Current Research Project (Thesis)

My doctoral research, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, seeks to contribute to a feminist revision of the history of French Surrealism through an analytical survey of the literary and visual works of Bona de Mandiargues and Nelly Kaplan, alias ‘Belen.’ I examine, in particular, how these writers/visual artists create a potential feminist Surrealism through a problematized exploration of Eros, a major Surrealist theme, in which they deconstruct and parody femininity, sexuality, desire and identity. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, I analyze the paintings, fabric assemblages, and writings of Bona de Mandiargues, as well as the literature and cinema of Nelly Kaplan, with the goal of illuminating their invention of feminist Surrealist myths, which take form in the rewriting of Eros and the self.  My research thus demonstrates the poetic and political stakes of a feminist Surrealism in these works while establishing both Bona and Kaplan as essential actors in the evolution and enduring vitality of the Surrealist movement in the postwar period. 

Second Research Project

My second research project, which I will take up after the completion of my dissertation, will focus on Surrealist women of the interwar period; namely, Germaine Dulac (1882-1942), Claude Cahun (1894-1954), Colette Peignot, alias ‘Laure’ (1903-1938), and Lise Deharme (1898-1980). I am interested in examining how these figures reacted and fought against the rise of fascism in France in the 1930s, and also how their creative works function as forms of political engagement rooted in feminist and/or queer avant-garde aesthetics. This research project will include analyzing the feminist films and theoretical writings of Dulac; the photographs, writings, and political actions of Cahun; the correspondence, political writings and literary texts of Peignot; and the poems and diary of Lise Deharme during the Second World War, as well as the Surrealist review that she founded and edited, Le Phare de Neuilly (1933).

In conjunction with my research on Surrealism, I also intend to pursue my interest in the avant-garde muse by examining her representation in contemporary French literature, whether this be in novels or in autofiction. I am interested in analyzing how muses of the avant-garde ‘haunt’ women writers in France today; how these writers give a voice to the muse while also simultaneously finding their own voices through these forgotten figures. I strive, in this way, to reinforce my interdisciplinary approach to research by highlighting how contemporary French women’s literature is contributing to a feminist revision of art history.