# Jennifer Oliver Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures French Undergraduate Advisor ![Jenny](/sites/g/files/omnuum8296/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/2025-04/Jennifer%20Oliver%20Cropped%20Headshot%20RLL.jpeg?itok=J0p5hkCV) location\_on Boylston 508 smartphone [(617) 495-5823]() email [jennifer\_oliver@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:jennifer_oliver@fas.harvard.edu) **Research interests:** the intersections between literary studies and the histories of science, medicine, and technology; art and architectural history; nonhuman and eco-critical theory; and metaphor theory. **Teaching interests:** besides pre-modern texts from the medieval to the eighteenth century, I teach with a range of critical and theoretical works, particularly in the field of nonhuman/eco- theory, and I like to build film into my courses wherever I can. My classes are often concerned with questions of materiality and embodiment, including conceptions of ‘nature’ in relation to the human and/or the artificial, and literary forms as spaces or objects for ‘working out’ these and other questions. --- I work mostly on sixteenth-century French literature, culture, and thought, and I teach across the early modern period and quite widely beyond. In my current book project *Mineral Matters: Crafting Ecologies and Early Modern French Literature*, I am interested in how early modern writers and craftspeople contemplated the connections and tensions between poetics, craft/technique, and non-human nature. The book explores mineral nature-cultures in the works of Rabelais, Ronsard, Léry, Montaigne, and d’Aubigné, alongside technical writers like *architecte du roi* Philibert de l'Orme and the ceramicist Bernard Palissy. In my work on shipwrecks (see publications list below), I became interested in the intersections between the material and the metaphorical, and I continue to think about what has been termed ‘matterphor’ in this new work. In 2018 I co-founded the interdisciplinary network [Writing Technologies](https://writingearly.hypotheses.org/), and continue to enjoy collaboration and conversation with colleagues across a range of disciplines. Before coming to Harvard, I held teaching and research fellowships at the University of Oxford. When I’m not thinking about minerals and matterphor, I can generally be found making things, including music with my band [Lucy Leave](https://lucyleave.bandcamp.com/album/everyone-is-doing-so-well). --- **Select Publications:** Monograph: [*Shipwreck in French Renaissance Writing: The Direful Spectacle*](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/shipwreck-in-french-renaissance-writing-9780198831709?cc=gb&lang=en&) (Oxford University Press, 2019) Edited volume: *Elemental Objects: Proceedings from a Virtual Showcase*, eds. Vittoria Fallanca, Jennifer Oliver, and Olivia Smith, (under review, forthcoming in [BREPOLS *Techne* series](https://www.brepols.net/series/TECHNE)) --- **Articles and book chapters:** 'Du navire au livre : La famille des Nefs publiées en France 1497-1507', *Réforme, Humanisme et Renaissance* 96.1, 2023, 9-36 'Lithic Montaigne: Stone, "bastiment", and "Du repentir" (III, 2)', *Montaigne Studies*, no. 35 ('Material Montaigne/ Montaigne Matériel'), 35-48 '« Forgé de son invention » : sur la double biomimesis des *Essais* II.9 et II. 12', *Bulletin de la Société internationale des amis de Montaigne*, 'Montaigne outre-Manche', no. 74, 2022 - 1, 149-166 '"When is a meadow not a meadow?": Dark Ecology and Fields of Conflict in French Renaissance Poetry', in [*Early Modern Écologies*](https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789462985971/early-modern-ecologies), eds. Pauline Goul and Phillip John Usher (Amsterdam University Press, 2020), pp. 73-98 'Rabelais’s Engins: War Machines, Analogy, and the Anxiety of Invention in the Quart Livre’, *Early Modern French Studies* (December 2016) ## Courses Taught ### Fall, 2026 [### FRENCH 072 - Forms of Desire: Pre-Modern French Voices ](/class/french-072-forms-desire-pre-modern-french-voices) **Semester:** Fall | **Year offered:** 2026 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-224501/2026/fall/17369) [### FRENCH 227 - (Dark) Ecologies in French Literature, Thought, and Film ](/class/french-227-dark-ecologies-french-literature-thought-and-film) **Semester:** Fall | **Year offered:** 2026 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-224500/2026/fall/17370) ### Spring, 2027 [### FRENCH 80BB - Beyond the Binary: Sex, Gender, and Nature in Premodern French Writing ](/class/french-80bb-beyond-binary-sex-gender-and-nature-premodern-french-writing) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2027 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-233123/2026/spring/16245) [### FRENCH 123 - Colonizing the Early Modern Body ](/class/french-123-colonizing-early-modern-body) **Semester:** Spring | **Year offered:** 2027 | **Link:** [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-233124/2026/spring/16246) - ## Department Role [Faculty](/people/role/faculty) [French Faculty](/people/role/french-faculty) - ## Language [French](/language/french) - ## Research Interest [16th Century](/research-interest/16th-century) [Literature](/research-interest/literature) [French](/research-interest/french) [Environmental Humanities](/research-interest/environmental-humanities) [Critical Theory](/research-interest/critical-theory) [Material Culture](/research-interest/material-culture)