Dr Ann Lewis

Overview

Biography

Dr Lewis is Senior Lecturer in French Studies, specialising in eighteenth-century French literature and culture.  Following a BA in French and History and M.St. European Literature at New College, Oxford, she completed her PhD at Queen Mary, University of London. She was awarded her Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at QMUL, and was appointed to a lectureship at Birkbeck in 2008 where she completed her ECF.

Nominated for the ‘Aurora Women into Leadership’ programme in 2015-16, she has held a number of Dept roles, including sub-board chair for French, programme director for various combined programmes, and she set up BA Comparative Literature & Culture in 2020.  She is Subject Lead for Languages and Linguistics and programme director for our MA Modern Languages and Comparative Literatures.

Dr Lewis’s research has two strands, each at the intersection of French studies and other disciplines (whether text/image relations, illustration studies and adaptation on the one hand, or the representation of the figure of the prostitute at the crossover between literary analysis and cultural history on the other):   

(1) Her first monograph Sensibility, Reading and Illustration: Spectacles and Signs in Graffigny, Marivaux and Rousseau (Legenda, 2009) provided a major new reading of the novel of sensibility, focusing on the  textual evocation of the visual image alongside the prolific illustration of three bestselling novels of the Enlightenment.  Her research on illustration has taken her in various new directions.  A number of journal articles and book chapters articles explore illustrations as interpretations of literary works by focusing on specific themes (e.g. visual depictions of the family, incest, nature, seduction, bienfaisance).  More recently, via various publications and projects, she has focused on illustrations as they function within the broader context of visual and material culture, often outside the book and independent of their text 'of origin' (for example, as ‘progresses’ within almanacs, as collectors’ items within extra-illustrated editions, and/or as art objects to be displayed in homes).                    

Following from this, she has organised a number of workshops and conferences more broadly interrogating the cross-over between adaptation, intermediality and illustration, and opening avenues in these emerging areas, resulting in a co-edited special issue of the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies: Picturing the Eighteenth-Century Novel through Time: Illustration, Intermediality and Adaptation (with Christina Ionescu, December 2016) and the first volume in the new Legenda series Transcript: Adapting the Canon: Mediation, Visualisation, Interpretation (co-edited with Silke Arnold-de Simine, Legenda, first published in 2020, now out in paperback).  Following an online workshop in April 2022, she has co-organised a major international conference at Birkbeck and the IMLR in April 2023, with the research network Illustr4tio: ‘Illustration Studies: New Approaches, New Directions’.  Each of thes

Highlights

• Conference April 2023: 'Illustration Studies: New Directions, New Approaches', a major international conference co-organised by Ann Lewis and Christina Ionescu with the Illustr4tio network, at Birkbeck and the IMLR, 19-21 April 2023

• Just published in paperback: Adapting the Canon: Mediation, Visualization, Interpretation, co-edited by Ann Lewis and Silke Arnold-de Simine (Legenda, 2020)

• Invited speaker (October 2022): 'Les gravures de Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse: décor de chambre et almanachs ’ - at 'Vivre la fiction: La littérature par ses appropriations au quotidien (XVIIIe – XXe siècles', 5-6 October 2022, MSH Paris Nord, Saint-Denis.

• Just published:  'Extra-illustrating Rousseau's 'Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse': The Case of the Defer de Maisonneve Edition (1793-1800)' in Journal of Illustration, 8:2 (December 2021) 251-280 (https://doi.org/10.1386/jill_00042_1)

Administrative responsibilities

• Subject Lead, Languages and Linguistics
• Programme Director and Admissions Tutor, BA French Studies and Graduate Diploma (French Studies)
• Programme Director and Admissions Tutor, MA Modern Languages and Comparative Literatures
• Programme Director, BA Comparative Literature & Culture

Professional memberships

• Member of the Advisory Editorial Board of the Book Practices & Textual Itineraries series (Presses Universitaires Nancy, Éditions Universitaires de Lorraine)

• Member, Society for French Studies

• Member of the IMLR Advisory Council (2017-2020)

• Member of the HEA

• Member, IAWIS/IERTI (International Association of Word and Image Studies/Association Internationale pour l'Étude des Rapports entre Texte et Image)

• Member, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS)

Honours and awards

• Aurora: Women into Leadership scheme Leadership Foundation (now Advance HE), November 2016
• Haydn Mason lecture British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, November 2012
• Ronald Tress prize Birkbeck, University of London, November 2012
• Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship Leverhulme Trust, November 2009

ORCID

0000-0003-3236-4872

Research

Research interests

• French literature & culture in the eighteenth century
• Sensibility and sentimentalism in eighteenth-century culture
• Text/image relations, book illustration, adaptation, and intermediality
• Representation of prostitutes and prostitution in eighteenth-century France

Research overview

Dr Ann Lewis’s research and teaching interests are in the field of 18th-century French literature and culture and in various forms of word and image relations (especially illustrations of 18th-century French fiction).

Her monograph Sensibility, Reading and Illustration: Spectacles and Signs in Graffigny, Marivaux and Rousseau was published by Legenda in July 2009, and she has co-edited several collections focusing on illustration, adaptation and intermediality, including: Adapting the Canon: Mediation, Visualisation, Interpretation, ed. by Ann Lewis and Silke Arnold-de Simine,  (Legenda, 2020) and Picturing the Eighteenth-Century Novel Through Time: Illustration, Intermediality and Adaptation, a guest-edited special issue of JECS (Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies), ed. by Ann Lewis and Christina Ionescu, 39:4 (December 2016).

