Cultural Currents: Nineteenth to Twentieth Century
Our research group has a wealth of expertise in nineteenth and twentieth-century literature and culture, considering transitions and continuities between the 'Victorian' to the 'modern'. We have particular interests in the Gothic, sensation and Weird fiction, the fin-de-siècle and modernism.
Cultural Currents is a research group specialising in nineteenth and twentieth-century literature and culture and considering transitions and continuities between the 'Victorian' to the 'modern'. We have particular expertise in:
- Victorian Sensation Fiction
- The Gothic
- Weird Fiction
- The Fin de Siècle and the 1890s
- Decadence and Aestheticism
- Edwardian Literature
- Modernism
Our members work across the fields of literary and cultural criticism, textual editing, digital scholarship, and publishing history, with interdisciplinary links to visual art, politics, history, and gender and sexuality studies.
In considering transitions from the Victorian to the modern, our research engages in archival exploration, textual editing, and close literary analysis to bring new discoveries and fresh perspectives to this fascinating period in literature. We have an active PGR community and we hold regular events.
We publish across the fields of nineteenth and twentieth-century literature and culture. Some of our recent publications include:
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Anne-Marie Beller has a chapter focusing on ‘Law’ in Wilkie Collins in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2023) |
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Nick Freeman contributes a chapter on ‘Essays: Defending and Describing Decadence’ in The Oxford Handbook of Decadence (Oxford University Press, 2021) |
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Rachael Grew has a chapter on ‘The occult, magic, and alchemy’ in The Routledge Companion to Surrealism (Routledge, 2022) |
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Sarah Parker has recently published a book entitled Form and Modernity in Women’s Poetry, 1895–1922: A Line of Her Own (Routledge, 2024) |
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Joanna Turner outlines her original research discoveries about the Victorian bestselling author Marie Corelli in “‘The most accomplished liar in literature’? Uncovering Marie Corelli’s Hidden Early Life” (Victorian Popular Fictions, 5.1, 2023) |
Recent events include:
February 2024: Dr Sarah Parker (Loughborough University) launched her new book Form and Modernity in Women’s Poetry, 1895–1922: A Line of Her Own (Routledge, 2024)
November 2023: Dr James Aaron Green (University of Vienna) presented on ‘“Death Outlived”: Desiring and Fearing Longevity in Fin-de-Siècle Britain’ and Dr Jade French (Loughborough University) presented on ‘Late lives, late styles: ageing in modernism’
May 2023: Dr Louise Creechan (Durham University) delivered a workshop on the AHRC New Generation Thinkers scheme, plus a research paper entitled 'Killing the Letter: Misspellings and Orthographic Distortions in the Novels of Thomas Hardy'
November 2022: Dr LeeAnne M. Richardson (Georgia State University, USA) visited as an IAS fellow and delivered a research paper entitled '“Final Form”: Michael Field's Palimpsestic Poetic'
May 2022: Cultural Currents hosted an online symposium on Editing Decadence