Thesis title: Representation of Motherhood in the 1790s Women's Novels
Supervisor: Ros Ballaster
Thesis summary: I am interested in the intersections of gender, sexuality, and education in eighteenth-century women's fiction. My dissertation examines the constructions of maternity in the eighteenth century and how the Jacobin and progressive women writers responded to the discursive definitions that were taking shape in their contemporary society. The 1790s was a decade of intellectual ferment and radical reform in Britain. The periodization is crucial to my study as I seek to establish that motherhood functions as a mode of intervention in the political discourses of the decade that centered on equality, rights, and emancipation.
My DPhil dissertation originates from my interest in the long eighteenth-century, particularly the radical women writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Eliza Fenwick, Charlotte Smith, and Elizabeth Inchbald. During my MPhil at the University of Delhi, India, I submitted a thesis on religion and feminist polemic in the early works of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Hays.
Research interests: Apart from eighteenth-century British writings, my research interests include South Asian women's writings in English and translation, Partition literature, nineteenth-century women's novels and the postcolonial short story.
My DPhil is funded by the government of Rajasthan, my home state in India, under the Rajiv Gandhi Scholarship for Academic Excellence.
Publications:
Upmanyu, Aditi. “Remembering Wajida Tabassum’s Radical Short Fiction.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 56, no. 39, 2021.
---. “Mary Hays: Forgotten Feminist.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 56, no. 16, 2021
---. “Jean Rhys and Reading the Fiction of Failure.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 54, no. 41, 2019