Jessica Cox, Brunel University London Mansplain v. ‘(Of a man) explain (something) to someone, typically a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing’ (Oxford Dictionaries) Earlier this year, celebrity chef and nutritional campaigner Jamie Oliver provoked controversy with his comments on breastfeeding. Suggesting he may turn his campaigning eye to increasing the rates of breastfeeding in Britain, he commented: ‘We have the worst breastfeeding in the world […] It’s easy, its more convenient, it’s more nutritious, it’s better,
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Kristin Hussey, Looking for the Victorian Eye in London’s Medical Museums
Kristin Hussey (kristin.hussey@qmul.ac.uk) is a PhD researcher int he School of Geography at Queen Mary University of London. Her doctoral research focuses on the influence of the British Empire on the development of medical practice and culture in late nineteenth century London. “It has been designated “the queen of the senses,” “the index of the mind,” “the window of the soul;” nay, it has even been esteemed “in itself a soul;” and ” He who spake as never man spake”
Read moreKatherine Byrne, Review of ‘Doctor Thorne’ (dir. Niall MacCormick, writer Julian Fellowes, ITV, 2016)
Katherine is a Lecturer in English at the University of Ulster, where she teaches nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and women’s writing. She is the author of Tuberculosis and the Victorian Literary Imagination (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Edwardians on Screen: From Downton Abbey to Parade’s End (Palgrave, 2015). As it has been some weeks since Julian Fellowes ended his domination of our Sunday night viewing schedules with the Christmas ending of Downton Abbey, it was inevitable that he would
Read moreRachel Carroll, “Sugar’s The Past”: Black British History in ITV’s Jericho (2016)
Rachel Carroll is Reader in English at Teesside University. She is the author of Rereading Heterosexuality: Feminism, Queer Theory and Contemporary Fiction (2012) and editor of Adaptation in Contemporary Culture: Textual Infidelities (2009) and (with Adam Hansen) Litpop: Writing and Popular Music (2014). Her essays on black Britain and literary adaptation have been published in Andrea Levy: Contemporary Critical Perspectives (2014) and Adaptation (2015). In the early months of 2016 American audiences from Washington to New York were able
Read moreDouglas Small, Cream and Cocaine: Hallucination, Obsession, and Sexuality in Victorian Cocaine Addiction
This post accompanies Douglas Small’s Journal of Victorian article ‘Masters of Healing: Cocaine and the Ideal of the Victorian Medical Man’ which can be downloaded here. Painless Surgery Cocaine occupied something of a contradictory position in the late-Victorian cultural imagination. Albert Niemann had isolated the cocaine alkaloid from raw coca leaves as early as 1860, but it was not until 1884 that cocaine truly entered the popular consciousness. In September of that year, a Viennese Ophthalmologist (and friend of Sigmund
Read moreBillie-Gina Thomason, Female Husband or the Man-Woman of Manchester? Review of Mister Stokes’s premier at the LGBT History Festival Launch
Billie-Gina Thomason is currently undertaking an MRes in Modern History in Liverpool John Moores University and is beginning the historicisation of trans* identity. Billie-Gina’s research focusses on nineteenth century female husbands. By using newspapers her interests lie in how female cross-dressers lived in their communities despite living in a time of such gender and sexual rigidity. Mister Stokes: The Man-Woman of Manchester was written by Abi Hynes. The play was directed by Helen Parry and produced by Pagelight Productions and
Read moreAlyson Hunt, ‘Dressed to Kill’ Study Day Review
Arriving outside the sleek glass architecture of the Aldham Robarts library on an overcast Saturday morning to be greeted by the Liverpool John Moores sports teams excitedly gathered outside inexplicably wearing underwear on top of their clothes, I wondered if the long drive North had affected me more than I had anticipated. Thankfully, a rather more sedate welcome signalled the start of the Victorian Popular Fiction Association study day, an interdisciplinary event entitled Dressed to Kill: Fashion in Victorian Fiction
Read moreMike Huggins, ‘Exploring the Backstage of Victorian Civilized Respectability: A Reply to Andersson”
Mike Huggins is Emeritus Professor of Cultural History at the University of Cumbria and has published widely on the histories of sport, leisure and education. He is currently writing a cultural history of horse racing and society in Britain 1664-1815. His website can be found here. This post responds to Peter K. Andersson’s Journal of Victorian Culture article ‘How Civilised were the Victorians’. This article can be downloaded here. Andersson’s argument that scholars have devoted disproportionate attention to the disciplining
Read moreAsa Briggs (1921-2016)
Asa Briggs was an extraordinary force of nature. The range and the significance of his contributions to twentieth-century British history and to British historiography defy summary. He played a part in Bletchley Park code-breaking unit during the Second World War, before an academic career which saw him serve as Professor of History at Leeds, Vice-Chancellor of the new University of Sussex, and Provost of Worcester College Oxford, as well as Chancellor of the Open University. Along the way he was a member of the University Grants Committee,
Read moreSusie Steinbach, Who owns the Victorians?: A Response to Peter K. Andersson’s ‘How Civilised Were the Victorians?’
Susie Steinbach is a professor of history at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota currently living in York, England. Her work focuses on gender, performance, and the law during the Victorian period. The second edition of her textbook, Understanding the Victorians: Politics, Culture, and Society in Nineteenth-century Britain will be published by Routledge later this year. In his essay “How Civilized Were the Victorians?” Peter K. Andersson challenges scholars of the Victorian period to work differently and better. Specifically, he
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