Centre for Nineteenth Century Studies

Centre for Ninteenth Century Studies

The Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies brings together scholars from a wide range of disciplines across the University of Sheffield and aims to promote genuinely interdisciplinary and collaborative research. Our interests extend over the whole breadth of the "long Nineteenth Century", from c.1789-c.1914, covering British, American and European history, literature and culture. Current members of staff are drawn from English Literature and Language, History, Germanic Studies, French, Russian, Architecture, Music and Philosophy. The Centre holds regular seminars and conferences, and provides a forum for its numerous graduate students. It runs a successful multi-disciplinary MA in Nineteenth-Century Studies.

The work of the Centre is not confined to the University, but extends outwards to the City, drawing on its wealth of nineteenth-century resources. We work directly with the City Archives, the Ruskin Gallery, the Graves Art Gallery, and Weston Park Museum, drawing on their materials for both research and MA teaching. Important holdings include Ruskin's Guild of St George collection of art and crafts at the Ruskin Gallery, and, at the City Archives, the papers of Edward Carpenter, and the archive of the Guild of St George. There are also extensive archival collections in the areas of labour, social, political and medical history. The University of Sheffield library, which itself dates back to the nineteenth century, has excellent holdings in both the primary and secondary literature in the field, including complete runs of all the major British periodicals, parliamentary records, and works by both major and minor literary figures. The library has over a million volumes, and subscribes to over 2,500 periodicals.

SOME PAST AND FUTURE NINETEENTH-CENTURY EVENTS ORGANISED, CO-ORGANISED OR SPONSORED BY THE CENTRE:

Poetry, Politics and Pictures in the Nineteenth Century. An interdisciplinary conference hosted by the University of Sheffield, 26-27 March, 2010

The Historical Imagination in the Nineteenth Century. Britain and the Netherlands 17^th Conference, University of Sheffield, 2-5 September 2009. Organised by the Centre for Dutch Studies

The Genealogy of Modern Civic Identity: Politics, Culture and Performance. White Rose Network Symposium. 15 June 2009, 11.50am–4.00pm

Eighteenth-Century Gothic. Conference. School of English, University of Sheffield, Thursday 25 October 2008

The Voice of the People: The European Folk Revival, 1760-1914. International Interdisciplinary Conference, in association with the Departments of History and Germanic Studies, the School of English and the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition. Thursday 6 - Saturday 8 September 2007

The Finest Verbalism of Victorian Poetry. A One-day Workshop organised by

the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics & the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies – 10 March 2007 9.30am-5.00pm

Histoires de la Terre. A conference exploring the impact of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment developments in the earth sciences and related fields on French and Francophone literature of the 18th, 19th and early-20th centuries. Organised by the Department of French. 30 March - 1 April 2007

War, Genocide and Memory. German Colonialism and National Identity. A conference organised by the Department of Germanic Studies, the Department of History and the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, University of Sheffield, 11-13 September 2006

Crossing the boundaries: Writing by German-speaking women, 1780-1918. A conference organised by the Department of Germanic Studies, together with the Centre for Gender Studies in Europe and the Centre for Nineteenth Century Studies, at Tapton Hall, University of Sheffield, 19-21 April 2006

Electrifying Experimentation: Science in Nineteenth-Century Britain. A One-Day Interdisciplinary Conference. Department of English Literature, University of Sheffield, 25 February 2006

Research Interests of Members of Staff

Dr Tim Baycroft (Director of the Centre): 19th-century French history, especially relating to questions of nationalism.

Prof Michael Perraudin (former Director of the Centre): 19th century German literature, especially German post-Romanticism and reflections on revolution in literature of the Vormärz.

Dr Matthew Campbell (former Director of the Centre): Victorian poetry, and Irish writing.

Prof Sylvia Adamson: literature, language and linguistics: grammaticalisation, subjectivity, narrative, rhetoric and the history of English

Dr Anthony Bennett: popular music in the Victorian era.

Prof Clyde Binfield: 19th-century cultural, political, religious and architectural history.

Dr Caroline Bland: late 19th and early 20th century German literature; constructions of femininity, sexuality and motherhood in Wilhelminian society and culture.

Prof Peter Blundell Jones: late 19th-century architecture, with particular interest in figures associated with William Morris.

Dr Shirley Foster: English and American literature, including the Victorian novel, travel writing and fiction for girls, colonial theory and feminism.

Dr Clare Griffiths: the political and cultural history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain, the history of the Labour movement, and the social history of rural Britain.

Dr Karen Harvey: early nineteenth-century social history, especially the history of the household.

Dr Jane Hodson: late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century political writing, especially theories and practices of language and the role of gender in the 1790s.

Dr Malcolm Jones: nineteenth-century folklore and popular language.

Dr Angela Keane: women’s prose fiction, particularly in relation to consumer culture, since the eighteenth century.

