Research

Research focus

My literary interests are situated within the broader fields of the long nineteenth century, British Romanticism, women’s literature, and postcolonial/decolonial critical approaches. My first book project, “‘The Wings of Inclination’: The Anglo-Persianate Realm in Women’s Travel Narratives and the Travelling Imaginary, 1750-1850,” specifically interrogates the field of women’s travel writing and the “Orient,” by focusing on texts primarily written by women authors from the 1750s until the 1850s that are concerned with Anglo-Persianate travel and encounter. I focus on readings of understudied texts such as Phebe Gibbes’ Hartly House Calcutta alongside works by canonical authors such as Sir Walter Scott and Thomas Carlyle. I conclude with readings of the Persianate women and women writers of the same era such as nineteenth-century poet Khurshidbanu Natavan, who wrote of their own voyages and migrations within the Persianate world and beyond. This project is currently under review for publication.

Select Publications: I have a forthcoming article with the Canadian Review for Comparative Literature that focuses on the life and writings of Elizabeth Marsh (1735-85), a travel writer and diarist. I have previously published an article with Studies in Travel Writing on two post-Ottoman women writers, Demetra Vaka Brown and Leila Ahmed (2021). I have also published an article with the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women’s Writing on the history of early modern women’s travel (2022).

Select Grants and Awards: My research has been awarded by the Social Sciences and Research Humanities Council of Canada (Joseph Armand-Bombardier dissertation grant, 2018-2022). I have been awarded the UCLA 2022-2023 Kanner Postdoctoral Fellowship for archival research at the Clark Library, and I received the UC Santa Barbara Chancellor’s Doctoral Fellowship (2018-2022). I was also an Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Public Fellow at UC Santa Barbara (2020-2022).