While researching the introduction to my book on the widow in British literature and culture, I stumbled across a tune from the First World War which illustrates perfectly some of the attributes which have rendered the figure of the widowed woman a popular and loaded one here in Britain, not only since the Victorian period […]
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An anonymous contributors reflects on their experiences of schizophrenia during their PhD and their nevertheless successful journey to a permanent academic job.
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From Mary Wollstonecraft’s call for chastity as a universal rather than a female virtue in A vindication of the rights of woman (1792), through nineteenth and early-twentieth century writings on the commodification of women in marriage and prostitution and campaigns for rational dress, to fights for women’s reproductive rights and sexual liberation in the 1960s and 1970s, the female body and female sexuality as sites of oppression and empowerment have long occupied a central place of concern in feminist theory and practice. In the new millennium, as in previous decades, this interest continues to engender productively diverse and conflicting, as well as often conflicted, responses by feminist scholars across disciplines whose work reflects upon and attempts to conceptualise women’s sexual bodies within the cultural and political landscapes of the twenty-first century.
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I’ve been thinking for a while about writing a post on my relatively quick transition from PhD student to PhD supervisor, mainly to reflect on what is important to me regarding my new responsibilities and based on my own and my peers’ experiences, but also to think more generally about what the common problems in […]
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This post is a brief reflection on how to deal with the fact that you might not be the only one working on “your” topic.
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A quick reflection on my Higher Education Academy Fellowship and what professional recognition can mean for postgraduates and early-career researchers.
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This post reflects on the issues surrounding supporting students’ wellbeing, especially academic workload, the unequal division of emotional labour, and the lack of appropriate training for those involved in pastoral care. It also offers five main strategies that can help support your students’ wellbeing and provide good pastoral care.
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The breadth and depth of scholarship on Victorian men and masculinities leaves much to be explored. This special issue is the result of a call for essays which aimed to bring together the work of scholars who seek to contribute to the filling this gap. The essays we have selected for this volume share a […]
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Read the introduction to our special issue of Nineteenth-Century Context.
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This is the introductory lecture for my Literary & Cultural Theory module. It introduces students to some of the questions theory can raise in relation to literature and its purpose as well as introducing some basic aspects of liberal humanism, and the module structure.
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Lucy R. Hinnie talks about her journey to and through self-funded part-time study and the challenges and benefits it brings.
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An anonymous PhD student discusses how Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the pressures of academia have led them to become addicted to painkillers. Are academics prone to socially acceptable addictions?
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At a time when we remember the First World War, its victims, and its survivors, it seems apt for me to share some of the research I’ve been doing on the literary and cultural history of the widow in Britain, and particularly on how the state’s support and the economic conditions of widowed women has changed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and reflects both Britain’s development in terms of gender equality as well as the emergence of the welfare state.
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Social Media Skills for Students is a new resource to help university students learn how to use social media to their advantage and in a professional manner.
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This is a review of Postfeminism & Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (2012), a collection of essays I edited with Dr Joel Gwynne.
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This is an introductory lecture to postmodernist theory, which forms the last critical lens we examine in this second-year course on literary and culture theory. This post contains both the Prezi and the lecture handout I’ve designed for this session.
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30 October 2014, Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Discussion Group, St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford
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10 July 2014, Centre for Sexuality & Gender Studies (CSGS) Summer School, Durham University
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