Didier Girard

Didier Girard is Professor of European literatures and aesthetics, now at the University of Haute Alsace, France. He ran the first Erasmus Mundus Course in the Humanities from 2005 to 2009, Crossways, and is now the General Co-ordinator of a multi-centre doctorate (16 partners around the world) called Interzones.

An eighteenth century specialist (he is the editor of William Beckford’s work of fiction – 10 volumes – and other pre-romantic European writers with José Corti Publ. in Paris). Girard is also the author of a Ph.D thesis on Edward James (1907-1984) as Hypnagogic Poet, which led to the publication of several books and articles focusing on radical aspects of surrealism and the avant-gardes, among which “Heterologies” (an essay inspired by George Bataille in 2006) and Les delits de Dali (a critical edition of Salvador Dali’s poems in 2007).

Several of his scholarly articles are devoted to literary investigations of William Burroughs’ late fiction, especially The Seven Deadly Sins, and Ghost of Chance which was the starting point of a large international conference held this month (october 2010) in Rio de Janeiro, Praticas do Acaso.