Smriti Verma

Thesis title:  Authorial Presence and Narrative Identity in Contemporary Women’s Anglophone Autofiction 

Supervisor: Professor Elleke Boehmer

Doctoral Research: My research examines the construction of narrative form in contemporary women's autofiction to consider what insights it might bring to existing debates on narrative theory, women's writing, and the core issues which tie contemporary female authorship to its narrativization. Women's autobiographies have previously been studied as testimony, bearing upon gendered experiences of trauma and empowerment which sacrifice attention to narrative form to privilege a reading of authenticity. This project studies narrativity as a part of tangible feminist praxis in the works of Rachel Cusk, Deborah Levy and Doireann Ní Ghríofa, analysing how autofiction reinterprets postfeminist debates on community, labour and identity.

Research Interests: life-writing, autofiction, narrative form, feminist theory, female authorship, world literature, postcolonial studies, feminist activism, narratology