Dr Althea Arguelles-Ling

Ph.D. (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill); MA, BA (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Honorary Lecturer

My research focuses on French women playwrights of the Ancien Régime. I coordinate the Play Summary 18 Project in the cooperation with Carol Sherman (Professor Emerita, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill) and Perry Gethner (Department Chair, Oklahoma State University). Our goal is to provide a plot summary for each of the approximately 300 plays written by women authors of this period. We are presently engaged in linking our data with that of the CESAR database (Calendrier électronique des spectacles sous l’ancien régime et sous la revolution) under the direction of Sabine Chaouche, Oxford Brookes University.

We are finding new connections among these plays and with the theatrical world of the time. Soon, we hope to share what place these women occupied in this very public sphere.

Research areas

Eighteenth-century French theatre
Women-writers
Mother-daughter relations
National Identity

Current projects

Play Summary 18

Selected publications

“Performing Mother and Daughter in Cénie and La Gouvernante.” New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century Vol. 8 (2011).

“Famille, Révolution, Patrie: National Imaginings in the Plays of Olympe de Gouges.” Australian Journal for French Studies Vol. 44 no.3 (2007).

“Benoist, Françoise-Albine, Puzin de la Martinière.” Entry in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Ed. Samia Spencer. Columbia, S.C.: Bruccoli Clark Layman (2005).

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Conference activity

“Comment devenir (plus) français: Antoine Fauchéry façonne une identité dans les mines de Victoria.” French Studies Seminar Series, University of Sydney, 21 October 2009.
“Nationalisms in Jean Mallat’s Les Philippines (1846).” Seuils et Traverses/Borders & Crossings Conference, University of Melbourne, July 2008.
“Revolution and Recognition in the plays of Olympe de Gouges.” Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SEASECS), Auburn University, Alabama, USA, 14-17 February 2008.
"Family Romance as Utopia and Sign of the National Imagination in the Plays of Olympe de Gouges". The 14th Annual International Conference of the Australian Society for French Studies, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, July 2006.

Other professional contributions

Initiated the French Poetry Contest and French Poetry Slam, Department of French Studies, University of Sydney; Coordinator September 2008, 2009, 2010.