Emma Wilson

Professor of French Literature and the Visual Arts, Emma Wilson has been a member of the Department since 1993, including four years as Head of Department. She has been a Fellow of Corpus Christi since 1995, and since 2011 she has also been Course Director of the MPhil in Screen Media and Cultures. Emma has research interests in film, gender and sexuality.

For a while I wanted to be an actress before self-consciousness hit in my teens. Then I discovered that I could be an academic.

I think perhaps because I’ve always had a strong relationship with my mother, perhaps because I was at an all-girls’ school, perhaps simply through my interests, my love of women writers like Colette, and my sexuality: these were all things that made me feel that women could be as successful as men.

I was also lucky in terms of my generation and because I grew up in a family that very much recognised the women’s movement and feminism. At home there was always a sense of the importance of women’s achievement. My mother collected books by Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, Katherine Mansfield and many others. This affected what I could aspire to be as a woman, as well as the research questions that continue to interest me now.

Getting a place to study at Cambridge really marked a transition for me. It enabled me to flourish. When I came to look round Newnham I fell in love with the buildings, the atmosphere, the gardens and the sense of all these incredibly intelligent young women studying in this space. I’d always loved the poetry of Sylvia Plath, and the opportunity to study at the same college where she had studied meant a huge amount to me. I think that Cambridge carries that sense of wonderment when you’re a first-year student.

“Success has come through a passion for my subject and a real sense that what I’m doing is what I’d want to be doing, in both work time and leisure time.”

Since then I suppose success has come through a passion for my subject and a real sense that what I’m doing is what I’d want to be doing, in both work time and leisure time. I’ve had the opportunity to write on modern French literature, French art and world cinema. These things engage me totally.

Doing well in a degree or being promoted only really means something to me because I love the subject. I think seniority and academic recognition matter in terms of the freedom and possibility that come with them, though. I feel empowered to pursue the research topics that interest me most. And I feel that I can play a role within the University, say in relation to gender or graduate studies. Recognition makes a difference not just because it is an asset to me but because of what I can do with it.

How do I feel about being seen as a role model? I find it a joy! I’m certainly not a flawless role model. But if some younger women think, ‘I can be an academic and I don’t have to fit the mould and I can do more creative work or I can make these choices’ because they see me, then I’m absolutely thrilled. It’s always been incredibly important to me to be taught by very gifted women academics, to read their work and to see the ways women are changing academia. I’m in a department which has a good gender balance and where there have been several female professors of French before me. That helps considerably.

“It’s always been incredibly important to me to be taught by very gifted women academics, to read their work and to see the ways women are changing academia.”

I love the opportunity of supervising people and finding ways of enthusing them. I love the sense of possibility that comes from hearing someone’s ideas and responding to them. Academia can be a competitive, driven environment, and everyone experiences doubts that can hold them back. At those points it can really help to have someone encouraging you to hold your nerve and believing in you. I was extraordinarily inspired and helped to move forwards by wonderful teachers – women and men – when I was a student, and I think there’s a sense in which to be successful is to be able to help others to move forwards. Playing a role in enabling other people’s progression gives something to me – there’s a reciprocity to it.

I was the first in my family to go to university, and perhaps because of this, equality, diversity and visibility in the broadest sense matter to me. When I experienced inhibition it was in relation to class rather than gender, so I see gender as working within rather than separately from a whole spectrum of different identity positions.

It’s also important to recognise the diverse ways people are living in the University. I don’t have children, I choose to live alone and I have an alternative sort of lifestyle. It matters to me that Cambridge in the main values people regardless of their gender or any other aspects of diversity. It’s an enlightened and open-minded workplace and somewhere where I feel valued and I hope other people like me can feel valued too.