Research Areas

Renaissance literature, intellectual history, history of the book, feminist historiography, history of feminist thought

Biography

My dissertation reassesses the origins of history as a discipline in the sixteenth century by demonstrating how literary authors developed alternative models of historical change that informed the creation of new literary genres such as the poetic collection and the novel. Scholars have shown that the modern discipline of history emerged out of new approaches to legal interpretation in the French Renaissance. This revolution in legal scholarship occurred due to the spread of humanism, a pan-European intellectual movement that insisted upon a return to the study of classical rhetoric, languages, history, and moral philosophy. Yet over the course of the sixteenth century in France, the humanist movement grew increasingly threatened by the nascent ideology of nationalism, which insisted upon the maintenance and expansion of political borders. My dissertation argues that in response to nationalism’s threat to humanism, the authors of sixteenth century literary texts developed an alternative definition of history as a domain that exists outside of the law. This extrajuridical definition of history anticipates contemporary feminist and queer historiography that identifies literature as a site of utopian possibility.

In my public-facing criticism, I write about the legacies of second-wave feminist thought (in both French and Anglophone contexts). 

Before coming to Berkeley, I graduated from Miami University with a BA in French and English Literature and an MA in French. I then read for an MSt in Modern Languages at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. I finished my Oxford degree with a Distinction, having also won the faculty's Gerard Davis Prize for the best MSt dissertation on a topic in French literary studies. I was subsequently honored at Oxford's Encaenia ceremony in 2021 for my performance on the MSt.

Selected Publications

Peer-reviewed

"Being 'time-bound': Montaigne on touch, contagion, and the contemporary." Early Modern French Studies 46, no. 1 (2024): 16-33. [published online January 2023]

• Commendation, 2024 Richard Parish Prize for the best article in Early Modern French Studies

Public writing

"Women's Land and Language: Huntington, Vermont" (with Annabel Barry, Anna Park, and Jadie Stillwell). Public Books. February 29, 2024.

"Compulsory heterosexuality, past and present: Adrienne Rich and the Lesbian Masterdoc." The Heteropessimism Cluster, edited by Annabel Barry, Caroline Godard, and Jane Ward. Post45: Contemporaries. July 13, 2023.

"Introduction" (with Annabel Barry and Jane Ward). The Heteropessimism Cluster, edited by Annabel Barry, Caroline Godard, and Jane Ward. Post45: Contemporaries. July 13, 2023.

"Happening captures the horrifying everydayness of illegal abortion." LitHub. May 4, 2022.

"Residual time." Diacritics blog. August 5, 2020.