My scholarly interests are primarily in transnational and comparative approaches to the study of poetry, poetry and modernization, Oscar Wilde studies, including aestheticism, and questions of historicity/transhistoricity, and translatability. Using a comparative method involves for me reading closely, reading historically, and reading broadly, a method that inherently leads to crossing fields. It also often means for me an avenue to examine peripheral or overlooked connections between authors, texts, and histories to shed an alternative perspective.
I am currently working on interconnected research projects surrounding poetry, Oscar Wilde, transnational movement, and imprisonment. My comparative methodology, which involves a mixture of zooming-in to texts and zooming-out to contexts, enables me to draw new connections, to find understudied topics, and to aim for research that makes an original contribution to ongoing discussions. To that end, I am presently writing a series of articles on poetry and imprisonment, with Oscar Wilde being a recurring figure and textual author for my studies.
This research direction develops out of my doctoral research on Oscar Wilde’s poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, and drawing national, historical, and linguistic connections between this work of his and the work of other poets across borders.