mairéad Hanrahan
| Project | Cixous’s Semi-Fictions |
|---|---|
| Institution | UCL |
| Publication | Edinburgh University Press, 2015 |
Runner up: Joseph Harris
| Project | Inventing the Spectator |
|---|---|
| Institution | Royal Holloway |
| Publication | Oxford University Press, 2015 |
Runner up: Ann Jefferson
| Project | Genius in France: an Idea and its Uses |
|---|---|
| Institution | University of Oxford |
| Publication | Princeton University Press, 2015 |
2014
Winner: Christopher Prendergast
| Project | Mirages and Mad Beliefs: Proust the Skeptic |
|---|---|
| Publication | Princeton University Press, 2014 |
2013
Winner: Siân Reynolds
| Project | Marriage and Revolution: Monsieur & Madame Roland |
|---|---|
| Publication | Oxford University Press, 2013 |
2012
Winner: Michael Moriarty
| Project | Disguised Vices: Theories of Virtue in Early Modern French Thought |
|---|---|
| Publication | Oxford University Press, 2012 |
2011
Winner: Judith Still
| Project | Derrida and Hospitality: Theory and Practice |
|---|---|
| Publication | Edinburgh University Press, 2011 |
2010
Winner: Ardis Butterfield
| Project | The Familiar Enemy: Chaucer, Language and Nation in the Hundred Years War |
|---|---|
| Publication | Oxford University Press, 2010 |
2009
Winner: Alain Viala
| Project | La France galante |
|---|---|
| Publication | Presses universitaires de France, 2009 |
2008
Winner: Mark Greengrass
| Project | Governing Passions. Peace and Reform in the French Kingdom, 1576-1585 |
|---|---|
: (Oxford University Press). |
|
| Publication | Oxford University Press, 2008 |
Winner: Christopher Prendergast
| Project | The Classic. Sainte-Beuve and the Nineteenth-Century Culture Wars |
|---|---|
| Publication | Oxford University Press, 2008 |
2007
Winner: Eric Robertson
| Project | Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor |
|---|---|
| Publication | Yale University Press, 2007 |
2006
Winner: Maria C. Scott
| Project | Baudelaire’s ‘Le Spleen de Paris’ : Shifting Perspectives |
|---|---|
| Publication | Ashgate, 2006 |
2005
Winner: Roger Pearson
| Project | Mallarmé and Circumstance: The Translation of Silence |
|---|---|
| Publication | Oxford University Press, 2005 |
2004
Winner: Sylvia Huot
| Project | Madness in Medieval French Literature: Identities Lost and Found |
|---|---|
| Publication | Oxford University Press, 2004 |
2003
Winner: Clive Scott
| Project | Channel Crossings: French and English Poetry in Dialogue 1550-2000 |
|---|---|
| Publication | Legenda, 2002 |
2002
Winner: Stephen Bann
| Project | Parallel Lines: Printmakers, Painters and Photographers in Nineteenth-Century France |
|---|---|
| Publication | Yale University Press, 2001 |
2001
Winner: David Baguley
| Project | Napoléon III and his Régime: An Extravaganza |
|---|---|
| Publication | Louisiana State University Press, 2000 |
2000
Winner: Alex Hughes
| Project | Heterographies: Sexual Difference in French Autobiography |
|---|---|
| Publication | Berg, 1999 |
Dr Patrick Crowley
Dr Patrick Crowley
Head of School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
O’Rahilly Building
University College Cork
College Road
Cork T12 K8AF
Ireland
Entries for 2021 are open now. The closing date is 27 August 2021.