Prof Danny Karlin: Victorian poetry, Franco-British literary relations.

Dr Linda Kirk: the French Revolution, and intellectual history in the nineteenth century.

Dr David Martin: nineteenth-century labour history.

Dr Hamish Mathison: early nineteenth century literature and journalism, especially in Scotland.

Dr Samantha Matthews: Romantic and Victorian poetry, Dickens, literature and the city.

Dr Duco van Oostrum: nineteenth-century American literature.

Prof Neil Roberts: George Eliot and George Meredith, narrative theory, particularly Bakhtin.

Prof Robert Stern: nineteenth-century German philosophy, with particular interest in Hegel.

Dr Marcus Waithe: William Morris, nineteenth-century literature and political thought.

Prof John Woolford : 19th century poetry, especially Browning, Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Arnold; the poetics of the 19th century grotesque

Dr Angela Wright: late 18th- and early 19th-century English and French literature, with particular interest in the Gothic.

Recent books by members of staff include:

Baycroft: Nationalism in Europe, 1789-1945; (co-ed.) What is a Nation? Europe 1789-1914; France: Inventing the Nation [in press]
Bland: (co-ed) Schwellenüberschreitungen. Politik in der Literatur von deutschsprachigen Frauen, 1780-1918; (co-ed) Frauen in der literarischen Öffentlichkeit, 1780-1918
Campbell: Rhythm and Will in Victorian Poetry; The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry
Foster: (co-author) What Katy Read: Feminist re-readings of 'Classic' Stories for Girls; (co-ed) An Anthology of Women's Travel Writing; Elizabeth Gaskell. A Literary Life;
Hodson: Language and Revolution in Burke, Wollstonecraft, Paine, and Godwin
Keane: Women, Writing and the English Nation in the 1790s: Romantic Belongings;
Martin: Labour and Society in Britain, 1830-1914;
Matthews: Poetical Remains: Poets’ Graves, Bodies, and Books in the Nineteenth Century
Perraudin: Literature, the 'Volk' and the Revolution in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Germany; (co-ed.) Formen der Wirklichkeitserfassung nach 1848. Deutsche Literatur und Kultur vom Nachmärz bis zur Gründerzeit I;
Roberts: (co-ed.) Meredith and the Novel;
Waithe: William Morris’s Utopia of Strangers. Victorian Medievalism and the Ideal of Hospitality;
Wright: Gothic Fiction: A reader’s guide to essential criticism

Graduate Studies

S.W. Parrott, "Turner on Varnishing Day", Ruskin Gallery, Sheffield

Applications are welcomed for M.Phil. and Ph.D. study, both full and part-time, in all our research areas. Students are assigned supervisors in either a single or two departments, depending on the range of their topic. Recent projects have included interdisciplinary work on literature and science (Pater, Aestheticism and Science; Dickens, Gaskell and Science), religious history and literature (responses to Anglican convents), nineteenth-century German literature (Literature and Censorship in the Vormärz), and architectural and social history. In addition to the regular nineteenth-century seminar series, there is a whole range of other graduate and research seminars which students are encouraged to attend. In their first year, students usually take research training modules up to a value of 45 credits; courses on offer include modules on information technology in the humanities and on nineteenth-century research skills.

The Departments which make up the Centre all have study suites with networked computers specifically reserved for graduate use. All the main Sheffield Arts departments will shortly move into a large new Arts Building in Hanover Street, Sheffield, at the heart of the University campus.

Great care is taken to foster graduate research, and to offer (paid) teaching experience wherever possible. There are also possibilities for publication through work on volumes produced by members of the Centre.

The University offers scholarships for full time study, and bursaries are also available for both full and part-time study. Members of the Centre are very happy to offer help with all applications for funding.

MA in Nineteenth-Century Studies

Our multi-track MA is designed for students with a background in either English Literature, History, or other subjects offering relevant period training. It aims to introduce students who might come from a narrow disciplinary base to methodologies and concerns of other related fields of study in the larger frame of Nineteenth-Century scholarship. For students who wish to proceed to research degrees it offers excellent research training in the field.

Students take a core module, which introduces them to interdisciplinary research and involves work in the local archives and galleries; and approved modules (normally three). Students also write a 15,000 word dissertation on a subject of their own choosing. Students preparing themselves specifically for MPhil/PhD research can choose the Research Track, where the approved modules include one in Research Practice. For students who would prefer just to take courses, without writing a dissertation, there is the option of the diploma.

The MA can be taken full time, over twelve months, or part-time, over twenty-four months.

Further details...

Enquiries and requests for application forms for research degrees in the Centre can be directed to:

Dr Matthew Campbell, Director, Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies
or to Graduate Secretary
School of English
University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN
Tel: 0114 282 8499 or 8450, fax: 0114 282 8481
e-mail m.campbell@shef.ac.uk

Alternatively, you can make contact directly, via the links above, with the member of staff who might supervise you.

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