Research

Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship

(2024 –)

‘Emotion, ageing, and the care home in post-war British novels since 1948’

Vice-Chancellor’s Independent Research Fellowship

(2022 – 2024)

Reimagining the Future in Older Age

(2021–2022)

Research Fellow at Loughborough University developing a project on representations of care and ageing in mid-century British culture.

Research Fellow on the ESRC-Funded Project ‘Reimagining the Future in Older Age’ working with PI Dr. Melanie Lovatt based at the University of Stirling.

PhD Researcher

(2016–2021)

Completed a PhD at Queen Mary, University of London, supervised by Dr. Suzanne Hobson and Dr. Morag Shiach. My research focused on ageing in twentieth-century texts by Mina Loy, H.D., and Djuna Barnes. I’m interested in applying cultural gerontology to modernist contexts to explore embodiment, archives, and lateness. Thinking through lived experience, as well as literary representations of old age, this interdisciplinary project uncovers how these late works are rich, relevant and emblematic of way women are treated and critiqued as they grow older.

Monograph

Publications

Chapters

My forthcoming monograph is titled Modernist Poetics of Ageing: The Late Lives and Late Styles of Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes, and H.D. & is under contract with Oxford University Press, due for publication Feb 2025.

French, JE. (2023) ‘Contradictory Late Styles in Djuna Barnes’s Poetic Cycles 1969–1982’ Poetics Today, 44 (1-2), 111–129 <doi.org/10.1215/03335372-10342113>.

French, JE., Lovatt, M., Wright, V. (2023) Understanding nuance and ambivalence in intergenerational relationships through fiction, The Gerontologist, gnad051, <doi-org/10.1093/geront/gnad051>

French, JE. ‘Mina Loy’s Shifting Oral History: Commemorations by an Artist in Later Life’, Modernism/modernity Print Plus, 7.2 (December 2022)

French, JE., S. Petot, and C. Whalen. ‘Ever-extending relationships: Bauhaus, Weaving and Contemporary Legacies, MAI Journal (December 2021)

French, JE. ‘Still Tickin’: Betye Saar, Ageing and Assemblage’, Women: A Cultural Review, 32.1 (April 2021): 70-85. [7000 words]

Parker, S and JE. French. ‘“But with this I’m embodied”: H.D.’s public photographic portraits, 1913–1956’, Feminist Modernist Studies, 4.1 (January 2021): 93-124.

French, JE. (2023) ‘Crones, Care Homes and Crisis: “the material culture of growing older” in Leonora Carrington’s “The Hearing Trumpet”’ in Aging Experiments Futures and Fantasies of Old Age, ed. João Paulo Guimarães, Bielefeld: Transcript, pp.155-174

French, JE. ‘“Zoological Outcasts” and the Aging Other in Jean Rhys’s Late Short Stories’, forthcoming 2023 (in print) in Aging Studies and Ecocriticism: Growing Old amid Climate Change, ed. Nassim W. Balestrini, Julia Hoydis, Anna-Christina Kainradl and Ulla Kriebernegg.

Book reviews

Mina Loy’s ‘Collage Strategies’ in Women: A Cultural Review 31. 4, 2023, pp. 141-143.

“‘Literature And Ageing’: Book Review”. The Polyphony, 2021,

‘War-Time Capsules: British Literature and Culture in Second World Wartime’ in Women: A Cultural Review 31. 4, October 2020, pp. 494–496.

‘Fierce with Reality: Literature on Aging’ ed. Margaret Cruikshank in Age, Culture, Humanities, 2018 [open access].

Media

Dada and the Power of Nonsense – Contributor to BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking on the relevance of Dada today, 2020.

Show & Tell: Inspiring Mini-Talks – Shared my experiences of collaborating for the Show & Tell talk and podcast series, 2018

Modernist Podcast – Featured on Episode 1: Modernism, Women & Feminism, 2017

NTS Radio, Round Trip – Co-hosted an all-female music lineup with Lucie Grace and discussed women’s rights in the UK, 2014

Conference organiser

Modernism: Making, Place & Protest – Queen Mary, 2018

Decorating Dissidence: Modernism, Feminism and the Arts – Queen Mary, 2017

Selected Conference Papers

Undoing Anti-Ageing Temporality with Grey Technology in Leonora Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet(1976), Ageing Experiments, University College Dublin [online], 2020

Sexual Ambivalence, Embodied Process & Reclusiveness in Djuna Barnes’ Late Work, British Association for American Studies, University of Sussex, 2019

Mature Modernism: Bodies, Beauty Cultures & Visibility New Historical Perspectives on Ageing and the Life Course, University of Leeds, 2018

Suspended Animation: Queer Temporalities & Ageing Bodies in Djuna Barnes’s ‘The Book of Repulsive Women’, Queer Modernisms II, Oxford University, 2018

‘Anti-Ageing Cultures: The New Woman and the Gaze of Youth’ Missing Women Conference, University of Southampton, 2017

‘Mina Loy’s Facial Destiny: The Mask of Ageing and Auto-Facial-Construction’, New Work in Modernist Studies, University of Leeds, 2017

Invited Speaker and workshops

‘What if Women Ruled the World?’, Manchester International Festival, Rehearsal Expert, (2017)

How to Make Your Research Collaborative- Queen Mary, Lecture & Workshop (2017)

DIY Art & Pussy Riot – Goldsmiths, Talk (2014)
Modern Protest – Queen Mary, Undergraduate Lecture (2014)

How To: DIY Protest – Central Saint Martins, Lecture (2014)

WOW Festival – Round Table Discussion (2014)

Yoko Ono’s Meltdown Festival – Book launch, (2013)

Let’s Start A Pussy Riot: US Book Launch – Bluestockings Feminist Bookstore, panel host, Q&A (2013)

The Feminist Library – Talk, Q&A (2013)

Modern Protest – University of Manchester, Undergraduate lecture (2013)

Protest Talks: 1 – University of Manchester, Public lecture (2013)

Let’s Start A Pussy Riot – Oxford University, Talk, Q&A (2013)

The Other Club “The Body Politic” – Talk, also led Q&A with Femen (2013)