Professor Emerita of French
Research and Teaching
Professor Kelly’s research and teaching interests include nineteenth-century French literature and the French novel, gender and literature, constructions of identity, and literary theory. Her most recent book, Reconstructing Woman, examines the nineteenth-century literary theme of the construction of an artificial woman. Her other publications include the books Telling Glances: Voyeurism in the French Novel, and Fictional Genders: Role and Representation in Nineteenth-Century French Narrative. Selected recent articles and book chapters include essays on Hugo’s Les Misérables, Balzac’s La Cousine Bette, Baudelaire’s “À Celle qui est trop gaie,” and an essay on Zola in “Experimenting on Women” in Spectacles of Realism: Gender, Body, Genre, edited by Christopher Prendergast and Margaret Cohen. She continues work on a new book project that explores the metaphor of the living dead in the works of Balzac, Baudelaire, and Zola, which is scheduled to appear in 2021.
Selected Publications
Kelly, D. (2021) The Living Death of Modernity: Balzac, Baudelaire, Zola. Legenda Press.
Reconstructing Woman: From Fiction to Reality in the Nineteenth-Century French Novel. Pennsylvania State University Press.
Telling Glances: Voyeurism in the French NoveI. Rutgers University Press.
Fictional Genders: Role and Representation in Nineteenth-Century French Narrative. University of Nebraska Press.