Smriti Verma

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

Thesis title: Beyond Authenticity: Narrative Form and Critical Feminist Engagement in Contemporary Women's Autofiction, 2010-2022

Supervisor: Prof. 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.

At Oxford, I co-convened the Memory Studies Reading Group, funded as a Critical Thinking Community by TORCH, and worked as a Non-Fiction Editor for Oxford Research in English. Presently, I'm a Postgraduate Member of the Rothermere American Institute and DPhil Representative at the English Graduates at Oxford (EGO) Committee. I also volunteer with the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing.

 

Teaching

I have experience teaching FHS Paper 6 (Writing Lives) at the Faculty of English as a Graduate Teaching Assistant and as a tutor on Visiting Student Programmes at Brasenose, Hertford and Worcester College. My teaching experience includes: life-writing, postcolonial literature, contemporary British Asian women's fiction, and memory studies. I'm currently a TMS mentee for Prelims Paper 4 Literature in English 1910-present day and and a dissertation supervisor for FHS Paper 7 for a dissertation on Joan Didion's works on California.

I'm opening to teaching opportunities, especially for papers ranging from 1910-present day.

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

 

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

I can be found here on twitter: @smritiverma__

 

Publications:

  • "(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.

Recent Conferences:

  • ‘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. An earlier version of this paper was presented in an invited talk at Department of English, Shiv Nadar University, August 2024.
  • ‘Feminist Situatedness and Radical Aesthetic in Deborah Levy’s Living Autobiographies (2013-2021).’ South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Jacksonville, November 2024.
  •  ‘Feminist Autofiction, Authorship and Tradition in Meena Kandasamy’s When I Hit You (2017).’ Lived Experiences Conference. The Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossings, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, June 2024. An earlier version of this paper was presented at English Graduate Students' Society (EGSS) Annual Conference at Université de Montréal, March 2024.
  • ‘Envisioning Ferrante: Female Authorship & Pseudonymous Identity in The Neapolitan Quartet (2011-2014).’ Oxford English Graduate Conference, University of Oxford, May 2024.
  •  ‘Care as Narrative: Women’s Life Writing and Decoloniality at the Kolam Writer’s Workshop.’ Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of St Andrews, June 2023.