About

EHU Nineteen is an interdisciplinary research group focussing on long-nineteenth century studies. We offer:

• Nationally and internationally excellent research in nineteenth-century topics, with specialisms including digital humanities and print culture, masculinity and gender studies, children’s literature and humour, and neo-Victorianism.
• A visiting speaker series featuring leading names and emerging researchers in  Romantic and Victorian studies.
• Collaborative opportunities with museums, galleries and cultural heritage partners across the North West and UK.
• International conferences including hosting BARS/NASSR 2021: New Romanticisms, ‘Substance Use and Abuse in the Long Nineteenth Century’ and an annual ‘Romanticisms’ conference.
• A diverse and innovative teaching portfolio in nineteenth-century subjects at undergraduate and postgraduate level.
• Outstanding PhD supervision with the opportunity to apply for Edge Hill’s Graduate Teaching Assistantship package.

Projects

EHU Nineteen is home to a diverse range of interdisciplinary research projects.

Events

EHU Nineteen hosts an annual Research Seminar Series as well as regular academic conferences.

The EHU Nineteen Seminar Series combines the Romanticism and Victorian Seminar Series which have run from 2010. The Seminar Series invites research papers from established scholars and emerging researchers on topics as wide-ranging as eighteenth-century Gothic texts and orientalism to girls’ periodicals and Victorian audiobooks. For further information, please contact: Andrew.McInnes@edgehill.ac.uk

Virtual Seminar Series 2020-2021

Our seminar series for 2020-2021 will take place virtually via pre-recorded talks and live Q&A discussions on Zoom. To learn more about these events, and to book your free tickets,  please follow the Eventbrite links below.

15 October 2020 — ‘Returning to Mont Blanc in 2020’, Prof Cian Duffy (Lund University)

“For the last 20 years, I’ve been spending summers in Chamonix. For much of that same time, I’ve been writing about the role of Chamonix in Romantic-period literature. In this talk, I reflect on going back to that place and back to those texts in 2020.”

3 December 2020 — ‘Careless John Clare’, Dr Erin Lafford (University of Derby)

This talk considers how Clare explores the aesthetic, emotional, and ethical facets of carelessness. It asks what negligence has to do with writing poetry at the same time as it examines how Clare wrote about the social and ecological consequences of not caring.

10 February 2020 — ‘Mars in the Magazines’, Dr Will Tattersdill (University of Birmingham)

This is a talk about Mars in the 1890s – the Mars of H. G. Wells, with which War of the Worlds (1897) remains one of the most famous imagined communications. It wasn’t the only one, though. Here I’m going to discuss a serious proposal for actual real-life Martian communication made by the eugenicist and statistician Francis Galton (1822-1911). Putting it alongside Wells, I hope to provoke thought on the relationships between science, fiction, and the periodical press of the fin de siècle.

Wednesday 10 March 2020 — ‘Performing Egyptian Magic’, Dr Eleanor Dobson (University of Birmingham)

Pre-Recorded Talk followed by a Live Q&A on Zoom at 6pm (UK).

This talk explores ancient Egyptian imagery in Victorian performance magic, and ancient Egyptian magic in nineteenth-century literature, to unearth a culture that saw cutting-edge imaging techniques repeatedly aligned with antiquity. It also charts ancient Egyptian presences in magic lantern slides, photographs, and early moving pictures, illuminating a particular visual strand in a longstanding cultural tradition in which ancient Egypt is read as byword for magic.

Registration links available soon.

Previous Conferences & Seminar Series

Conference: Substance Use and Abuse in the Long Nineteenth Century

Conference: Romanticism Goes to University

Conference: Romanticism Takes to the Hills

Conference: Edgy Romanticism

Romanticism Seminar 2018

Victorians Seminar 2017

Romanticism Seminar 2017

Romanticism Seminar 2016

Romanticism Seminar 2015

Romanticism Seminar 2014

Romanticism Seminar 2013

Romanticism Seminar 2012

Romanticism Seminar 2011

Romanticism Seminar 2010

Teaching

Our EHUNineteen researchers lead specialist research-led modules at undergraduate and postgraduate level in long nineteenth-century studies. These modules include:

LIT1020: Ways of Reading – This first year introductory literature module uses Victorian literature to explore various ways to engage with and analyse literary texts. The module begins with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, introducing students to formalist, psychoanalytic, postcolonial and medical humanities approaches to this classic novel. The module then explores Victorian poetry, the detective fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle, and Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.

HIS2032: Digital Detectives – This second year optional history module explores the development of crime and punishment in the 18th and 19th centuries. It begins with a discussion of the ‘bloody code’ and public executions, before tracking transformations in punishment such as the introduction of transportation and imprisonment. It also considers the representation of crime and criminals in Victorian popular culture. The module is taught in computer labs and makes extensive use of digital tools and archives.

