DEPARTMENT OF FRENCH AND ITALIAN

Lily McDonnell is a PhD student in the Department of French & Italian and a Mellon Cluster Fellow in Gender and Sexuality Studies. She received her B.A. in French and Francophone Studies and International Studies from Vassar College in 2023. Her undergraduate thesis analyzed 19th century lesbian culture and its intersections with class identity through linguistics, the mass press, and popular literary and visual representations. She argued that the fin-de-siècle lesbian identity enforced a class hierarchy by manipulating or denying working-class queer womens’ access to lesbian culture and identification.

Prior to Northwestern, Lily was an English Teaching Assistant with TAPIF in Nancy, France. Her current research interests are 19th- and 20th- century French literature and history, queer studies, gender studies, aesthetics, and archival approaches.