David Mitchell’s doctoral research focuses on the intersection of material practices of wax sculpture in early modern France and contemporaneous textual considerations of boredom, emptiness, and simulacra. The dissertation in progress is titled “Mimetic Heresies: Waxworks in Paris, 1661-1723.” Broader research interests include: prehistories of the uncanny, portraiture, early modern art theory, intersections of text and image, and the historiography of ancien régime France in the nineteenth century.