Ashley Williard

Ashley Williard is an Associate Professor of French in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of South Carolina's College of Arts and Sciences. Her research interrogates intersections of disability, gender, and race in the early modern French Atlantic world.

• Specializes in early modern French and Caribbean studies
• Focuses on colonialism, slavery, and epistemologies of violence

Her articles explore themes like madness in French colonial contexts, enslaved African narratives, and religious morality in the Antilles. Recent publications appear in Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies, Early Modern Women, and L'Esprit Créateur. Her work has been supported by prestigious grants, including those from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of South Carolina's ASPIRE program.

Scientific awards include funding from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the ACMRS RaceB4Race Second Book Institute, and the University of South Carolina Office of the Vice President for Research. She is actively involved in the Modern Language Association and the Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies.