Professor Hugo Frey
Director of Arts and Humanities and Professor of Visual and Cultural History
About
Hugo Frey, BA Hons (CNAA) MA (Surrey) PhD (Surrey)
Professor Hugo Frey is Director of Arts and Humanities and Professor of Visual and Cultural History at University of Chichester. With Jan Baetens he has published, The Graphic Novel: An Introduction (CUP, 2015) and with Baetens and Stephen Tabachnick he co-edited the award-winning, The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel (2018). In 2023, he published again with CUP, The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel (co-editor). To learn more about this publication and his vision of graphic narrative more generally, visit the Cambridge University Press podcast, ‘Contours’.
In addition, Hugo has also written extensively on the history and politics of French cinema and is a Prince’s Teaching Institute ‘Inspirational Lecturer’ working to support early career secondary teachers in their first professional roles.
Hugo has been awarded external research grant funding from: the British Academy, the British Council, the Italian Cultural Institute, and the HLF.
In 2022, he was awarded the post of Visiting Professor at the University of Gent, and in 2025 is co-curating an exhibition on surrealistic comics pages at the Brussels Comics Museum titled: ‘Visionary Comics’.
Key Publications
- The Look of the 1960s. Barbarella and the Pulp Pop Comics [co-author with Jan Baetens] (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2025).
- (Contributing co-editor) The Visionary Art of Franco-Belgian Comics, 1930-1960 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2025). Forward by Dan Nadel.
- (Contributing co-editor) The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
- (Contributing co-editor), The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018; reprinted pbk, 2022).
- The Graphic Novel: An Introduction [co-author with Jan Baetens] (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
- Nationalism and the Cinema in France: Political Mythologies and Film Events, 1945-1995 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014).
- Louis Malle (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).
Research
Hugo has delivered research papers to conferences and research groups around the world including in: the UK, Ireland, USA, Vietnam, Canada, Norway, Finland, Holland, Germany, Luxembourg, Denmark, Portugal, Spain and Belgium, among others.
He is co-series editor of Graphic Narratives for Cambridge University Press and series editor in chief of European Comics and Graphic Novels for Leuven University Press/Cornell.
His new work includes editing a forthcoming issue of the Proceedings of the British Academy. Also in 2025, his new book with Baetens, titled, The Look of the 1960s, is published by Texas University Press. The catalogue he co-edits, Visionary Comics, comes out with Leuven UP to mark the launch of the associated international exhibition at the Comics Museum, Brussels.
In West Sussex, Hugo is a Trustee of Chichester Marks Holocaust Memorial Day and regularly contributes to public cultural events at, for example, The Oxmarket Gallery and the New Park Cinema. He has equally co-supervised doctoral research on outsider and untrained art in partnership with the leading charity, “Outside In”. In 2024, he presented the “6 June D-Day Memorial lecture” at the University of Chichester.
PhD Supervision
Professor Frey would be delighted to supervise students in history or politics across a range of subjects including:
- Graphic novels & Comics
- American cultural history
- French cultural history
- Politics of Nationalism
- French and Francophone Cinema
- International political history
Teaching
Hugo teaches across several different UG programmes in the Humanities with modules including:
- Political Ideology
- Comics and Graphic Novels
- Brexit
- Soft power
- Fascism and neo fascism
- Contemporary French and Francophone history
- War photography
Research Output
Articles
Frey, H. (2022) Summertime France as Ethno-Sociological Experiment Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary in Jacques Rozier’s "Du côté d’Orouët" (1969). Imaginaires, 24. pp. 131-147. ISSN 2780-1896 10.34929/imaginaires.vi24.40
Frey, H. (2020) Pop Art and Nostalgia: The New Lessons of David Vandermeulen’s Ric Remix. Recherches sémiotiques, 38 (1-2). pp. 221-236. ISSN 1923-9920 10.7202/1070822ar
Frey, H. and Baetens, J. (2019) Comics Culture and Roy Lichtenstein. Art History, 42 (1). pp. 126-152. ISSN 0141-6790 10.1111/1467-8365.12416
Baetens, J. and Frey, H. (2017) ‘Layouting’ for the plot: Charles Burns and the clear line revisited. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 8 (2). pp. 193-202. ISSN 2150-4865 10.1080/21504857.2016.1270219
Frey, H. (2014) Pierre Benoit et les leçons de L’Atlantide. Le Cahiers des Amis de Pierre Benoit, XXIV. pp. 148-161. ISSN 0992-9835
Frey, H. (2008) Trafic d’Outre-Manche: réflexion sur Une trilogie anglaise de Floc’h et Rivière. Lendemains: Études comparées sur la France, 33 (129). pp. 43-60. ISSN 0170-3803
Frey, H. (2007) Paul Sérant and the extreme right's rhetoric of antithesis. Journal of European Studies, 37 (4). pp. 373-389. ISSN 0047-2441 10.1177/0047244107083225
Frey, H. (2006) Louis Malle and the 1950s: Ambiguities, Friendships and Legacies. South Central Review: Journal of the South Central MLA, 23 (2). pp. 22-35. ISSN 0743-6831
Frey, H. (2002) History and memory in Franco-Belgian Bande Dessinée (BD). Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, 6 (3). pp. 293-304. ISSN 1364-2529 10.1080/13642520210164517
Book Sections
Frey, H. (2022) Polyphonies de la mémoire dans Le Souffle au cœur. In: Louis Malle dans tous ses etats. Les Impressions nouvelles, Brussels, pp. 225-236. ISBN 9782874499456
Frey, H. (2019) Graphic novels and Beat literature. In: The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel. Cambridge University Press, New York. (Submitted)
Frey, H. (2017) Historical Fiction. In: The Cambridge Companion to the Graphic Novel. Cambridge University Press, New York. ISBN 9781107108790
Frey, H. and Baetens, J. (2017) Graphic Novels and the First World War. In: Teaching Representations of the First World War. Options for Teaching . Modern Language Association, New York, pp. 277-284. ISBN 9781603293044
Frey, H. (2016) Tintin between Myth and Style. In: The Comics of Hergé. Great Comics Artists . University Press of Mississippi, Jackson. ISBN 9781496818492
Frey, H. (2015) The tactic of illusion in Grennan’s re-creation of Trollope. In: Transforming Anthony Trollope: Dispossession, Victorianism and 19th Century Word and Image. LUP/Cornell, Leuven. ISBN 9789462700413
Frey, H. (2010) Inside-out: questions of form in the work of Friedrich Meinecke and Robert Aron. In: Nationalizing the Past: Historians as Nation-Builders. Palgrave, pp. 282-297. ISBN 9780230237926
Frey, H. and Jordan, S. (2010) Inside-out: the purposes of form in Friedrich Meinecke's and Robert Aron's explanations of national disaster. In: Nationalizing the Past: Historians as Nation Builders in Modern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. ISBN 9780230237926
Frey, H. and Flood, C. (2010) Henry Rousso (1954- ). In: French Historians 1900-2000: New Historical Writing in Twentieth-Century France. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford. ISBN 9781405198677
Frey, H. (2009) Contradiction Without End: Renaud Camus and the Parti de l’In-nocence. In: Les Spirales du sens chez Renaud Camus. Rodopi Editions, Amsterda, Paris, pp. 207-231. ISBN 9789042026841
Frey, H. (2009) Contradiction without end: Renaud Camus and the parti de l’in-nocence. In: Les Spirales du sens chez Renaud Camus. Rodopi Editions, Amsterdam ; NY, pp. 207-231. ISBN 9789042026841
Frey, H. (2008) “For All to See": Yvan Alagbé’s 'Nègres jaunes' and the representation of the contemporary social crisis in the Banlieue. In: Writing and the Image Today. Yale French Studies, 114 . Yale University Press, New Haven, Conneticut ; London, pp. 116-129. ISBN 9780300118216
Frey, H. (2008) Cannes 1956/1979: Riviera reflections on nationalism and cinema. In: Narrating the Nation: Representations in History, Media and the Arts. Making Sense of History (11). Berghahn Books, Oxford ; New York, pp. 181-203. ISBN 9781845454241
Frey, H. (2008) Trapped in the Past: the Persistence of Anti-Semitism in Hergé’s Flight 714. In: History and Politics in French-Language Comics and Graphic Novels. University of Mississippi Press, Jackson, pp. 34-51. ISBN 9781604730043
Frey, H. (2008) Trapped in the past: The persistence of anti-semitism in Hergé’s 'Flight 714'. In: History and Politics in French-Language Comics and Graphic Novels. University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, pp. 34-51. ISBN 9781604730043
Frey, H. (2007) Shutting out the city: reflections on the portrayal of London in 1960s Auteur Cinema. In: London Eyes: Reflections in Text and Image. Berghahn, Oxford, UK, pp. 135-147. ISBN 9781845454074
Monographs
Frey, H. (2014) Cinema and Nationalism in France. Other. Berghahn Books. 9781782383659
Frey, H. (2014) Nationalism and the Cinema in France: Political Mythologies and Film Events, 1945-1995. . Berghahn, New York.
Books
Baetens, J., Frey, H. and Tabachnick, S. E. (2018) The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel. Cambridge Histories - Literature . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. ISBN 9781107171411
Frey, H. and Baetens, J. (2015) The Graphic Novel: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, New York. ISBN 9781107655768
Frey, H. (2004) Louis Malle. French Film Directors . Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK. ISBN 9780719064562
Other department members
Alison MacLeod
Visiting Professor in Creative Writing
