Michael Holland retired from St Hugh’s in 2016 after 30 years as the Tutor in French at the College. Since then, he has pursued the opportunities opened up by retirement to continue his research into the work of the French writer Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003). The final issue of the Cahiers Maurice Blanchot, a journal he co-founded, appeared in 2016. That year saw the launch with Hannes Opelz of Trinity College, Dublin, of a project for a dictionary of Blanchot’s life and work. After ten years of slow gestation, involving over 100 authors from a number of countries, the Dictionnaire Maurice Blanchot was published by Classiques Garnier in 2026.
In 2022 and 2025 Holland was awarded a Houghton Library Fellowship which allowed him to work on the large archive of Blanchot papers that the Harvard library had acquired. In 2024 he was a visiting lecturer in the French department at Berkeley.
His work on the role of narrative in Blanchot’s thought continues apace.
For a list of Holland’s publications see his Faculty page:
