About

I am a part-time MPhil/PhD student concentrating on the writings of Madame de Staël (1766-1817) whose publications cover aesthetics, historiography and literature. This project is supervised by Professor Katherine Astbury and Dr Susannah Wilson.

Research

Since the 1970’s the work of the Swiss born salonnière, Madame de Staël has been the focus of a wide variety of literary criticism ranging from aesthetics though to issues of identity construction in relation to power, gender and nationhood. My research will adopt close readings of de Staël, seeking to reveal chains of signification that lie below the surface of the text, demonstrating a degree of continuity between various critical methodologies. In my focus on de Staël’s novel Delphine, I shall test the hypothesis that regardless of the author’s steps taken to disassociate her literature from contemporary historical reference, linguistic structures collectively combine to what Edward Said calls a strategic formation, emerging as a thorough-going assault on a sedimented ancien régime of 18^th Century France.

Research Interests

Early Modern and 19^th Century French travel writing

The 18^th-Century epistolary novel tradition

Critical methodologies and Cultural criticism

18^th-Century French thought

The Frankfurt School

Qualifications

• BA Hons French and English (Upper Second Class) Portsmouth University including one year at l’École d’interprètes internationaux, Mons, Belgium.

• P.G.C.E. The Colleges of St Paul and St Mary, Cheltenham
• MSc Aston University
• MA French for Research and Francophone Studies (with Merit) University of Warwick 2015
• MA by Research in French (with Distinction) University of Warwick 2024

Conference Presentations

• IMLR Graduate Forum: Representations of the Orient in 17^th Century French récits de voyages, UCL September 2015
• University of Warwick Arts Faculty Seminar Series 2014/15. ‘Encountering the Orient through the lens of Europe.’
• Borders and Crossings/Seuils et Traverses: International and Multidisciplinary Conference on Travel Writing 11th –13th September 2014 Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria. ‘Power and gender in Early Modern Asia’