James Wishart is a graduate of Oxford University and King’s College London where has worked there as a sessional lecturer in the departments of French and of Comparative Literature since 2011.

Research Interests and PhD Supervision

James Wishart specialises in post-war French poetry and intellectual history, particularly through the lens of the polemics between Jean-Paul Sartre and Georges Bataille. He is a specialist of the poet Olivier Larronde. Building on the critical heritage of this history within contemporary French Thought, his research follows two broader intermingled lines of investigation. On the one hand, the role of poetry for French thinkers, from Badiou to Rancière, in elaborating conceptions of the event in which Mallarmé plays a key part. On the other hand, the ways in which poets’ exploration of space, from Rimbaud to Jacques Roubaud and Bernard Noel, can generate a broader picture of the relation of poetry and the event and help reshape literary and historical narrative in the present. 

• French poetry from 19^th century to the present.
• Modern French Thought (Sartre, Badiou, Rancière).
• Poetry and the visual arts in 1940’s to 1960’s.

For more details, please see his full research profile.

Teaching

Poetry and the visual arts. 20th century French thought and Critical Theory. 

Expertise and Public Engagement

Contribution to the Francis Bacon catalogue for the 2016 Exhibition held in Monaco “Francis Bacon: Monaco et la culture française”. Interview of the artist Anne Dunn in preparation of a documentary on Bacon financed by the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation.