Overview
Marie-Claire Hoferer earned a B.A. in English and French, which included a period of study at the Sorbonne, before completing an M.Ed. in English and French Foreign Language Teaching and an M.A. in Romance Studies, all at the University of Freiburg. Her M.A. thesis on female force and gender utopias, a comparative analysis of Rousseau’s Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse and George Sand’s Nanon, is currently nominated for the Ulderup Prize at her home institution.
During her studies, she worked as a research assistant at the university’s French Center and served as a tutor for the “Introduction to French Literature” and “French Grammar” courses.
Her research focuses on eighteenth-century French literature, especially the intersections of Enlightenment thought, female agency, and alienation. She is particularly interested in how literary portrayals of women in this period engage with themes of resistance to societal norms, identity formation, and the role of self-expression in epistolary and first-person narratives.
Her broader academic interests include narratology, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the cultural history of the Enlightenment.