Rebecca Boyd

Rebecca is a second-year DPhil candidate at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and one of the co-convenors for the French Graduate Seminar for 2022-23.

Her thesis looks at the intersections of esotericism and identity in the works of lesbian French poet Renée Vivien (1877-1909). Her main areas of interest are French-, English- and Russian-language literature of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, with an emphasis on queer theory, reception, and subjectivity.

Prior to this, she completed a BA in French and Beginners’ Russian at Oxford (2019) and holds a Masters in Comparative Literature from Sorbonne Université (2022), where she produced two Masters dissertations on the verse and prose works of Renée Vivien, Sophia Parnok, and Oscar Wilde. While studying towards her Masters degree, she also worked on the digitisation of the registers of the Comédie-Française under Florence Naugrette.

Conference & Seminar Papers

• ‘“Quelle est cette femme damnée ?” Witchcraft as a blueprint for lesbian existence in the poetry of Renée Vivien,’ Magic: Enchantment and Disenchantment (21st Annual Conference of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes), Oxford (27/03/2023).

• ‘Paradoxes de la création littéraire chez Renée Vivien, la “Muse aux Violettes,”’ Colloque Muses, Égéries, Pygmalions, Bordeaux-Montaigne (26/04/2023).

Publications

• ‘Sophia Parnok, Russia’s First Lesbian Poet,’ Queer Nineteen (16/08/2023).