Millie Jacoby

About

I am a second year PhD student in French Studies, researching memory and postmemory of Eastern Europe and the Pale of Settlement in Jewish literature from France. My research is supervised by Dr David Lees and Professor Seán Hand and funded by the AHRC Midlands4Cities Open Doctoral Award.

Research

My research interrogates how Jewish authors within nation states like France imaginatively engage with their origins in another homeland, or how they depict literary geographies that are indicative of a less homogeneous cultural or ethnic identity. Considering notions of cultural nationalism in France and the ancestral homelands of the authors such as Irène Némirovsky, Elsa Triolet, Myriam Anissimov and Régine Robin, I examine the significance of being a Jewish and French writer with origins in Eastern Europe and particularly the Pale of Settlement, as well as these writers' (post)memorial testimonies of their own family histories.

Research Interests

Jewish literature, (post)memory, life writing and autofiction, trauma studies, 20th Century comparative literature, fascism and nationalism

Conferences

​'Two Faces of the Same Illness: Zionism, Anti-Zionism and Trauma in Francophone Jewish post-Holocaust Writing,' International Conference of Undergraduate Research, 30th September 2020

Public Engagement & Impact

'Trauma and the Body: Francophone Jewish Women's Holocaust Writing' – lecture for University of Warwick French department's module, Representations of the Holocaust, 2026 & 2021.

'The body as a physical site of trauma in Francophone Jewish women's post-Holocaust writing' - guest lecture for Oxford University Medical Humanities Society, 2024.

Scholarships and Awards

M4C Open Doctoral Award, University of Warwick, 2024-2028.

​Best Master's Dissertation on a Topic in Comparative Literature, University of Oxford, 2022 – prize awarded by the Modern Languages department for my dissertation, 'Beyond the Pale: Migratory postmemory of the Pale of Settlement in Francophone and Hispanophone Jewish life writing.'

Nominee for the BCLA Arthur Terry Essay Prize, 2022.

Douglas Johnson Undergraduate Essay Prize, Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France (ASMCF), 2021 – national prize for the best undergraduate essay focusing on modern French culture, awarded for my dissertation 'The body as a physical site of trauma in Francophone Jewish women's post-Holocaust writing.'

Knowle Hill School Fund (partial Master's scholarship), 2021.

URSS research grant, University of Warwick, 2020.

Qualifications

MSt Modern Languages, Wadham College, University of Oxford, 2022.

BA French and Hispanic Studies, University of Warwick, 2021.