Research areas
Linda Goddard is a specialist in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French art and literature, and artists’ writings. She holds a BA in French and Italian language and literature from the University of Oxford and an MA and PhD from The Courtauld Institute of Art, London. She joined St Andrews in 2009 after a Junior Research Fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge, a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at The Courtauld, and a fixed-term Lectureship at the University of Cambridge. From 2019–2022 she was Head of the School of Art History at St Andrews.
She has been a Member in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2014-15), and a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Washington, DC (2018).
Her most recent book, Savage Tales: The Writings of Paul Gauguin (Yale University Press, 2019) is the first book-length analysis of the artist’s wide-ranging literary output. Her first book, Aesthetic Rivalries: Word and Image in France, 1880–1926 (Peter Lang, 2012) examined how the rejection of mimesis in painting affected literary responses to the visual arts. She has edited or co-edited two journal special issues devoted to the interpretation of artists’ writings: Artists’ Writings, 1850-present (Word & Image), including her essay, “Artists’ Writings: word or image?” and (with Natalie Adamson) Artists’ Statements: Origins, Intentions, Exegesis (Forum for Modern Language Studies), both 2012.
She has recently begun a new project on the life writings of women artists, in nineteenth-century France and beyond.
At St Andrews she teaches undergraduate modules including “Women Artists and Autobiography” and “Symbolism, Decadence and Modernity” and co-teaches the postgraduate modules “The Image of the Artist” and “Writing on the Visual”.
She welcomes enquiries from potential PhD students with interests in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French art – particularly its intersections with literature – and artists' writings.
Recently completed PhD students
Maria Golovteeva, 'Fernand Khnopff: Art and Photography in the Nineteenth Century'
PhD supervision
- Matthew Yeats
- Esther Laforge
- Eunjee Lee
Selected publications
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Aesthetic rivalries: word and image in France, 1880-1926
Goddard, L. J., 2012, Peter Lang. 287 p.Research output: Book/Report › Book
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Artists' Writings: word or image?
Goddard, L. J., 2012, In: Word & Image. 28, 4, p. 409-418Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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'Poésie plastique'? The competition between art and literature in early twentieth-century France
Goddard, L. J., 2013, The Art Book Tradition in Twentieth-Century Europe. Brown, K. (ed.). Ashgate, p. 117-129 13 p.Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter