Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
Our People
Ashley Williard
| Title: | Assistant Professor of French |
| Department: | Languages, Literatures and Cultures College of Arts and Sciences |
| Email: | awilliar@mailbox.sc.edu |
| Office: | J. Welsh Humanities Bldg, 811 |
| Resources: |
Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures Curriculum Vitae [pdf] |
Bio
Ashley Williard's research examines gender, race, and dis/ability in the early-modern French-speaking
world. Her first book, entitled Engendering Islands: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Violence in the Early French Caribbean (under contract with the Women and Gender in the Early Modern World series at University
of Nebraska Press), argues that early Caribbean reconstructions of masculinity and
femininity upheld slavery and nascent ideas of race. Through close readings of archival
and narrative texts, she examines the words, images, and perspectives that reflected
and produced new conceptions of human difference. She was recently awarded two grants
(Office of the Vice President for Research ASPIRE-I.1; College of Arts and Sciences Faculty
Research Travel Initiative) toward research on her second book project, entitled Disruptive Minds: Madness in the Early French Atlantic. She argues that the mediated voices of the "mad" can expose unique sites of subjectivity
that interrogate colonial power structures and archival silences. Her research has
appeared in Biblio17, Cahiers d'Histoire de l'Amérique Coloniale, The French Review, and Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies (eds. Smith, Jones, Grier, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).