I am interested in how literature registers historical change in ways that diverge from the narrative conventions of history writing. I explore this topic in my dissertation by studying the emergence of the printed collection in sixteenth century France. I first chart how antiquarianism, or the collecting of archaeological objects from the classical past, turned into a form of political communication during the Italian Wars and caused the collection to emerge as a dominant mode of literary organization in Renaissance France. Then I recount how the printed collection—of poems, stories, essays, ethnographic observations, or archaeological discoveries—offered a methodology for ordering history that differed substantially from the burgeoning field of historiography, in which stories of the past were supposed to be recounted as linear narratives punctuated by periods of rupture. Finally, by putting the work of major French authors such as François Rabelais, Joachim du Bellay, Marguerite de Navarre, and Michel de Montaigne in conversation with printers, advisors, archaeologists, historiographers, and natural historians from across sixteenth-century Europe, I argue that the form of the printed collection continues to shape debates about how poetry is supposed to be read, what a literary canon is supposed to include, and how the “nation,” as a collection of individuals, is supposed to be imagined.
My other major area of scholarly research is in the history of feminist thought and feminist historiography, a topic that I have explored in my academic work and public-facing criticism.
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.
I am in Paris for the 2025-26 academic year thanks to the support of the Georges Lurcy Charitable Trust.
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. Forthcoming 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
