I study the transmission of political and cultural forms between Italy and France in the sixteenth century. I am currently writing a dissertation on the reception of republican political thought in Renaissance French literature, in which I argue that French humanists developed their vision of national literary community by aestheticizing republican concepts such as citizenship, liberty, fortune, and the contingency of the state. My PhD work has been supported by the Newberry Library, the Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship, Berkeley’s Graduate Division, and the Georges Lurcy Charitable Trust.
My other major area of scholarly research is the history of second-wave feminist thought and feminist historiography, a topic that I have explored in my academic work and public-facing criticism.
Before coming to Berkeley, I was educated at Miami University and St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. I grew up in Northeast Ohio.
Selected Publications
Peer-reviewed
“Compulsory Heterosexuality before ‘Lesbian Existence.’” Journal of the History of Ideas. Accepted.
"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
Other writing and reviews
“The History of Women’s Studies is a History of Conflict” (with Annabel Barry and Anna Park), Public Books. September 10, 2025.
Review (in French) of Vie, vieillesse, et mort d’une femme du peuple by Didier Eribon, Simone de Beauvoir Studies, 36, no. 1 (2025): 193-97.
“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, Post45: Contemporaries; ed. Annabel Barry, Caroline Godard, and Jane Ward. July 13, 2023.
“Introduction” (with Annabel Barry and Jane Ward), The Heteropessimism Cluster, Post45: Contemporaries; ed. Annabel Barry, Caroline Godard, and Jane Ward. July 13, 2023.
“Happening Captures the Horrifying Everydayness of Illegal Abortion,” LitHub. May 4, 2022.
Renaissance literature, intellectual history, history of the book, feminist historiography, history of feminist thought
