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Professor of French and Comparative Literature, Queen Mary University of London

I am currently writing a book entitled Reading with Sade, which goes against the grain of Sadean criticism by exploring this notorious author's works from the reader's point of view. It focusses on what it is actually like to read Sade, and on the many questions - about authorship, readership, literature, violence, ethics - that reading Sade raises.

With Thomas Wynn (Durham), I translated Sade's 120 Days of Sodom for Penguin Classics (September 2016), while my translation of Philippe Brenot's The Story of Sex: From Apes to Robots was released by Particular Books in October 2016. A translation of Sade's last published novel, La Marquise de Gange, was published by Oxford World's Classics in 2021. Future projects include a study of Sade's afterlife in the English-speaking world.

My research interests include French and English eighteenth-century fiction, comparative literature, the history of sexology, fictional representations of sexuality, and translation studies.

Experience

  • 2017–present
    Reader in French & Comparative Literature, Queen Mary University of London