A University of Cambridge doctoral student’s seemingly benign social-media post caused an unexpected, ongoing, and occasionally memeable discourse centered around the treatment of female academics and right-wing criticisms of humanities scholarship.
Ally Louks, a doctoral student of English at the university, declared in an X post last week that she was “PhDone” after passing her oral defense (or “viva”) with no corrections. The photo featured Louks holding a copy of her thesis, titled “Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose.”
The post was quickly recirculated by right-wing accounts, which criticized the thesis as a wayward example of progressive scholarship and argued that that its ultraspecific subject matter provided no practical value. Critics began to dogpile on Louks, characterizing the dissertation as a waste of resources.
Other professors jumped to her defense, attributing the criticisms to misogyny and a misunderstanding of academic research, with some saying that Louks had brought attention to harmful racial stereotypes targeting Indian people. Some mocked the controversy — which one scholar dubbed “smell-gate” — with memes.
For the first two days, criticisms were based entirely on the title of Louks’ thesis — it hasn’t been published, and her initial post on X included no further information regarding its contents. In response to “confusion about the nature of my research,” she later posted a screenshot of her abstract.
This thesis studies how literature registers the importance of olfactory discourse — the language of smell and the olfactory imagination it creates — in structuring our social world. The broad aim of this thesis is to offer an intersectional and wide-ranging study of olfactory oppression by establishing the underlying logics that facilitate smell’s application in creating and subverting gender, class, sexual, racial and species power structures.
Louks said she has received death and rape threats regarding the thesis, including a threatening email from an unknown source, which she reported to local authorities.
As of Thursday, Louks’ X thread has been viewed over 100 million times and received roughly 64,000 likes. Louks said that her follower count has shot up nearly twentyfold from 3,000 to 59,000 since November 27.
“Guys, how the heck did I become verified?” she said in a post this Thursday.
She spoke to The Chronicle on Thursday about the incident and what it says about how humanities scholars, particularly women in the field, are perceived. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why do you think the discourse continues more than a week after your initial post? Do you think the stir was warranted?
I don’t think by any means the stir was warranted. Now most of the people interacting with the post are either apologizing for my treatment by other people, or they’re actually just really confused as to why the post has gained so much traction. There are also a lot of people obviously congratulating me on getting the Ph.D., which is very nice.
One sect of critics argued that the subject of your thesis was too niche and that it doesn’t provide any societal value. Another camp argued that your thesis perpetuated harmful racial stereotypes. How do you respond to those criticisms?
Those comments are based on a complete misunderstanding of the abstract that I provide. They were made to create a stir, rather than because people actually believe that I am perpetuating stereotypes. A careful reading of the abstract that I provide will reveal that that is absolutely not true.
I think the period in which the right-wing commentators were engaging with the post was actually quite a small time frame, but it certainly got a lot of attention at that point. As for it being niche, a Ph.D. is designed to contribute to knowledge, so it’s niche by necessity.
The vast majority of the comments are really kind and generous. A lot of people don’t feel it necessary to defend my work, which I think is perfectly right. I don’t feel it necessary to defend my work either, because I did that in my viva. But I think the majority of people just want to say congratulations for doing something that is objectively difficult.
Do you think that gender was a factor in the social-media response to your thesis?
Misogyny was an undeniable factor in the negative responses towards the post. I think that can be gleaned from the content of those responses, many of which were straightforwardly sexist. But misogyny wasn’t the only factor at play, I don’t believe that. But I think it’s implicit, even in the comments questioning the value of female-dominated disciplines like literary studies.
You wrote under your original post that you were “enjoying the huge variety of smell-related puns.” Which replies and quote tweets made you chuckle in particular?
Honestly, there have been too many to count. I’ve laughed out loud so many times this week. I think my absolute favorite is from an account called “Chaucer Doth Tweet” that is a joke about the whole situation in the style of Middle English.
(The post read: “Apparentlye a Ph.D. yn English Literature ys the most punk rock thynge yn the worlde because looke who doth get bent out of shape about the verye idea of it.”)
How did you “get a nose” for studying olfactory systems? Can you summarize that field of study?
Smell studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the role of smell in society. There are smell-studies scholars working in the humanities, in the social sciences, and in the sciences. Literary smell studies, which is my field, investigates how literature records and interrogates the importance of smell in society.
I started working on smell during my undergraduate degree. I’ve always been interested in perfume, so I think that’s probably where the interest came from. I discovered that it was possible to critically engage with smell through an article by someone called Hans Rindisbacher called “What’s This Smell?” Once I was more attuned to the operations of smell in literature, I began to notice patterns in the techniques that are employed by authors, many of which gestured to the social status of individuals and groups more broadly. That’s where the thesis came from.
How did you approach responding to the discourse? Which of your responses are you most proud of?
I wouldn’t say that I’m particularly proud of my responses, mostly because in order to be proud, it would have needed to feel like a challenge, and as someone who has just gained a Ph.D., this doesn’t really feel like a challenge.
I didn’t want to engage in the same way that the detractors were engaging. I don’t think that it’s helpful, and it’s obviously not intellectually rigorous. I’m an academic, so I like to engage in reasoned debate.
What does this episode say about the state of academia, particularly the humanities?
I think the controversy has very little to say about the actual state of the humanities, but it certainly draws attention to a strong anti-intellectual current, especially in America’s right-wing cohort, but I hope to be a positive representative for the value of literary study going forwards. I hope that that’s what I can do with this platform that I’ve been bizarrely handed.
