News Archive

Former staff member Beverley Noakes reflects on the life of UWA's first Professor of French.Professor James R. Lawler, who was appointed to the foundation chair of French at UWA in 1963, has died in Paris at the age of 83.

A graduate of Melbourne University with a doctorate from the Sorbonne, after lecturing at Queensland and Melbourne Universities he came to Perth in January 1963, and was Professor of French until 1971.

During his time here he transformed his department, renaming it the Department of French Studies in recognition of new courses on French culture and history that were introduced alongside the teaching of literature and language.

Jim's French wife Christiane, an anthropology graduate with a keen interest in the arts, played an important part in the setting up of French civilization courses.

Jim was an inspirational teacher, remembered by many Australian academics as the mentor who set them on the path to a career in French.   Modern French poetry was his particular field, and the long list of his publications includes studies of Valéry, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, and René Char.

But in the 1960s he also gave weekly lectures on the great French writers of the past and on the major 20th-century novelists.  These were open to all UWA students and were always packed.

Reading extracts aloud was important to his mode of presentation and one former student recalls, "We were all entranced by his mellifluous voice, whose timbre I can still hear.  He loved poetry and he wanted to communicate that love with passion".

He established a PhD degree in French and in 1965 launched the first issue of an academic journal, Essays in French Literature (now Essays in French Literature and Culture ).  He was always available to members of staff, cordial and welcoming to junior tutors, encouraging senior academics to introduce courses in their research fields.  Mindful of the importance of public outreach, he created a small journal, The French Bulletin , for secondary students, held Saturday morning French classes for children, and maintained close links with the Alliance Française de Perth.

In 1971 Jim moved to the United States to be Professor and Chairman of Department at the University of California (Los Angeles); in 1974 he took up the Chair of French at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, where he was the founding editor of Dalhousie French Studies .  From 1979 to 1997 he was Professor of French at the University of Chicago; during this period he was also a visiting professor at the Collège de France, and an invited lecturer in Tokyo.  In 1997 he retired to live in Paris, where he continued to participate in literary circles, most recently as President of the Association Internationale des Etudes Françaises and then as President of the prestigious Association des Amis de Rimbaud.

As an eminent scholar, Jim received many honours: among these, he was a member and foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, an Officier des Palmes Académiques, and was awarded the Prix du rayonnement de la langue française by the Académie Française.

Yet those who knew him will recall him not principally for these distinctions, but above all for his courtesy and modesty, his gentle humour, and the interest and warmth he brought to his encounters with students, colleagues and friends.