- 鈥楾echnology and the Human-Adjacent: Dracula鈥檚 Posthumanisms鈥, 2025.
- 鈥楥ontagion and Organ Transplantation in Maurice Renard鈥檚 Speculative Fiction鈥, 2025.
- 鈥楢rs猫ne Lupin, the Secret Gentleman?鈥, 2024.
- 鈥楢u feu! Gas, Explosions and Incendiary Commerce in Au Bonheur des Dames鈥 (invited talk), 2024.
- 鈥楾he Doppelg盲nger: Weimar Cinema and the Posthuman鈥, 2023.
- Biological Clocks and Women鈥檚 Rights: Cyborgs and Satire in Radium Age Fiction鈥, (invited talk), 2023.
- 鈥楶rosthetic Modernisms: The Technologized Human Body in 1920s Art鈥, 2022.
- 鈥楽ex and Shopping: The Legacy of Zola鈥檚 Mannequins in the Twentieth Century鈥, 2021.
Dr Kate Foster

-
Lecturer in French Literature and Culture
Year Abroad Coordinator for French
Outside of 糖心视频:
Conference Officer (Society for French Studies)
Office
Miller G15Building location
Miller BuildingAreas of interest
In previous roles, I have taught a range of French language and content courses. These include compulsory French language, translation, modules on photography and theories of the self, French national identity and visual culture, and modernity and the city of Paris.
Research Interests:
My primary research interests lie in the intersections of human bodies, technology and science in the cultures of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Europe. Although always rooted in French studies, my research has taken on a more transnational aspect in recent years, incorporating the cultural output of Germany, Belgium and the UK. I am interested in how attitudes to technology in the past can help us to understand our technological present and future. My doctoral research focused on humanoid bodies in literature and visual culture between the 1880s and 1930s, and forged links between modernist representations and contemporary understandings of artificial people. This is currently being developed into a full-length monograph.
I have recently co-edited a volume (The Human and the Machine in Literature and Culture: Cultures of Automation, forthcoming with Routledge), which was developed following a conference I organized in 2023 on ‘Automation & Automatism/s’. I have also worked on mannequins in art and literature, and have published several articles in which I explore concepts of seriality, new configurations of the human, and objectification through the figure of the department store mannequin in Emile Zola’s fiction and in Surrealist art.
Teaching
I co-teach and convene the first-year module FR1IFA (Ideas of Frenchness), and teach and convene the final-year module FR3PF (Philanthropy à la française). I also teach FR1L3, FR2L3 (Advanced French Language I).
I have previously taught FR3PM (French Popular Music and Society) and FR2HTF (How to Think in French).
Research projects
My current research has developed from my previous investigations concerning cultural discourses of energy, force, fragmentation and identity. I am working on a new project which centres on technology, disease and cultural history, which will examine Surrealist automatism, vampires, questions of identity and disguise, and representations of organ transplantation avant la lettre. This interdisciplinary study will bring together textual/visual analysis, the cultural and medical study of the body, AI experimentalism, queer studies and gender studies.
Academic qualifications
- BA, French and Linguistics (University of Wales, Bangor)
- MA, French Literature and Culture (King’s College London)
- PhD, French (King’s College London)
- Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Professional bodies/affiliations
- Society for French Studies
- Society of Dix-Neuviémistes
- British Society for Literature and Science
- British Comparative Literature Association
Selected publications
- 鈥楾he Serial Surreal Mannequin: The Art of Repetition at the 1938 Exposition internationale du surr茅alisme鈥, French Studies, 79.4 (October 2025).
- 鈥業ntroduction: This Time it鈥檚 (Probably Not) Different鈥, in The Human and the Machine in Literature and Culture: Cultures of Automation, ed. by Kate Foster & Molly Crozier (Routledge, 2026).
- 鈥楢u Feu! Gas, Explosions and Incendiary Commerce in Au Bonheur des Dames鈥, Emile Zola Bulletin, 66 (2024), 15-24.
- 鈥楲猫che-vitrines: Human Identity and the Mannequin in Au Bonheur des Dames, Dix-Neuf, 26.2 (2022), 74-90.
- 鈥楾he Cyborg鈥檚 Undecidable Body: A Game of 鈥淲ho am I?鈥 in Gaston Leroux鈥檚 La Poup茅e sanglante鈥, in Queer(y)ing Bodily Norms in Francophone Culture, ed. by Polly Galis, Antonia Wimbush and Maria Tomlinson (Peter Lang, 2021), 187-205.