Her current book-length research project, started during the tenure of her Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, focuses on the representation of the figure of the prostitute in 18th-century France, adopting an interdisciplinary perspective. (She co-edited a collection of articles bringing together a variety of approaches to the topic of prostitution in different national contexts in the eighteenth century Prostitution and Eighteenth-Century Culture: Sex, Commerce and Morality, co-edited with Markman Ellis (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012.)

Conferences and workshops organised:

• Illustration Studies: New Approaches, New Directions, international conference, with Illustr4tio network at Birkbeck and the IMLR (April 2023)
• Picturing the C18 Novel Through Time: Illustration, Intermediality and Adaptation, day-long workshop within the BSECS annual conference, co-organised with Christina Ionescu (St Hugh's Oxford, January 2016);
• Have You Heard...? Navigating the Interstices Between Public and Private Knowledge, MHRA conference (at the IMLR, October 2016);
• Adapting the Canon, MHRA/Legenda conference (at the IMLR, October 2014);
  
• Visions of the 'Coming Community', co-organised with Andrew Asibong, Damian Catani, Akane Kawakami and Nathalie Wourm, (Birkbeck, 2011);
• Venal Bodies: Prostitutes and Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century Culture, co-organised with Markman Ellis (at the IGRS, 4 April 2009).

Research Centres and Institutes

• Co-founder and co-convenor, Eighteenth-Century Research Group
• Steering Group member, Birkbeck Centre for French, Francophone and Comparative Studies
• Co-director/steering group member, Illustr4tio

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Supervisions within Birkbeck:

2

I am  happy to discuss PhD/MPhil/MA proposals relating to eighteenth-century French literature and culture in all areas related to my research interests.

I currently co-supervise two research students:

• Kirsten Tambling 'A Wanton Kind of Chase: Watteau and Hogarth', working title (co-supervised with Dr Kate Retford, History of Art)
• Miki Jablkowska 'The Reception and Cultural Adaptation of Voltaire in Eighteenth-Century Poland, with particular reference to the Press', working title (co-supervised with  Prof. Robin Howells).

Current doctoral researchers

• MICHELLE URBAN

  Nature of supervision:

  PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR, Sep 2025

Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

• KIRSTEN TAMBLING

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor

  Awarded:

  2019

Teaching

BA COURSES

I teach on the full range of comparative and French modules offered at BA level (available on BA French Studies, Modern Languages, and all combined and associated programmes).  I am also convenor of several modules at Levels 5 and 6 (see below):

Imagining France (co-teacher, 30-credit, Level 4, team-taught French module).  My section: "Imagining the Outsider's View in Eighteenth-Century France": L'Ingénu (Voltaire) and Lettres d'une Péruvienne (Graffigny)];

Masterpieces of French Literature & Culture from the Enlightenment to the Present Day (convenor and co-teacher, 30-credit, Level 5, team-taught French module). My section: 'Eighteenth-Century Masterpieces: Les Liaisons dangereuses and Le Mariage de Figaro'.

Reading the Signs: Text and Image in French Culture (convenor, and co-teacher, 30-credit, Level 5 French module). My section: "Diderot's Encyclopédie and its Plates: Embodying Knowledge".

Voice, Identity Gender: Women' Writing in French (co-teacher, 30 credit team-taught French module, Levels 5 and 6). My section: Histoire d'Ernestine (Riccoboni) and Ourika (Claire de Duras)

Fictions of Enlightenment (convenor, and sole teacher, 15-credit French module, Level 6)

Sensibility and Sociability in the Eighteenth-Century French Novel (convenor, and sole teacher, 15-credit French module, Level 6)

Reading Text and Image in he Eighteenth Century: Diderot and the Tableau (convenor, and sole teacher, 15-credit French module, Level 6)

Comparative culture modules:

Reading Transnational Cultures (from 2022, convenor, and co-teacher, team-taught comparative culture module) - Level 5 [my section: "Enlightenment Perspectives: Montesquieu's Persian Letters and Voltaire's Letters Concerning the English Nation"]

Representations of Gender, Love & Sexuality (co-teacher, team-taught comparative culture module) - Level 5/6 [my section: "Love, Desire & the Novel of Sensibility": France and Germany]

MA COURSES

I teach sections on a number of core and optional MA modules for the MA Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, including:

Interrogating the Self [my section: on three autobiographical texts by Rousseau: Les Confessions, Dialogues: Rousseau, juge de Jean-Jacques, Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire]

Reading Across Cultures [my section on: Richardson's Pamela and Graffigny's Lettres d'une Peruvienne],

French Studies strand (Self, Sexuality and Identity) [my section: Rousseau's Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes and Diderot's Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville]

Time, Memory and the Novel [my section, on Rousseau's Julie, ou La Nouvelle Heloise']; and previously, a French module 'Health and Illness' [my section: on representations of prostitution in three novels - from the c18, c19 and c20]).

Teaching modules

• Culture and Image
• The European Novella (Level 5)
• Culture and Text: 'Imagined Communities'
• Masterpieces of French Literature and Culture: From the Enlightenment to Postmodernity (Level 4)
• Dissertation MA Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern Languages)
• Doing Languages, Cultures and Applied Linguistics
• Studying Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies in Modern Languages
• Representations of Gender, Love and Sexuality (Level 5)
• Interrogating the Self

Publications