Smriti Verma

Smriti Verma
DPhil Candidate
Wolfson College
smriti.verma@wolfson.ox.ac.uk

Thesis Title: Autofictional Affordances and Critical Feminist Engagement in Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk and Xiaolu Guo, 2000–2024

Supervisor: Prof. Elleke Boehmer

Doctoral Research: My project explores autofictional methodology, feminist engagement and narrative form in contemporary women's life-writing in the United Kingdom, looking at a body of work published in the last two decades by Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk and Xiaolu Guo. The thematic study and impact of women's autobiographies as stories of trauma and empowerment has been crucial to the development of gender studies in the Western academy. However, such scholarship can have the effect of reducing women's life-writing to source material, obscuring the text from the purview of formal literary criticism to privilege a reading of authenticity. I synthesize the analysis of narrative form and life-writing methodology with the thematic concerns of contemporary feminist criticism, in order to explore the possibilities and affordances of life-writing as critical method for the contemporary woman writer. I also use primary archival materials from the Feminist Theory Archive at Brown University, Women's Library at LSE and Rachel Cusk papers at UT Austin. 

My research is supported by the Foundation Grant and the Jennifer Ashworth Award by Funds for Women Graduates, and through travel bursaries by BACLS, Wolfson College and the Faculty of English. I've also been awarded a Summer Interdisciplinary Research Fellowship at University of York's Centre for Modern Studies in 2026.

I'm one of two Teaching and Careers Officers (TCO) at the Faculty of English from 2026-27, and a Junior Dean at Green Templeton College. I volunteer with the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, and am a Postgraduate Member of the Rothermere American Institute.

In the past few years of my DPhil, I co-convened the Memory Studies Reading Group, funded as a Critical Thinking Community by TORCH; worked as a Non-Fiction Editor for Oxford Research in English, and as a Social Secretary and DPhil Representative in the English Graduates at Oxford (EGO) Committee.

Teaching

I'm an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA). I have experience teaching FHS Paper 6 (Writing Lives and Silences) at the Faculty of English as a Graduate Teaching Assistant and as a Tutor on Visiting Student Programmes at Brasenose, Hertford, Exeter (WEPO), St. Catherine's, Mansfield and Worcester College. My teaching experience includes: life-writing, contemporary literature, postcolonial literature, contemporary British women's fiction, and memory studies. I've been a TMS mentee for Prelims Paper 4 Literature in English 1910-present day and and have supervised dissertations for FHS Paper 7 on Joan Didion's writing on California, and mid-20th century women's memoirs on mental illness and institutionalisation. I've taught widely in access and outreach programs in Oxford, at Pembroke and Lincoln College, Oxford Prospects Programme and UNIQ at English Faculty.

I'm open to teaching opportunities and dissertation supervision, especially for papers ranging from 1910-present day for modern and contemporary women's writing, gender studies and autobiography.

Research Interests: life-writing, autobiography, gender studies, feminist theory, world literature, postcolonial studies, narratology, contemporary novel

Links to my creative and academic writing can be found on my website.

I can be found here on twitter: @smritiverma__

Publications:

  • "Feminist Theory: Review Article for The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory." The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, forthcoming.
  • "Lessons in Resemblance; or attempts to (un)mask." Creative Critical, June 2025, https://creativecritical.net/lessons-in-resemblance-or-attempts-to-unmas....
  • "(Re)defining Metaphorical Address: Female Disability, Embodiment and Agency in Jerry Pinto's Em and the Big Hoom (2012)." Retrieving the Crip Outsider, edited by Someshwari Sati. Bloomsbury, 2024.
  • "Motif and Meaning: Hijrat in Intizar Husain's Basti (1979)." (Re)Writing The Margins, edited by Aparna Singh. PAIOLCK, 2019.

Select Conferences and Talks:

  • "Studies in Autofictional Discourse and Truth Narratives." History Up for Debate: Literature, Storytelling and the Imagined Past, University of Salzburg, July 2026.
  • "Women's Life-Writing and Autofictional Methodology." Laura Marcus Life-Writing Workshop, Oxford Centre for Life Writing, June 2026
  • "Restaging the Memoir: Autofiction and Doubling in Second Place (2021) and Parade (2024)." BACLS New Work in Contemporary Literary Studies, University of Leeds, May 2026.
  • "Beyond Authenticity: Affordances of Autofictional Methodology in Contemporary Women's Life-Writing." British Sociological Association, Autobiography Study Group Seminar, January 2026 and at Narrare Annual Autumn Seminar, University of Tampere, November 2025.
  • "Continuity, Change and the Contemporary Realist Novel: Rachel Cusk’s Fiction and Mrs. Dalloway." 100 Years of Mrs. Dalloway, University of St. Andrews, October 2025.
  • "Deborah Levy and Feminist Thought." International Autobiography Association, University of Coimbra, July 2025. Supported by the Maxwell and Meyerstein Award.
  • "Autotheory and Literary Lineage in Meena Kandasamy's Prose Writing." British Sociological Association, Autobiography Study Group. University of Reading, July 2025.
  • "Autofiction as Methodology in Women’s Life-Writing." International Society for the Study of Narrative Annual Conference. Miami, April 2025. Supported by the Wolfson College Travel Grant. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Center for Women's, Gender and Queer Histories Symposium at University of Oxford.
  • “Form as Strategic Necessity in Contemporary Women’s Autofiction.” Graduate Seminar Series, Centre for the Study of Women and Gender. University of Warwick, January 2025.  Previous version of this paper was presented as part of an invited talk at Department of English, Shiv Nadar University, August 2024.