Jade completed her undergraduate English Literature degree at Queen Mary, University of London before completing an MA in The Contemporary at University of Kent. She returned to Queen Mary to undertake a PhD, which focused on examining how a ‘poetics of ageing’ is present in modernist texts by Mina Loy, H.D., and Djuna Barnes.
In 2021–2022, she was a Research Fellow on the project ‘Reimagining the Future in Older Age’ at the University of Stirling, working with PI Dr. Melanie Lovatt.
Jade co-runs the research project ‘Decorating Dissidence’, which explores the conceptual, aesthetic, and political qualities of craft from modernism to the contemporary.
As an interdisciplinary researcher, Jade is interested in making connections between literary and cultural studies, visual arts, social sciences, and health humanities. She is interested in applying ageing studies in modernist and mid-century contexts, particularly looking at embodiment, archives and life writing.
Research interests include: modernism, post-war literature, age studies, narrative gerontology, visual cultures, care studies, craft and the decorative, arts-based methodologies.
Please get in touch if you would like to connect or collaborate on any of the above.
Articles
- Parker, S. and French, J. (2021). But with this I’m embodied’: H.D.’s Public Portraits 1913-1958. Feminist Modernist Studies, 4(1), 93–124. Link
- French, J. (2021). Still Tickin’: Betye Saar, Ageing and Assemblage. Women: A Cultural Review, 32(1), 2021, 70–85. Link
- French, J., Petot, S., Whalen, C. (2021). Ever-extending relationships: Bauhaus, Weaving and Contemporary Legacies, MAI Journal (open access). Link
- French, J., Whalen, C. (2021) ‘Women Modernists and the Decorative: An Introduction’ in Women: A Cultural Review, 32(1), 1–7. Link
Book reviews
- ‘Literature and Ageing’ in The Polyphony, July 2021. Link
- ‘Shattered Objects: Djuna Barnes’s Modernism’ in Times Literary Supplement, 2020
- ‘War-Time Capsules: British Literature and Culture in Second World Wartime’ in Women: A Cultural Review 31. 4, October 2020, pp. 494–496.
- ‘Fierce with Reality: Literature on Aging’ ed. Margaret Cruikshank in Age, Culture, Humanities, 2018 [open access]