Course summary

Kent offers an excellent environment for postgraduate study in French literature, thought, culture, society and the visual arts from the 18th century to the present. On this PhD programme you benefit from spending a year at Kent's Paris School of Arts and Culture, to immerse yourself in French culture and language. A PhD, also known as a doctorate, is a requirement for a career as an academic or as a researcher. In addition, it has become a qualification valued by many employers who recognise the skills and commitment a PhD requires. Employers also recognise that a PhD indicates excellent research and critical thinking capabilities, discipline and outstanding writing skills. The Year in Paris furthers your linguistic skills and cultural understanding through living in the city for an extended period of time. Over the duration of the PhD, you produce an original piece of research of up to 100,000 words, in English or in French. Previous doctoral theses have included ‘Deleuze and Anti-Humanism: The Sense of Deleuze's Spinozism’, ‘Haptic Experience in the Writings of Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot and Michel Serres’, ‘Photobiographies: pour une écriture de notation de la vie (Roland Barthes, Denis Roche, Annie Ernaux)’, and ‘De l'abject et du sublime: Georges Bataille, Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett’.