Pierre Forfert

Pierre Forfert holds a B.A. (2017) and a M.A. (2019) in English literature from Sorbonne Université, as well as a master’s degree in Communications (2021) from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences de l’Information et de la Communication (CELSA).

His current research centers on spa culture and balneotherapy in 19th-century French literature. He is interested in exploring the literary significance of spa towns through the prism of space and cultural studies as well as medical humanities. His master’s thesis, “‘As yet, you have seen nothing of Bath.’ Fiction Writing and Town Planning in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Persuasion,” received the Manon Gozard Award for best master’s thesis in British history from Sorbonne Université and Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. As an Environmental Humanities Fellow at the Whitney Humanities Center, he is also interested in studying the spatial inscriptions of socio-cultural phenomena within literature through an ecocritical lens.

Prior to Yale, Pierre worked as a Teaching Assistant in the Department of French and Francophone Studies at Vassar College. He also worked for Franco-American academic exchange programs such as the Vassar-Wesleyan Program in Paris and Fulbright France.