A photo of Cécile Guédon

Cécile Guédon

Assistant Professor

E-mail: cclg@humnet.ucla.edu Office: Royce Hall 226B

Office Hours: By appointment

Fields of interest: Global French Studies•Transcultural Modernisms•Experimental Humanities•Intermediality•Comparative Arts•Media Archeology

Cécile Guédon is Assistant Professor of French, European Languages, and Transcultural Studies at UCLA. Prior to coming to UCLA, she was a Visiting Lecturer in Theatre, Dance and Media and a Research Associate in Comparative Literature at Harvard University (2018-2019). She was previously a Lecturer in Comparative Literature (2015-2018) and a post-doctoral Research Associate at the Romance Languages and Literatures/Visual and Environmental Studies Departments at Harvard University (2014-2015). Her first monograph: Abstraction in Motion: A Choreographic Approach to Modernism is in preparation; she has been working on the idea of dance or kinesthetics as a possible tool-model for intermedial exploration for High Modernism. The book sets out to apply dance aesthetics concepts (rhythm, gesture, empathy) to a wide range of media at the time of early twentieth century: visual poetry, architecture, film, drawing, photography. In addition, she is currently working on a second project dealing with improvisation and embodiment in the 1940s. Cécile has held research positions at the Centre for European Studies (UCL, London); CRAL (EHESS, Paris); the International Research Training Group Interart at the Institut für Theater- und Tanzwissenschaft (FU, Berlin); the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Groningen (NL); the MediaLab and the Department of Art, Culture and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MA). She was Curator in Residence at the Momentum Gallery, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin in 2017, and has been offered residencies at the Myrifield Institute for Cognition and the Arts (MA) and at the Cochlea Dance Lab in Athens (Greece) in 2018. Between 2015 and 2018, she has given Masterclasses in the UK, USA, Canada, and Europe—including the Yale School of Architecture, and STUK (A House for Dance, Image and Sound) in Leuven (Belgium). At the Mahindra Centre for the Humanities, she has led the Mellon Interdisciplinary Seminar: Panaesthetics—A Colloquium on the Visual Arts, Literature and Music (2015-2018) for the Graduate School of the Arts and Sciences (Harvard).

She is member of the editorial board for the peer-reviewed journal Evental Aesthetics (UCLA/University of Southern California).

Research interests: Global French Studies • Transcultural Modernisms • Experimental Humanities • Intermediality • Comparative Arts • Media Archeology • History of Arts and Sciences • Embodied Cognition

Education

  • Ph.D. University of London, Humanities and Cultural Studies (2014)
  • M.A. University College London, European Culture (2007)
  • D.E.A. Université Paris IV-Sorbonne, Comparative Literature (2005)
  • M.A. Université Paris-X Nanterre, Lettres Modernes (2004)
  • B.A. Université Paris X-Nanterre, Lettres Modernes (2002)

Selected Publications

Articles

Interview 

  • Cécile Guédon (2017). “The Intermedial Moment—Introducing Lance and Andi Olsen’s Show: ‘There’s No Place Like Time, A Novel that You Walk Through”—Momentum Gallery, Kunstquartier Bethanien. Berlin, Germany https://vimeo.com/22284167

Special Issue

  • Cécile Guédon, Isabelle Rieusset-Lemarié (eds). ‘L’Art et les arts.’ Numéro spécial. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Nouvelle Revue d’Esthétique. 2015; Vol. 16

Book Chapters

  • Cécile Guédon, Marco Caracciolo, Karin Kukkonen, Sabine Müller. ‘The Promise of an Embodied Narratology: Integrating Cognition, Representation and Interpretation.’ In John Pier and Philippe Roussin (eds). Emerging Vectors of Narratology. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017
  • Cécile Guédon, Marco Caracciolo. ‘Child Minds through Gaps and Metaphors: On Two Strategies for Consciousness Representation in Literary Narrative.’ In Jan-Noël Thon, Maike Reinerth (eds.). Representation of Subjectivity Across the Media. London. Routledge, 2016
  • Cécile Guédon. “Front Populaire”, “Dirk Huizinga”, “Alexandre Koyré”, “Lucien Lévy-Brühl”, “Michel Leiris”, “Marcel Mauss”, “André Salmon”, “Unanimisme”, in Stephen Ross (ed.). The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Modernism. London: Routledge, 2015
  • Cécile Guédon. “Hop”, “Swing”, “Tap-Dancing.” In Lina Hakim (ed.). The London Consortium English Dictionary. London: London Consortium, 2012
  • Guédon. ‘Scandalo e dono—San Paolo letto da Giorgio Agamben e Jacob Taubes (Scandal and Gift—Saint Paul read by Giorgio Agamben and Jacob Taubes)’ in Rosaria Carbotti (ed.). Scandalo, Atti della Scuola Europea di Studi Comparati, Bertinoro. Florence: Le Monnier, 2009 (in Italian)
  • Cécile Guédon. ‘Abstract Shadows, the Aesthetics of the General’. Static. Issue 08–General, The London Consortium, February 2009
  • Cécile Guédon. ‘Dance as a Figural Pattern for Modernist Poetics’, International Journal for the Humanities, Melbourne, Volume 5, N. 1, April 2007

