Kathryn (Kat) Haklin is a generalist of French & Francophone Studies, specializing in nineteenth-century literature and visual culture.
Dr. Haklin holds a Ph.D. in French Language and Literature from Johns Hopkins University. She is currently a Lecturer in French at Washington University in St. Louis, where she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures from 2018 to 2020. She taught at Colorado College as a Visiting Assistant Professor of French from 2020 to 2022.
In Summer 2025, she will direct the WashU Healthcare in France study abroad program in Nice, which recently was awarded a $35,000 Global Pillars Grant from IES Abroad.
A scholar of nineteenth-century France working at the intersection of literature, visual studies, and the medical humanities, Dr. Haklin’s book project, Writing Claustrophobia: Enclosure in Nineteenth-Century French Literature, examines the unexplored proliferation of enclosed spaces in literature just prior to the first definition of “claustrophobia” in 1879.
Dr. Haklin has published articles on Baudelaire, Hugo, and Zola in Dix-Neuf, L’Esprit Créateur, and MLN, as well as in the collective volume Ephemeral Spectacles, Exhibition Spaces and Museums 1750-1918 (Amsterdam UP, 2021). She has co-edited two special issues: “Connecting Characters in Modern and Contemporary French-language Fiction” (L’Esprit Créateur 63:3) in Fall 2023 and “The Poetry of Life, the Life of Poetry: Essays in Honor of Jacques Neefs” (MLN 136:4) in September 2021. Her latest publication, forthcoming in Écrire le huis clos au XIXe siècle (Classiques Garnier, 2024), analyzes the psychological effects of claustrophobia in Jules Verne’s Voyage au centre de la Terre.
Professor Haklin regularly teaches courses in French language, literature, film, and culture at all levels. She is currently the course coordinator for French 307D (Cultural Expression) and serves as faculty advisor to WashU’s student conversation group La Table Francophone. She has taught upper-level courses on a wide range of topics: “The Art of Health in Nice,” “Fashioning a Revolution: Style & Social Change in France, 1700-1900,” “Feminist Filmmaking,” “From Cholera to the Coronavirus: Medicine & Confinement in Modern France,” “Liberté, Égalité, Sororité: Women & French Film,” “Medical Narratives, Narrative Medicine,” “Not Another Fashion Victim: Shopping, Style, & Consumer Culture in Paris,” “Phobias,” and “The World Below.”
Research & Teaching Interests
Modern French literature
Visual culture studies
Medical humanities
Fashion studies
Film and media studies
Environmental humanities
Women’s and gender studies
Education
Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University (2018) French language and literature
M.A. Florida State University (2012) French literature
B.A. DePauw University (2008) Art history & French magna cum laude