Lauren Rich is a PhD candidate in the English Department and Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Her research interests include British and Irish modernism, food studies, feminine middlebrow culture, and twentieth-century British periodicals. Her dissertation, titled “Food for Thought: Eating, Reading, and Being Modern in Twentieth-Century British & Irish Literature, 1904-1954,” focuses on food and consumption in early twentieth-century British and colonial fiction as a way of enriching our understanding of the complex relationships between food, community, and literature.
As a graduate student, Lauren developed and taught a popular English course for non-majors titled “Voracious Reading: Four Centuries of Food & Fiction” as well as freshman composition. She also co-organized a graduate student conference on the theme “’The Sincerest Form’: Literary Imitation, Adaptation, and Parody” and is currently working with the Gender Studies program to coordinate an interdisciplinary conference in January 2012 called “Food Networks: Gender & Foodways.” In addition, she has presented papers at many literature, food studies, and Irish studies conferences. Her article, “A Table for One: Hunger and Unhomeliness in Joyce’s Public Eateries” appears in the Joyce Studies Annual (2010).
Lauren has received a number of teaching fellowships and travel grants from the University of Notre Dame, and is the recipient of a 2011-12 American Association of University Women (AAUW) American Dissertation Fellowship.