LIT2046: British Children’s Literature – This second year optional literature module explores British children’s literature from the eighteenth century to the present day, analyzing significant constructs of childhood from the Romantic child to the Victorian waif and beyond. Students study classics of the genre such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland as well as more modern examples such as Julia Golding’s The Diamond of Drury Lane, a historical novel focusing on life in 1790s London.

LIT2050: Romanticism – This second year literature period survey introduces students to the literature and culture of the Romantic period, 1750-1850, exploring representations of home and abroad, the literature of sensibility, the spirit of the age, as well as childhood, gender, and animal rights. Canonical Romantic poetry is studied alongside lesser-known examples of Romantic drama and historical fiction.

LIT2051: Rudyard Kipling – Rudyard Kipling is best known today for his Jungle Book tales and is often thought of as the leading voice in Victorian imperial propaganda. Yet Kipling was also a prolific writer of journalism, adventure fiction, gothic and supernatural tales, travel writing, poetry and more, and his relationship with empire is far more complex than is often acknowledged today. This course allows students to explore the many styles and genres of a prolific Victorian author, and to think about  Kipling’s influence on genres like children’s literature and the Gothic, as well as his reception and adaptation in modern culture and in discourses of race, racism and anti-racism, and nationhood. 

HIS3038: Special Subject – Read All About It – This year-long research module explores the history of journalism and print culture, with a particular focus on the Victorian era. It examines the emergence of the popular press and discusses topics such as women’s magazines, investigative journalism, the provincial press, and the so-called ‘Harmsworth Revoltion.’ In the second semester, students undertake research on a project of their choice linked to the history of journalism. The module is taught in computer labs and makes extensive use of digital newspaper archives.

HIS3038: Special Subject – History of Interpersonal Violence – This year-long module examines the history of interpersonal violence in 19th and 20th century Britain. It begins with a broad theoretical examination of the definitions of violence, moral panics, the rise of new journalism, and the nature of masculinity. These theories will then be applied to historical analysis of particular forms of interpersonal violence, including gang violence, domestic violence, rape and murder.  The module encourages students to examine the extent to which interpersonal ‘violence’ is framed and defined less by everyday experience and more through the discourses and operation of the law and the print media. The courtroom and the newspapers can be interpreted as arenas in which this framing is played out, reinforced and modified. In the second semester, students undertake research on a project of their choice linked to themes of the module.

LIT3040: Victorians – This third year literature period survey analyses major Victorian authors like Charles Dickens and the Brontës in relation to significant cultural questions of the time, from evolution and empire to women’s rights; at the same time, the module also explores 19th-century popular culture and Victorian tastes for scandal, sensation, the supernatural, sex, and adventure.

LIT3045: Hosting a Literary Festival – This third year optional module offers students the opportunity to develop, plan, and host an event, celebrating a literary topic of their choice. Past events include a Festival of Forgotten Victorian Women, rediscovering significant women writers from the past and thinking about the future.

LIT3047 Postmodern Histories: Story and Memory – This module examines recent trends in literature that re-imagine historical figures and the space they occupy in cultural memory. With a particular focus on the nineteenth century, students will examine modern controversies for renowned Victorians like Lewis Carroll, as well as issues of truth and lies in Peter Carey’s rewriting of the mythology surrounding outlaw Ned Kelly and Margaret Atwood’s exploration of the fate of a sixteen-year-old ‘celebrated murderess’. This course considers postmodern (im)possibilities of life writing focusing on gaps and unresolved tensions that invite fictional retelling of the past in biofictions that transform the past for different desires and different times.

HUM4015: The Victorian City – This interdisciplinary MA module investigates the image and reality of the Victorian city in England. As a result of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, urban centres became a source not only of interest but of fascination and anxiety in the nineteenth century. This engagement was vividly demonstrated in social accounts, journalism and popular fiction, particularly slum, detective and gothic fiction, through which social concerns about surveillance and safety were played out. The module brings together a range of historical, journalistic and literary documents from the period to facilitate students’ critical engagement with constructions of the city in the nineteenth century.

HUM4043 Neo-Victorian Fiction – This interdisciplinary MA module focuses on contemporary adaptation of the Victorian past. As part of a current trend of popularity for historical fiction, the Victorian period is crystallised as a site of creative and critical activity. The module investigates our enduring fascination with the Victorians considering the ways that nostalgia and self-conscious narrative experiment re-imagine an era.

HUM4046: Literature & Laughter – This MA level interdisciplinary module explores the theory and practice of the comic in nineteenth-century texts from the poetry of Lord Byron and novels of Jane Austen to Victorian print culture, joke books, and journalism.