Professor Margaret Sankey

PhD (Sydney), Dip.Ed. (Sydney), BA (Sydney), MA (Adelaide), FAHA, Chevalier (Palmes académiques)
McCaughey Professor of French Studies
Room 741, A18 Christopher Brennan Building

+61 2 9351 6797

My research career in French Studies has been devoted to the study of the history of ideas and mentalités in France, with particular reference to the early modern period and the scientific revolution. I have published extensively in my key areas of interest: Cyrano de Bergerac’s novels and the transmission of his texts; French notions of Terra australis, in particular, research on the writing of Abbé Paulmier (1663-4), to the end of the eighteenth century; the Baudin Expedition to Australia (1800 to 1804). I have edited or co-edited several books, and co-translated into English The Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary by Gilbert Durand. My experience in the field of editing has led me to theorise on the nature of editing and to break new ground in the conceptualisation of the editorial process.

• Early French voyages to Australia
• French narrative and cultural history from the 17th century to the 20th century
• Cyrano de Bergerac

• ARC Discovery Grant project (2005-9): 'The Baudin Legacy' (with
  Dr Jean Fornasiero (University of Adelaide), Dr John West-Sooby (University of Adelaide), Professor Michel Jangoux (Université libre de Bruxelles)). This Project will be the first comprehensive documentation of the work of the scientific expedition of Nicolas Baudin to Australia (1800-1804)
• Translation of Michel Serres’s Les cinq sens (with Dr Peter Cowley)
• ARC Discovery Grant project (2004-5): 'Communications and National Identity in Early Modern France' (with Dr Elizabeth Rechniewski and Emeritus Professor Angus Martin)
• Cyrano de Bergerac

Books

• A Critical Edition of the Mémoires sur l’establissement d’une mission dans les Terres australes, antarctiques et inconnues… by the Abbé Paulmier (1663). Paris, Champion, 2004
• Gilbert Durand, The Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary, trans. M. Sankey and J. Hatten, Brisbane, Boombana Press, 1999
• The Editorial Gaze: Mediating Texts in Literature and the Arts, ed. with Paul Eggert, New York and London, Garland Publishing Inc, 1998
• The Textual Condition: rhetoric and editing, ed. With Maurice Blackman, Frances Muecke, Sydney, Local Consumption Publications, 1995
• L'Autre Monde Ou Les Empires et Estats de la Lune, Édition diplomatique d'un manuscrit inédit, Cyrano de Bergerac, L'Autre Monde Ou Les Empires et Estats de la Lune (Bibliothèque Fisher, University of Sydney, RB Add. Ms. 68), Paris, Lettres Modernes, (Bibliothèque Introuvable 19), 1995, 18cm, XLII-101pp
• Essays in Honour of Professor Ivan Barko, ed with J. Hatten, G. McAuley, R. White, Brisbane, Boombana Press, 1994

Book Chapters

• 'L’Abbé Paulmier méconnu: le mythe et l’histoire des Terres australes en France au dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles', Studies in Eighteenth Century French Fiction in Honour of Angus Martin, ed. Wallace Kirsop, Australian Journal of French Studies, XXXVIII, 1, 2001
• 'Est ou Ouest: le mythe des terres australes en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles', L’Océan Indien dans les littératures francophones: pays réels, pays rêvés, pays révélés; ed. Kumari Issur and Vinesh Hookoomsing, Paris et Réduit, Editions Karthala et Presses de l’Université de Maurice, 2001, pp. 13...26
• 'The Paradoxes of Modernity: Rational Religion and Mythical Science in the Novels of Cyrano de Bergerac', Religion, Reason and Nature in Early Modern Europe, ed. R. Crocker, Dordrecht, Kluwer, pp. 43....64, 2001
  
  'Zola’s L’Œuvre et Cézanne: the art and politics of friendship', Repenser les processus créateurs/ Rethinking the Creative Processes, textes réunis par Françoise Grauby, Michelle Royer, Berne, Peter Lang SA, 2001, pp. 97-114
• 'Le matérialisme dans L’Autre Monde de Cyrano de Bergerac', Materia Actuosa: Antiquité, Age classique, Lumières: Mélanges en l’honneur d’Olivier Bloch, eds Anthony McKenna and Alain Mothu, Paris, Champion, 2000, 157...179pp
• 'Le roman comme exercice spirituel: la traduction française de La Montagne de l’âme de Gao Xingjian', Mauriac et d’autres: Mélanges en l’honneur de Keith John Goesch, eds B. Swift, R. Kanawati and A. Martin, Sydney, Macquarie University/Société Internationale des Etudes Mauriaciennes, 2000, pp.245-256
• The Question of Authorship in Cyrano de Bergerac’s Voyage dans la lune: a computer assisted statistical analysis', with Morna King, The Culture of the Book: Essays from two Hemispheres in Honour of Wallace Kirsop, eds Brian McMullin et al, Melbourne, Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand, 1999, pp.136....147
• 'Between and across cultures: place and time in Andreï Makine’s Le Testament français', Variété - Perspectives in French Literature, Society and Culture, Studies in honour of Kenneth Raymond Dutton, ed. M. Ramsland, Frankfurt-am-Main, Peter Lang, Europäischer Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1999, pp. 293-303
• 'Perceptions of the Aborigines Recorded during the Baudin Expedition: the Dynamics of First Encounter', Australia in Between Cultures, Specialists Session papers from the 1998 Australian Academy of the Humanities Symposium, ed. Bruce Bennett, Canberra, Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1999, pp. 55-76
• 'Gilbert Durand et l’Australie', in Bulletin de liaison des Centres de Recherches sur L’Imaginaire, hors série, 1, Université de Bourgogne, Université de Grenoble, 1998, pp. 82-90
• 'Lire le manuscrit clandestin: L’Autre Monde de Cyrano de Bergerac' in La Philosophie clandestine à l’Age classique, eds. A. McKenna and A. Mothu, Paris, Universitas/Oxford, The Voltaire Foundation, 1997, pp. 279-291
• 'Le Voyage initiatique et la représentation de l'experience dans l'Autre monde', Il senso del nonsenso, Scritti in memoria di Lynn Salkin Sbiroli, eds. Monique Streiff Moretti, Mireille Revol Cappelletti, Odile Martinez, Perugia, Università degli Studi di Perugia, 1994, pp.47-72

Articles

• Special Numbers of the Australian Journal of French Studies
  The Baudin Expedition 1800-1804, Ed. with Jean Fornasiero and Peter Cowley, Australian Journal of French Studies, XLI, 2, 2004
  
  'Autour de Michèle Le Dœuff'', (co-editor: Jean Fornasiero), Australian Journal of French Studies, XL, 3, 2003, 150pp
• 'Women’s Voices', Australian Journal of French Studies, XXXIV, 1, 1997, 142 pp. (Sole editor)

• French literature and literary theory
• The French Enlightenment
• The French Renaissance
• The French Seventeenth Century
• The contemporary French novel
• French voyages to Australia
• French writing about Australia

In 1999 and 2002, I was jointly responsible for the organisation of two international conferences for the Australian Society of French Studies:

• 'Les études françaises qu seuil du millénaire'
• A celebration of the Baudin Bicentenary

Some of my key-note addresses and plenary papers deliverd at both national and international conferences are:

• On Baudin to the Australian Academies of the Humanities Annual Conference, 'Australia in Between Cultures' (Sydney 1998)
• On Baudin to the 'Cultural Encounters in the Indian-Pacific Region 1200-1800' Conference organised by the History and English Departments at the University of Western Australia in the context of the Baudin Bicentenary Celebrations (2001)
• Key-note address on Paulmier at a joint French-Malagassy conference in Madagascar, October 2003, organised by the Centre de recherches sur la littérature des voyages (CRLV), Paris IV; and on Baudin at a conference on the explorer at the University of Mauritius
• Paper on Baudin at the Australian Society of French Studies conference at the University of Western Australia in Perth (July 2005)

• Member of the editorial boards of the Australian Journal of French Studies and the Australian Universities Modern Languages Association
• Chair of European Cultures Electoral Panel of the Australian Academy of the Humanities
• Honorary Researcher at the CELLF 17-18 (Centre d’études sur la littérature et langue françaises du dix-septième et du dix-huitième siecles), Paris IV
• Honorary Researcher at the CRLV (Centre de recherches sur la littérature des voyages), Paris IV
• Australian Correspondent with the Centre de recherches sur l’imaginaire, Université de Chambéry
• ARC Assessor, International