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Haha, as an undergraduate I, I tried to do a lot of different things
I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, umm, and, uh, so I
I just tried to take a lot of courses in areas that I was interested in and, uh
and it ended up that I was taking more and more courses in literary studies and found
that that's what I, I loved and what I was better at.
But I also as time went on spent more and more time in libraries
uh, reading, umm, and, uh, and I
really actually am thankful for that time as a student when you've got
a lot of time that you can just sit and read and, uh
I, I really enjoyed that part of being a student.
What was your doctoral thesis?
Uh, it was on travel writing by couples in the French nineteenth century, and, uh
collaborations between, uh, men and women in travel writing.
What did you find out about it?
Oh, it was fun, it was a fun topic, I still actually like the topic which
most people don't say about their PhD work, umm, but
I, I discovered a bunch of couples actually, first of all a lot of people, umm, had looked at
women's travel writing but had looked more at the women who went by, who traveled by
themselves in the nineteenth century, and uh
and then tended to marginalize them and showing that they were kind of eccentric, uh.
But it was interesting, I found a group of eight, umm
couples who traveled together, who
wrote together and published, umm, separate accounts of their travels, and, uh
and so just discovering them and then showing the way that their texts worked together
that it wasn't always the man who was giving his authority and permission to the wife to write
but that the wives actually also contributed a lot.
So I'm still working, umm, with one of my travelers.
Uh, when I worked in her archives, she was, umm
involved in a literature jury, uh, the
first jury composed entirely of women, uh
it's called the Prix Femina, or it's, it's been called the, the Prix Femina today, yeah
so it's the second most prestigious literary award in France still today.
And, so she was one of the first women who was invited to seat,
to, to be part of this jury, and along with thirty-nine
other women, and so I'm looking at this particular generation of women writers,
how they came together, tried to seek
recognition for the writing of their generation of women, and
how they also just wanted to have a voice in contemporary literary
discussions as well, to pass judgement themselves.
Well, what, what I find interesting, what matters is the, the role that women
played in those early days, umm, and there still is not
the same amount scholarship on women writers from that time period
as there is for men.
Going back to history of the prizes, there are six books about the Prix Goncourt
and about the early founding of the Goncourt that go into the archives
of the different writers who were on the jury, and, and really study this in depth.
Uh, there's nothing, there's one PhD thesis about the, the Prix Femina
and a couple articles but, umm, there's, so there's still a real
imbalance in the scholarship and I think it's impo - important to, uh
try to find an equilibrium there.
Why?
Well because women played an important role in these things too, it's just so
shocking to see that they've been
forgotten and left out and
this, that's what I saw when I was working on travel writing as well, that, uh
women are just forgotten, uh, left out of the, the scholarship and once
you start to replace them, you
it actually sheds a different light on not just their role but on the whole of literary history
because you start to see other influences in other things that, uh
were recognized by contemporaries sometimes, but historians have
kind of, historians of literature have forgotten.
I love my job, I feel so fortunate, hahaha.
I was thinking driving today "Today I get to teach Flaubert" and, and I love teaching Flaubert.
hahaha