I have just completed my DPhil on French Caribbean Women’s Theatre at the Faculty of Modern Languages at Oxford.
I hold a B.A. in English Literature and Drama Studies, from Trinity College Dublin (2013), and a Master Arts Lettres et Langues, Spécialité Arts de la Scène, from the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (2014). I taught French to English and English to French translation for two years at Exeter College, Oxford (2015 to 2017). In April 2017 I was a Language tutor at the London Centre for Languages and Cultures Easter School.
Research Interests
My interests include Gender, Postcolonial, and Theatre Studies, and Intercultural and Caribbean Theatre. I have also an interest in and have written on colour-blind casting and debates about diversity in theatre and film in France, the UK and the US.
My undergraduate dissertation was a study of male cross-dressing in Peking Opera, and its influence on twentieth century Western theatre. My Master’s thesis looked at the politics of Intercultural theatre through the analysis of the many adaptations of the first Chinese play translated into a European language, The Orphan of Zhao.
My doctoral research focussed on the dramatic works of contemporary French Caribbean women writers Ina Césaire, Michèle Césaire, Maryse Condé, Suzanne Dracius and Gerty Dambury. I investigated how these writers make use of the theatrical genre to reflect on contemporary Caribbean issues, while emphasizing the female experience. My study of a corpus of five plays explored the themes of (i) the contribution of women to local history, (ii) gender roles and relations, and (iii) the status of the female writer and theatrical practitioner in the French Caribbean and in metropolitan France.
Selected Publications
Academic articles:
‘Errant isles: Existential and Linguistic Wanderings in Confusions d’instants (2003) by Gerty Dambury’, in Transtext(e)s, Transcultures. Forthcoming 2018.
‘Art and Politics in Contemporary French Caribbean Theatre: The (Re)presentation of Guadeloupe’s 2009 General Strike in Gerty Dambury’s Les Atlantiques amers (2009) and Des doutes et des errances (2014)’ in Journal of Romance Studies 17.2 Special Issue: Francophone Postcolonial Studies in the 21st Century (June 2017).
‘A Dangerous Woman is an Ordinary Woman’. on Dangerous Women Project. url: http://dangerouswomenproject.org/. 25th December 2016.
‘“In Search of the Orphan”: Intercultural Theatre, Multi-Ethnic Casting, and the Representation of Chineseness on European and North American Stages’. in Transtext(e)s Transcultures, 7 | 2012. url: http://transtexts.revues.org/455.
Book reviews:
Book review of Dangerous Creole Liaisons: Sexuality and Nationalism in French Caribbean Discourses from 1806 to 1897 by Jacqueline Couti, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016. In Bulletin of Francophone Postcolonial Studies: A Biannual Publication, 8.1 (2017).
Book review of Les Veuves créoles, comédie. Edited with an Introduction by Julia Prest, Cambridge: The Modern Humanities Research Association, 2017. In Bulletin of Francophone Postcolonial Studies: A Biannual Publication, 8.2 (2017).
