Martin Willis is Professor of English Literature at Cardiff University, Chair of the British Society for Literature and Science, Editor of the Journal of Literature and Science and head of the Cardiff University ScienceHumanities research team. I noted with interest, and some dismay that the Journal of Victorian Culture was drawing attention, via Twitter, to the Guardian’s old article on evolutionary psychology and the Victorian novel that described, without criticism, the work of Joseph Carroll and his fellow literary Darwinists.[1] Heartened
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Kristina Hochwender, ‘Tourism as Pedagogy: Part 2’
Part 2: ‘Postcard project: Pilgrimage and Pedagogy’ Kristina L. Hochwender is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Evansville, where she also serves as the Director of General Education. Alongside her interest in literature for children, her research centers on the Victorian clerical novel, and particularly the ways in which the clergyman–in the words of Samuel Butler, “a kind of human Sunday”–mediates national and religious identities and crises in novels that captured the Victorian imagination. Some of her
Read moreAmber Pouliot, ‘Tourism as Pedagogy: Part 1′
Part 1: ‘The Postcard Project’ Amber Pouliot is a teaching fellow at Harlaxton College, the UK study abroad centre of the University of Evansville, Indiana. She was awarded her MA and PhD from the University of Leeds. She is currently writing a book on the development of Bronte fictional biography from the mid-nineteenth century to the interwar period. Her essay on nineteenth-century proto-fictional biographies of the Brontes will appear in Charlotte Bronte: Legacies and Afterlives (forthcoming from MUP), and she
Read moreVerity Burke, ‘Narrative on screen: BBC’s The Moonstone (2016)’
Verity Burke is a doctoral student at the University of Reading, working on the Cole Library of Early Medicine and Zoology. Her project is an interdisciplinary study of anatomies in nineteenth-century science, medicine and literature, and their effect on both epistemology and the popular imagination. Her wider research interests include Charles Dickens, surgery, forensics and the body. She loves a good taxidermy squirrel. Come say hi on Twitter @VerityBurke or on https://reading.academia.edu/VerityBurke Revamped for the BBC’s Love to Read season,
Read moreCharlotte Mathieson, ‘Victorians Decoded: Art and Telegraphy’
Dr Charlotte Mathieson is a Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century English Literature at the University of Surrey. She works on travel and mobility in Victorian literature and culture, with publications including Mobility in the Victorian Novel: Placing the Nation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), and Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-present (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). “Victorians Decoded: Art and Telegraphy” at Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London until 22nd January 2017 Celebrating the 150th anniversary of the laying of the trans-Atlantic telegraph
Read moreValerie Sanders, ‘Victoria: as seen on TV’
Valerie Sanders is Professor of English and Director of the Graduate School at the University of Hull. Her research interests include Victorian fatherhood and sibling groups, as well as individual author studies. With Gaby Weiner she has recently edited a collection of essays, Harriet Martineau and the Birth of Disciplines (Routledge 2016). So, Victoria has ended in the U.K., and so has its arch-rival Poldark, briefly leaving Tutankhamun in sole possession of the prime historical drama spot on Sunday evenings. By all accounts
Read moreHila Shachar, ‘Walking New Myths: Sally Wainwright’s Brontë Biopic’
Hila Shachar is a Lecturer in English Literature at De Montfort University, Leicester, and a member of the Centre for Adaptations who specialises in the adaptation of literary works and authors in various media including film, television, and ballet. Her book, Cultural Afterlives and Screen Adaptations of Classic Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), was featured in The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, as well as nominated for the 2012 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards. She also works as
Read moreMartin Johnes, ‘A Christmas Carol: A Tale for All Times’
Martin Johnes teaches history at Swansea University and is the author of Christmas and the British: A Modern History (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016). In 1943 the centenary of the publication of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol appears to have passed with little comment. However, one man did write to The Times to remind people of the occasion, calling it ‘this most delightful of all Christmas ghost stories’. He thought this worth doing because ‘of the influence which Dickens has had on
Read moreLaura Foster, ‘Merry Christmas in the Workhouse’
Laura Foster completed her PhD at Cardiff University in 2014. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on the representation of the workhouse in nineteenth-century culture, with a particular focus upon periodical publications and visual material. Her most recently published article, ‘Dirt, Dust and Devilment: Uncovering Filth in the Workhouse and Casual Wards’, is available to read online at Victorian Network. A perusal of the December issues of the Illustrated London News or the Graphic is a gratifying pastime for anyone indulging a
Read moreMaria Quick, ‘Convent Embroidery Workrooms’
Embroidery and needlework agencies run by women, for women, are an under-researched sub-set of the nineteenth-century British art world. I explore these organisations and their complicated relationship with professionalism, commerce and philanthropy in my article ‘Stitching Professionalism’, published in the Journal of Victorian Culture 21, no.2 (2016). One group of female embroiderers that did not fit within the scope of that article, but which deserve further attention, are those that worked in convent workrooms. Religious women living in communities such
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