Eric Robertson is Professor of Modern French Literary and Visual Culture at Royal Holloway, University of London

Royal Holloway, University of London

Royal Holloway, University of London is a constituent college of the University of London. The college has three faculties, 18 academic departments, and about 8,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students from over 130 different countries...

. His research focuses primarily on 20th century French literature, especially poetry, and the visual arts, with particular emphasis on European Modernism

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 and the avant-gardes. He is the author of Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor (2006), Writing Between the Lines, a study of the bilingual novelist and essayist René Schickele (1995), and various articles and chapters on 20th century French literature, especially poetry, and visual arts. He is also the co-editor of Yvan Goll - Claire Goll: Texts and Contexts (1997), Robert Desnos: Surrealism in the Twenty-First Century (2006), Dada and Beyond Volume 1: Dada Discourses (2011) and Dada and Beyond Volume 2: Dada and its Legacies (2011, forthcoming). Professor Robertson recently completed a monograph exploring the writings of Blaise Cendrars

Blaise Cendrars

Frédéric Louis Sauser , better known as Blaise Cendrars, was a Swiss novelist and poet naturalized French in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the modernist movement.-Early years:...

 in the light of his interactions with artists, photographers and filmmakers, including Sonia and Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay was a French artist who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, cofounded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. His later works were more abstract, reminiscent of Paul Klee...

, Robert Doisneau

Robert Doisneau

Robert Doisneau was a French photographer. In the 1930s he used a Leica on the streets of Paris; together with Henri Cartier-Bresson he was a pioneer of photojournalism...

, Abel Gance

Abel Gance

Abel Gance was a French film director and producer, writer and actor. He is best known for three major silent films: J'accuse , La Roue , and the monumental Napoléon .-Early life:...

, Fernand Léger

Fernand Léger

Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...

 and Léopold Survage

Léopold Survage

Léopold Survage was an important French painter of Russian-Danish-Finnish descent born in Vilmanstrand, Finland .-Biography:At a young age, Survage was...

. Further ongoing projects include a study of avant-garde art and virtual technologies.

Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor, published by Yale University Press

Yale University Press

Yale University Press is a book publisher founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day. It became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but remains financially and operationally autonomous....

, considers the close connections between Arp’s writing, painting and sculpture and reassesses his contribution to major artistic movements of the 20th century. This book was awarded the 2007 R.H. Gapper Book Prize. The award, made annually by the Society for French Studies

Society for French Studies

The Society for French Studies, or SFS, is the oldest learned association for French Studies in the UK and Ireland. It aims to promote teaching and research in French Studies within higher education....

, is for the best book by a scholar working in Britain or Ireland in French studies.

Publications

Authored and Edited Books

• Dada and Beyond, vol 1: Dada Discourses, ed. with Elza Adamowicz (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2011)
• Dada and Beyond, vol 2: Dada and its Legacies, ed. with Elza Adamowicz (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2011, forthcoming)
• Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006)
• Robert Desnos: Surrealism in the Twenty-First Century , ed. with Marie-Claire Barnet and Nigel Saint (Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Vienna: Peter Lang, 2006)
• Yvan Goll – Claire Goll: Texts and Contexts, ed. with Robert Vilain (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997)
• Writing Between the Lines: René Schickele, ‘Citoyen français, deutscher Dichter’ 1883-1940 (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1995)