Kat Haklin is a scholar of nineteenth-century French literature and visual culture.
Kat Haklin’s research focuses on representations of confinement in nineteenth-century France. She has published articles on Baudelaire, Hugo, and Zola in Dix-Neuf and MLN, and in the collective volume Ephemeral Spectacles, Exhibition Spaces and Museums 1750-1918 (Amsterdam UP, 2021). In 2021, she co-edited a Festschrift special issue of MLN (“The Poetry of Life, the Life of Poetry: Essays in Honor of Jacques Neefs” 136:4) and is currently at work co-editing a special issue of L’Esprit Créateur (“Connecting Characters in Modern and Contemporary French-language Fiction”) scheduled for Fall 2023 publication. Her 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.
Professor Haklin regularly teaches courses in French language and culture at all levels. She is currently the course coordinator for French 204 (Intermediate French II) and faculty advisor to WashU’s student conversation group La Table Francophone. She also teaches advanced seminars focusing on literature’s intersections with fashion, film, science, and medicine.