Dr Ellamae Lepper

PhD thesis

Narrating Hospitality: Salons in French Fiction, 1789-1848

My PhD thesis deals with portrayals of salon culture, and particularly the figure of the salon hostess, in fiction from the first half of the nineteenth century in France. I explore c19 authors’ fascination with the idea of the powerful and autonomous hospitable woman, who can appear at times threatening and at others idealised; arguing that the importance of this ambivalent figure has been largely underappreciated in research on the gender politics of the nineteenth-century French novel.

After the PhD

For the academic year 2024-25 I’m taking up a fixed-term College Teaching Officer position at Churchill and Selwyn Colleges, Cambridge, providing undergraduate teaching in French and Direction of Studies for MML. I also plan to continue pursuing research into nineteenth-century French literature and gender/queer theory, this year and beyond.