Rachel Mesch is a professor and director of undergraduate studies in French, and recently promoted faculty member. Her research focuses on nineteenth-century France, specifically the Belle Époque period, and the literary work and histories of female, gender diverse, and queer writers. She approaches her research in an interdisciplinary manner, analyzing French literary works in their historical and cultural contexts. She currently teaches The Nonbinary Nineteenth Century (LF 571) and will teach Topics in The Voice in the Text: Gender and Authorship (LF 478) next semester. Mesch recently published a book on transgender identities in French history, entitled, Before Trans: Three Gender Stories from Nineteenth Century France, published in Stanford University Press.
What initially drew you to your specialization in Belle Époque France?
So many of the things that we associate with modern pleasures and contemporary forms of entertainment actually started in nineteenth-century France: from photography to shopping in department stores to the explosion of the mass press. I love studying [contemporary forms of entertainment] at their origins to see how many of the questions that continue to preoccupy us—around gender, sexuality, and images of femininity—were explored through these emerging technologies, especially during the Belle Epoque, as it was a moment of transition between the centuries.
What brought you to the BU CAS Romance Studies Department? What about the community here do you appreciate?
I was eager to be part of such a vibrant university with an outstanding language program. I get to work with wonderful undergraduates and brilliant PhD students. I love being part of a Romance Studies department with colleagues in French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese—and I love seeing how the Humanities are nurtured here.
What courses do you teach at CAS, which is your favorite and why?
Well this is my first semester, so I’m not quite ready to answer that. Right now I’m teaching a class called “The Nonbinary 19th Century,” which explores queer and trans narratives in French literature. It’s taught in French, and I’d love to teach something similar in English. I look forward to offering interdisciplinary courses with Women Gender & Sexuality Studies on French feminisms down the road. I also love teaching about popular culture, and using shows like The Bachelor or Love Is Blind to understand nineteenth-century marriage plots, which I might do in my class on Gender and Authorship next semester.
What is the most recent paper you’ve published, or are working on currently, and why is it meaningful to you and your work?
I’m currently in my Colette era, I like to say, returning to an author I wrote about in my dissertation. I’m looking at some of her work in a new way, in the context of her relationship with the Marquise de Belbeuf, known as Missy, and whom we might recognize today as a trans man. Some of Colette’s writing seems totally heteronormative at first and then takes on a new valence when you realize that it was dedicated to Missy. You realize that there is a whole other way to read it, contextualized through the performances they did together and through their use of photography. It’s much more complex than it first appears.
What inspired you to write Before Trans: Three Gender Stories from Nineteenth Century France and how do you see the book fitting into or countering current Western acceptance of transgender individuals?
Before Trans explored how gender diverse writers in nineteenth-century France found ways to tell stories about themselves before there was a complex vocabulary through which to do so. The book historicizes current debates by demonstrating that trans identities are not new; we simply have new ways of talking about those identities. As a scholar of literature, I often think about stories as empathy generators, and I think that idea relates to this scholarship. I am passionate about stories and the ways we rely on them to understand ourselves and to help others understand us. Before Trans is coming out in paperback in the Spring, which I’m very excited about. I have been working on translating it into French, which raises all sorts of questions about gender inclusive language since French is a gendered language in ways entirely different from English.
What subject do you hope to touch upon in your next academic publication? What intrigues you in French literary history that you want to research more?
I love working between the disciplines of literature, history, and visual culture, and my new project allows me to do just that. I’m still working on gender in 19th-century France, this time focused on how writers used costume and photography to explore gender expression and gender variability. Some of these writers turned their homes into theaters where they put on their own performances; others, like Colette, performed in actual theaters.
Interview by Katrina Scalise (COM’25)