The Department of Modern Languages is delighted to announce that Helen Hui-Yueh Cheng has completed her PhD in French, entitled ‘In Search of an Individual Identity: A Psychoanalytical Examination of Motivational Forces behind the Identity Development of Female Characters in the Selected Works of Violette Leduc and Eileen Chang’ under the supervision of Dr Lucy O’Mera.
Violette Leduc and Eileen Chang are brought together in this thesis for their portrayal of women characters in pursuit of a sense of identity and fulfillment in societies where gender roles can function as pseudo-destinies. Such roles can, to varying degrees, be relativized, questioned and resisted.
Feminist and psychoanalytic theories are used in conjunction with concepts drawn from the work of Abraham Maslow, in particular his theory concerning the ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ – a theory that is widely used as a marketing tool in present-day companies, although it is less actively used in the literary world.
Now that many disciplines are seeking to redefine themselves as interdisciplinary, to bring together these various strands in a literary thesis is to make a contribution not only to the study of Leduc and Chang, but the study of methodology in interpreting literature.
Our congratulations to Dr Cheng.
For more details on a PhD in French, please see:
www.kent.ac.uk/secl/modern-languages/postgraduate/research-french.html