Hannah Thompson
Hannah Thompson (PhD Cantab) is Professor of French and Critical Disability Studies at Royal Holloway University of London. She is a specialist in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French fiction, particularly the novel. At Royal Holloway she teaches French translation, French and Comparative Literature and translation theory. Her current research looks at how audio description (the verbal provision of visual information for blind people) can help us understand literary depictions of paintings in nineteenth-century France as well as how these descriptions might inform audio description practices in UK and French museums and galleries.
The project
Title: Blindness Gain and the Inclusive Museum
Keywords: French literature; blindness; disability studies; art; inclusion; access; museums; nineteenth-century visual culture; translation
Selected publications
- ‘Blindness Gain as World-Making: Towards a New ‘partage du sensible’; with Marion Chottin; peer reviewed article forthcoming in L’Esprit Créateur (2021)
- ‘BLINDNESS at the Donmar Warehouse’, in Contemporary Theatre Review vol. 31 n. 1-2 (2021), pp. 244-45.
- Describing Diversity: An Exploration of the Description of Human Characteristics and Appearance within the Practice of Theatre Audio Description (VocalEyes: September 2020) https://vocaleyes.co.uk/about/research/describing-diversity/
report co-authored with Rachel Hutchinson and Matthew Cock (VocalEyes). - ‘Reading Blindness in French Fiction through Critical Disability Studies’, in Céline Roussel and Soline Vennetier (eds), Discours et Représentations du Handicap: Perspectives Culturelles (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2019), pp. 231-247; ISBN 978-2-406-08829-5
- Canadian Journal of Disability Studies vol 8 no. 6 ‘Cécités et Créations’ (2019); special issue co-edited with Maria Fernanda Arentesen: https://doi.org/10.15353/cjds.v8i6
- Disability Studies Quarterly vol. 38 no. 3 ‘Blindness Arts’ (2018); special issue
co-edited with Vanessa Warne: http://dsq-sds.org/issue/view/160 - ‘Audio-Description: Turning Access to Film into Cinema Art’, Disability Studies Quarterly, 38.3 (2018): http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/6487
- ‘Recent Work in Critical Disability Studies’, Paragraph, vol. 41 no. 2 (July 2018), 233-244.
- ‘Lourdes's Monsters: A Critical Disability Studies Reading of the Spectacle of Disability’, Australian Journal of French Studies, vol. 55, no. 2, (2018), 171-183.
- ‘Etat présent: French and Francophone Disability Studies’, French Studies, vol 71 no. 2 (2017), 243-51.
- Reviewing Blindness in French Fiction (London: Palgrave, 2017); ISBN 978-1-137-43510-1; 198 pp.
- ‘« De simple malade j’étais devenu un handicapé »: Interrogating the Construction of “Disability” in Jean-Dominique Bauby’s Le scaphandre et le papillon’, L’Esprit créateur, vol. 56 no. 2 (2016), 79-92.
- ‘Les aveugles en France au dix-neuvième siècle: un regard littéraire’ in Corpus: revue de philosophie vol 67 (2014), pp. 69-90 (Special issue ‘Actes du colloque Histoire de la cécité et des aveugles’ edited by Marion Chottin and Francine Markovits) ISSN 0296-8916
- Taboo: Corporeal Secrets in Nineteenth-Century France (Oxford: Legenda, 2013)
