Catz Fellow Awarded Funding for Public Engagement Projects in the Humanities
St Catherine’s College is delighted to announce that Dr Jessica Goodman, Catz Director of Studies and Tutorial Fellow in French, has been awarded funding for two exciting public engagement projects. These initiatives, closely related to Dr Goodman’s ongoing research on imagined futures and authorial posterity, are indicative of her commendable commitment to accessible research and collaborative language learning.
Dr Goodman has been awarded one of seven prestigious grants by the Oxford/Berlin (UdK — Universität der Künste Berlin) Partnership. The initiative, pioneered by the University of Oxford and the Berlin University of Arts (Universität der Künste Berlin), is designed to strengthen the international and interdisciplinary ties between research institutions, and to embolden research findings across the Humanities. In collaboration with Professor Mathilde ter Hejne (UdK), Dr Goodman’s project will explore the artistic legacies of women and non-binary communities throughout various historical and geographical contexts. Titled ‘Dropping In and Out’, the work will combine archival research with contemporary artistic practice, in order to recover overlooked historical figures and to examine feminist and decolonial perspectives in creative production.
The second award, granted by the Oxford Humanities Cultural Programme, will support a year-long partnership with Pegasus Youth Theatre. This project, titled ‘Pegasus Young Company’, will present a bold new work inspired by 18th century revolutionary writers, reimagined for today’s world under Dr Goodman’s guidance. Anchored once more to the theme of imagined futures, the proposed project will culminate in two public performances in 2026: a debut at the new Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities in June, followed by a production at Pegasus in December.
Dr Jessica Goodman
As Fellow in French and Director of Studies at St Catherine’s College, Dr Jessica Goodman has specialised in eighteenth-century literature and thought, with a particular focus on authorship, self-presentation, and posterity. Her first monograph, Goldoni in Paris: La Gloire et le Malentendu, re-examines Carlo Goldoni’s French career and the dynamics of literary fashioning in the Enlightenment.
Her current research, culminating in a forthcoming monograph Imagined Afterlives in Eighteenth-Century France, explores fictional representations of the afterlife and the ways in which eighteenth-century writers used imaginative forms – such as the dialogues des morts – to reflect on death, memory, and posterity. Beyond her individual scholarship, Dr Goodman collaborates widely on projects concerning death and performance, including the MHRA-funded conference and edited volume Last Scene of All: Representing Death on the Western Stage.
Further information about ‘Dropping In and Out’ is available as part of TORCH’s announcement of Oxford/Berlin seed-funded projects. For more information about Dr Goodman’s Pegasus project, please see here.
To read more about Dr Jessica Goodman, her research, and her publications, please view her College and Faculty landing pages.
Image courtesy of University of Oxford Development Office