Alistaire’s scholarly interests involve the 18th-century points of intersection between French literature and larger questions including gender, sexuality, scientific thought, and celebrity. Recent publications include an article in French Forum on the homosocial bonds between men in 19th-century France and their mimetic desire for the courtesan, as well as several articles adapted from the work of her monograph, “Fictions of Pleasure: The Putain Memoirs of Eighteenth-Century France,” exploring constructions of power, gender, and utopic fantasy in the libertine novel as a means of undermining the social iniquities of the Ancien régime. Future projects include an essay on French microgenres in the long 18th century and a study on the dissemination of Newton’s laws of gravity and attraction through literary texts.