We are an interdisciplinary community aiming to connect the wide range of expertise across the long nineteenth century and foster collaborative connections, both within and beyond Queen Mary University of London.
We are new as a QMUL Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences Research Centre in autumn 2022 (as a Centre: we were The Nineteenth-Century Network, 2020-2022). Please watch this space as the webpage develops...
Dr Rachel Bryant Davies, Lecturer in Comparative Literature, School of Languages, Linguistics, and Film
Dr Matthew Ingleby, Lecturer in Victorian Literature, School of English and Drama
Professor Alastair Owens, Professor of Historical Geography
Dr Clare Stainthorp, Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow
Dr Angela Dunstan (Senior Lecturer in SED, English Literature and Visual Culture)
Kimberly Glassman, (PhD candidate, SED (English) and Kew Gardens, PGR Rep)
Professor Astrid Köhler (Professor of German Literature and Comparative Cultural Studies, SLLF)
Dr David Mills (Lecturer in Imaging and Calcified Tissue, School of Dentistry)
Dr Aoife Monks (Reader in Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies)
Dr Hannah-Rose Murray (Lecturer in US History)
Professor Angus Nicholls (Professor of Comparative Literature and German, SLLF)
Dr Merrilees Roberts (Teaching Associate, SED (English), TA/TF Rep)
Dr Robert Saunders (Reader in Modern British History)
Dr Chloe Ward (Senior Lecturer in the History of British Art)
This section is being updated
Dr Will Bowers, Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Thought, School of English and Drama
Professor David Duff, Professor of Romanticism, School of English and Drama
Chunlin Men, 1st year PhD student, School of English and Drama
Professor Angus Nicholls, Professor of Comparative Literature and German, School of Languages, Linguistics, and Film
Dr Amanda Sciampacone, Lecturer in British and European Art since 1700, School of History
Professor Kiera Vaclavik, Director of the Centre for Childhood Cultures, School of Languages, Linguistics, and Film
Professor Georgios Varouxakis, Professor of the History of Political Thought, School of History
7th December 2022, The Octagon
Carol singing led by a choir plus contextualised short critical commentaries from QMUL colleagues.
5th December 2022, hybrid/Durham Castle
Research conversation with Tim Barringer (Yale), Jennifer Tucker (Wesleyan), Efram Sera-Shriar (Copenhagen), Adiva Lawrence (International Slavery Museum), Bennett Zon (Durham) and other essay contributors.
Preceded by PGR training workshop, with presentations by Amanda Sciampacone, Hannah-Rose Murray and Merrilees Roberts.
Rachel Bryant Davies and Erin Johnson-Williams lead a cast of renowned scholars to initiate an interdisciplinary conversation about the mechanisms of power that have shaped the nineteenth-century archive, to ask: What is a nineteenth-century archive, broadly defined?
This landmark collection of essays broaches critical and topical questions about how the complex discourses of power involved in constructions of the nineteenth-century archive have impacted, and continue to impact, constructions of knowledge across disciplinary boundaries, and beyond academic confines. The essays, written from a range of disciplinary perspectives, grapple with urgent problems of how to deal with potentially sensitive nineteenth-century archival items, both within academic scholarship and in present-day public-facing institutions, which often reflect erotic, colonial and imperial, racist, sexist, violent, or elitist ideologies.
2nd November 2022
Lecture on celebrity theatrical postcards in late 19C London; Respondent: Aoife Monks
This talk examined the way the coming of the picture postcard in the 1890s changed the nature of theatrical celebrity and the relationship between performer and audience. Postcards are an under-used resource for the cultural historian. They were integral to the creation of the image of the star. What we find is the construction of a visual culture that sustained a fan base and predated the cinema. Professor McWilliam’s talk examines images of performers who appeared in straight drama and in musical comedy, contrasting the images of actors and actresses. His talk raised issues about celebrity culture, portraiture, performance and sexuality.
26th October, 2022
Research Conversation, part of Black History Month student-accessible events, in Collaboration with QMUL’s Postcolonial Seminar
First published in 1995, Gretchen Gerzina's Black England: A Forgotten History quickly became essential reading, shedding new light on the lives of Black Britons in the 18th and 19th century. This event enabled researchers to reflect on the significance of this book, which is republished this year with a new foreword by Zadie Smith.
Rachael Gilmour, Valentina Aparicio, and Amanda Sciampacone reflected upon the reissue of this book and how scholarship changes and is informed by the moment in which it is researched, written and published.
Session
Monthly discussion forum: informal 'show and tell' format (online in 2020) on abstract topics and big themes with interdisciplinary scope (such as, for example, 'anecdotes', decades of the 1800s, melodrama, music, vaccinations...).
*Times and dates for the second half of Semester One coming soon: please fill out the doodle poll (on the Teams channel) and watch this space!*
A mixture of work-in-progress talks, research papers, and lectures from external speakers.
9th November 2020, 18:00 to 19:30
The virtual launch of Dr Rachel Bryant Davies and Dr Barbara Gribling’s edited collection Pasts at play: childhood encounters with history in British culture, 1750-1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020)
For more information about, or to join the mailing list, please contact: nineteenth-century@qmul.ac.uk. This is a shared mailbox.
There is also a Teams channel (still named Nineteenth-Century Network) available to existing QMUL colleagues, for updates, shared files, and meeting links.
Tweets by Dr Clare Stainthorp
There will be a guided tour and introduction to the collection led by Steve Moore from the Barts Pathology Museum team, with informal research discussion for those interested in using the collection for research.
The museum is not open daily (only for special events and by appointment), so this is an exciting opportunity to visit the collection and learn about its history, as well as to discuss future research potential.
Booking essential as numbers are limited (and it is a requirement of the Human Tissue Authority that there is an accurate list of visitors so we will need to check registrations). For this reason, the event is restricted to QM staff and students (and Centre members) in the first instance:
March-June, IHSS network seminar series
Legacies and Liabilities? Decolonial, Interdisciplinary, and Intersectional Approaches to the 19thC Now
The series is dedicated to addressing the legacies of the nineteenth century and what studying the period involves across disciplines.
Further planned events will be advertised on Twitter and here as soon as booking becomes available.