Francesca Kavanagh

PhD

English and Theatre Studies

Image of Francesca Kavanagh
Image of Francesca Kavanagh

Francesca's research focuses on Georgian women’s reading and writing practices with a particular interest in space and materiality. Her other research interests include the Gothic, and fandom from Romanticism to the present. Her latest article forthcoming in European Romantic Review explores frame narratives in Mary Shelley’s novels and Stranger Things.

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Thesis

Textual Intimacy: Space and Sociability in Georgian Women's Letters, Annotations, and Manuscript Books

This thesis examines the ways in which Georgian women used their letters, annotations, and manuscript books to maintain their friendships. Through an examination of actual and fictional examples, this thesis argues that Georgian women use these textual forms to build spaces for intimacy through the deliberate evocation and imbrication of place and space. In doing so, I demonstrate the significance of the creation of spaces for intimacy to Georgian women’s sociability and shed new light on the complex, often collaborative, use of textual objects as material and immaterial tools with which Georgian women could build spaces for their relationships which sit alongside and at times resist dominant patriarchal institutions.

Research interests

  • Romanticism
  • Women's Writing
  • Book History
  • Sociability
  • The Gothic
  • Fan Studies

Supervisors