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Charlie Mc Evoy

DPhil Student - St John's College

charlie.mcevoy@sjc.ox.ac.uk

Research Topic: Queer Femininity and Nineteenth-Century Culture: A Sexual Pre-History of Modern Identity, 1806-1928

Supervisor: Sarah Knott and Matt Cook

My research explores the intimate lives and ideas of women across nineteenth-century Britain and Europe. I am interested in how feminine actors invested, divested and co-existed with ideals of femininity, manipulating, twisting and reinterpreting such discourses to achieve ambitions at once within and outside of their ‘‘proper shining sphere.’’ In particular, I am fascinated by women who found pathways of personal fulfillment and emancipation through the structures of their oppression, such as domestic ideology, religious orthodoxy or concepts of nature and the ‘natural’.

My doctoral dissertation explores these themes through the lens of early lesbian and transfeminine histories, casting light on women for whom sexual dissidence co-existed with a deep commitment to gender roles and conventional femininity. Drawing from the lives of Adele Schopenhauer (1797-1849), Grace Aguilar (1816-1847), Pauline de Floranges (1837-?) and Natalie Clifford Barney (1876-1972), I use the predicament of the nineteenth-century ‘femme’ (at once located at the centre and the margins of her society) to theorise the ontological underpinnings of feminine selfhood during the long nineteenth century, and with that, the philosophical basis on which feminine sexuality was conceived.

Academic Profile & Awards

I hold a BA(Hons) in European Studies from Trinity College Dublin, where I specialised in modern European history, Jewish studies and German. I spent time in both Switzerland and Austria, where I completed year-long Erasmus+ at the University of Vienna. My capstone project was supervised by Dr. Jürgen Barkhoff and studied ecofeminist philosophy within the Victorian anti-vivisection movement.

In 2025, I completed an MSt in (Women’s, Gender and Queer) History at the University of Oxford, where I placed first in my cohort and was awarded the Best Performance Prize, Best Dissertation Prize and the Taube Essay Prize for Writing in Hebrew and Jewish Studies. My dissertation, ‘Grace Aguilar’s Construction of the Jewish Femme: Desire, Mysticism and the Self’ was supervised by Dr. Miri Freud-Kandel and investigated lesbian sexuality and theology in the archive of the pioneering Jewish woman writer, Grace Aguilar (1816-47).

My doctoral studies have been made possible by the generosity of the Clarendon Fund and the Hillary Rodham Clinton Scholarship for Women’s History at St. John’s College.

Publications

The following articles are currently under review: 

  • ‘‘To Love but Her Alone’: Lesbian Desire, Mystic Love and the Secret Life of Grace Aguilar (1816-1847)’
  • ‘‘The Garments of my Second Sex’: Materiality and Transition in Early Transfeminine Life Narratives.'

I am currently developing a digital humanities project dedicated to the manuscript writings and love poetry of Grace Aguilar.

In April 2025, I was one of the first researchers to study the newly accessioned Amy Levy Papers at the University of Cambridge and was interviewed on archive here: https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/stories/Amy-Levy-Archive-Cambridge

During my masters, I presented papers at the Oxford Centre for Women’s, Gender and Queer History and the Oxford Queer Intersection’s Network.

I have published articles in several public-facing, postgraduate and student journals:

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Period Modern
Region British Isles & Ireland Europe
Specialism Cultural History Gender History LGBTQ+ History Women's History