Graduate Student in French
Eleonora Mancuso is a PhD Candidate in French Literature at Boston University under the direction of Professor Rachel Mesch. Her areas of interest include nineteenth-century French literature, gender studies, medical humanities, and disability studies.
Through an interdisciplinary approach to nineteenth-century French literature, she explores the topic of medical spectacles. Her research investigates the literary representation of disability in nineteenth-century novels and poetry. In particular, she is interested in how selected nineteenth-century writers (Balzac, Zola, Flaubert, Baudelaire, and others) exploited disability in their narratives (narrative prosthesis) and turned it into spectacle.
Before arriving at BU, Eleonora earned her Bachelor’s degree in English, French and Spanish Language, Literature and Culture from the Università di Catania (Italy). She also holds a master’s degree in French literature with a minor in Spanish literature from the University of Delaware.
Currently, she is completing the Graduate Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the Graduate Certificate in Pedagogy through BU.