Ryanne McEvoy

In his Body Work, Peter Brooks describes “the body as an object and motive of narrative writing—as a primary, driving concern of the life of the imagination” (xii). Given my background in classical ballet, an industry comprised of exalted and ailing bodies intimately engaged in narrative innovation, I share Brooks’ belief that artistic representations of the body can involve particular imaginative force and often inspire linguistic experimentation. Across modernist texts, this imaginative force translates into a particular kind of embodiment that I call dividuality in my work. In contrast to the Westernized individual, who is “one in substance or essence,” and “form[s] an indivisible entity” (OED), the dividual achieves coherence and agency through its permeable, divisible structure, its characteristically modernist fractured body. To capture an accurate rendering of the dividual in modernist literature, I study both portrayals of dividual bodies in texts and consider texts themselves as dividuals, especially within hybrid genres.

Education:
Ph.D., English, Boston University, expected 2022
M.A., English, Boston University, 2018
B.A., English, summa cum laude, Skidmore College, 2014
B.A., Psychology, summa cum laude, Skidmore College, 2014

Recent Presentations:
“Ghost Flesh and Phantom Friendship: Interbodily Families in Faulkner’s ‘The Leg,’” The Annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference 2020, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MI (postponed until July 2022).

“The Production of Longing: Derenesque ‘Tactile Visuality’ and ‘Double Exposures’ in Fun Home” 2021 NeMLA Annual Convention, Virtual; March 13, 2021.

“Bending Time and Boundaries in Beloved” 2020 NeMLA Annual Convention, Boston, MA; March 7, 2020.

“Faulkner in the Fifth Dimension,” William Faulkner Society; 2020 MLA Annual Convention, Seattle, WA; January 10, 2020.

“Peepy and the Birds: Bleak House Children as Deleuzian Anti-Progress Narrative,” Bleak House Everywhere: A Graduate Student Conference on Charles Dickens’ Bleak House; Boston University, Boston, MA; April 5, 2018.