Translations

  • Stephen Bann. ‘A un moment précis.’ Cécile Guédon (translation). In Arno Gisinger. Topoï. Paris: Trans-Photographic Press and Bucher Verlag, 2013. French-German edition

 

 

Honors and Awards

Honors:

  • Harvard Captain Jonathan Fay Prize for Excellence in Senior Thesis Advising Spring 2018
  • Harvard Thomas T. Hoopes Prize for Excellence in Senior Thesis Advising Spring 2018 (Lily Scherlis)
  • Harvard Thomas T. Hoopes Prize for Excellence in Senior Thesis Advising Spring 2018 (Annie Wu)
  • Harvard Certificate of Teaching Excellence Spring 2018, Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016, Spring 2016, Fall 2015

Awards:

  • Graduate Scholar Award—2010, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
  • Horst Frenz Prize—2010, American Comparative Literature Association, Harvard University
  • Travel Grant Award—2009, Society of Dance History Scholars Annual Conference, Stanford University 
  • Haskell Block Grant for International Graduate Students—2009, American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, Harvard University
  • Association for the Study of Comparative Theory and History of Literature Doctoral Student Award—2008, European School for Comparative Studies, Università di Siena and Università di Bologna
  • Synapsis Doctoral Student Award—2007, European School for Comparative Studies, Università di Siena and Università di Bologna

Grants:

  • Mahindra Humanities Mellon Grant (2015-2018) for convening the graduate interdisciplinary workshop: Panaesthetics—A Colloquium on the Visual Arts, Literature and Music—Graduate School of the Arts and Sciences, Harvard University
  • London Consortium Bursary (2007-2010) for the completion of the doctoral dissertation—Birkbeck College, University of London, United Kingdom

Fellowships:

  • DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Research Fellowship (2010-2011)—Institut für Theater- und Tanzwissenschaft, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany
  • European Commission Marie Curie Early Stage Training Fellowship (2007-2008)—Centre for European Studies, University College London, UK
  • Goethe Institut Language Scholarship (2006)—Berlin Goethe Institut
  • DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Language Scholarship (2005)—Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
  • French Ministry of Education Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies (DEA) Scholarship (2004-2005)—Paris, Education Nationale, Université Paris IV-La Sorbonne, France
  • European Union Erasmus Scholarship (2003-2004)—Università degli Studi di Pisa, Dipartimento di Lettere e Filosofia, Pisa, Italy
  • French Ministry of Education Maîtrise Scholarship (2002-2003)—Paris, Education Nationale, Université Paris X- Nanterre, France

Professional Activities

  • Vision Lab, Radcliffe Institute, Cambridge, MA (2018)
  • Cochlea Dance-Artist Residency, Athens, Greece (2018)
  • Myrifield Institute for Cognition and the Arts, Heath, MA (2018)
  • Momentum Gallery, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin (2017)
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Art, Culture and Technology and MIT Media Lab, USA (2014-2015)
  • Harvard University, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures/Visual and Environmental Studies, USA (2014-2015)
  • University of Groningen, Department of Arts, Culture and Media, The Netherlands (2012-2014)
  • Freie Universität, Institut für Theaterwissenschaft, Berlin, Germany (2010-2011)
  • EHESS, CRAL, Centre de Recherches sur les Arts et le Langage, Paris, France (2009—2010)
  • Centre for European Studies, University College London (2006-2007)

Teaching

  • Harvard University, Theatre, Dance and Media, USA (2018-2019), Visiting Lecturer
  • Harvard University, Comparative Literature, USA (2015-2018), Lecturer
  • Harvard University, Visual and Environmental Studies and Romance Languages, USA (2014-2015), Post-doctoral Teaching Fellow
  • Royal University of Groningen, European Languages and Cultures, NL (2012-2014), Lecturer
  • University of London, School of English and Humanities, Birkbeck College, UK (2007-2012), Graduate Teaching Fellow