Nora Baker
Research
My DPhil research explores memoir writings by French Protestant refugees in the wake of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.
Prior to commencing my DPhil research at Jesus College, I completed a Master of Science in Russian and East European Studies at University College, Oxford, and a Bachelor of Arts in French and Italian at the National University of Ireland in my hometown of Galway. As an Irish speaker from one of the country’s Gaeltacht areas, I have long been interested in the nature and expression of minority identity, and am therefore delighted to be further investigating this theme as part of my doctoral research.
As my project takes the form of a Collaborative Doctoral Award under the Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Training Partnership, I will be involved in outreach events relating to my research findings at the Hampshire Record Office in Winchester.
In December 2022, I will spend two weeks at Marsh’s Library in Dublin as a Maddock Research Fellow.
Teaching
Seminar Tutor for Paper XI: Introduction to French Film (Michaelmas 2021 & 2022)
Graduate Teaching Assistant in French at Lincoln College (Michaelmas 2021 & 2022, Hilary 2022 & 2023)
Non-Stipendiary Lecturer in Early Modern French at The Queen’s College (Hilary-Trinity 2022)
Stipendiary Lecturer in French at Lincoln College (Trinity 2023)
Lecturer in Celtic (Irish) at the Linguistics Faculty (Michaelmas 2022–)
I am also involved in modern languages outreach with The Challenge Academy Trust/Oxplore programme, designing and delivering sessions on language study at university to secondary school students in Warrington. As part of the Oxplore project, I have created a coursebook on language families for second-level students in association with AccessEd. I also ran a tutorial on French women’s writing before the Revolution at Pembroke College’s Oxnet Summer School in August 2022.
Publications
Academic:
• Entry on the memoirist Jacques Fontaine for the Literary Encyclopedia: https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=15015/
• ‘The Ourry Family and their Integration into English Society, 1707-1771’ in the Huguenot Society Journal [Forthcoming article based on invited lecture]
• Book review of Un “miroir” calviniste: Les Emblèmes, ou Devises chrestiennes de Georgette de Montenay et Pierre Woeiriot, 1567/1571 by Pascal Joudrier in the Sixteenth Century Journal, volume 53, issue 4, 2022, pp. 1113-1115.
• “ Tiered Tolerance: Protestants and the ‘Other’ after 1685” in: Narratives of Peace in Religious Discourses: global perspectives in the Early Modern Age, ed. Alessandro Saggioro, Beatrice Tramontano, Ludovico Battista, Maria Fallica, Equinox Press, [forthcoming January 2024].
Outreach:
• Podcast commentary on Cyrano de Bergerac for the TORCH Post-Show Conversations series: https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/torch-post-show-conversations-cyrano-de-bergerac/
• ‘Years of the French: why the Huguenots fled to Ireland’, RTÉ Brainstorm, https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2022/0216/1281144-huguenots-ireland-france-religion-persecution-17th-century/
• ‘Pious Positions in Huguenot Memoir’, Institute for Modern Languages Research Living Languages Blog, https://modernlanguagesresearch.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2021/01/26/pious-positions-in-huguenot-memoirs/
• ‘Louis Ourry: A French Protestant in the English Army’, Hampshire Archives and Local Studies Blog, https://hampshirearchivesandlocalstudies.wordpress.com/2021/02/06/louis-ourry-a-french-protestant-in-the-english-army/
• The Spring – the Hecatomb for Diane, Sonnets VI and VII, translations of Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné’s poetry for Stanford University’s Global Medieval Sourcebook, https://sourcebook.stanford.edu/author/th%C3%A9odore-agrippa-d%E2%80%99aubign%C3%A9
Conference Presentations
• ‘Missionaries, colonists, historians, nurses? The multifaceted roles of nuns working in eighteenth-century Montreal,’ Women and Work across the 18th-Century Francophone Globe, University College, Dublin, 14th October 2022
• ‘‘Vous tenez mon corps en prison, mais mon âme est en liberté’: Finding freedom in early modern Huguenot narratives of captivity,’ Society for French Studies Conference, Queen’s University Belfast, 29th June 2022
• ‘Writing Traumatic Events in Post-Revocation Huguenot Writing,’ Huguenot History and Culture Workshop, Oxford Town Hall/The Queen’s College, 21st June 2022.
• ‘Searching for Stability in Huguenot Refugee Narratives’, American Comparative Literature Association Conference, National Taiwan Normal University/Online, 16th June 2022
• «La correspondance comme lieu de résistance spirituelle : le cas de la huguenote Blanche Gamond», Colloque Femmes en correspondances (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles), Université de Montréal, 9th June 2022
• ‘« Vous l’avez tiré de l’Écriture sainte »: Belief and intertextuality in post-Revocation Huguenot memoirs,’ Saints, Scriptures, and the Sacred Symposium, Newnham College, Cambridge, 28th March 2022
• ‘ “Trop grand précheur pour être prophète”: The Mystic and the Mundane in Huguenot Accounts of the Galleys,’ Cambridge French Graduate Seminar, University of Cambridge/Online, 20th May 2021
• ‘ “Une patience vrayement chrétienne”: Jean-François Bion’s Compensation for his Catholic Past,’ Early Modern French Seminar, Maison Française d’Oxford/Online, 13th May 2021
• ‘Huguenot Women’s Writing and Self-Representation’, Studying Herstories: Women’s History Network International Women’s Day Student Conference, Online, 8th March 2021
• ‘“Illustrious among Refugees”: Huguenot Memoir and Social Standing in Exile’,’ Ideas of Community in the Early Modern World Conference, 1500-1700, Lincoln College,Oxford/Online, 7th December 2020.
• ‘”Distingués par leur piété”: The Social Value of Suffering in Huguenot Memoir,’ Oxford French Graduate Seminar, All Souls College Oxford/Online, 10th November 2020.
• ‘Violence, Victims and Virtue in Huguenot Memoir,’ Society for French Historical Studies Conference/George Rudé Seminar, University of Auckland/Online, 27th July 2020.
