School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies

Profile

Charlotte joined the School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies in 2007.  Her research interests include nineteenth-century literature and culture (particularly nineteenth-century representations of food, hunger, cooking and domesticity); Victorian illustrated texts; cultural history and cultural theory. She teaches mainly on nineteenth-century literature, and co-ordinates special units on Gothic literature and the writings of Charlotte Brontë. 

Current Research Project

The Victorian Dining Room.  I am currently working on the exhibition of ‘taste’ in the Victorian dining-room, examining the conflicting textual and visual instruction offered to middle-class householders in a range of publications, from fiction to domestic design literature. This forms part of a wider project on the ideological significance of the dining room and acts of consumption in Victorian culture, which will result in the production of a book-length monograph.

Journal Articles

'"Mighty by thy Meats and Drinks Am I:" The Gendered Politics of Feast and Fast in Tennyson's Idylls of the King,' Victorian Poetry (forthcoming Fall 2014).

'Representing the "Hungry Forties" in Image and Verse: the Politics of Hunger in Early-Victorian Illustrated Periodicals,' Victorian Literature and Culture 40.2 (2012): 421-449. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1060150312000034

‘Reading Recipes: The Victorian Cookery Book and its Literary Analogues’, Peer English 2 (2007), 19-31.

Book Chapters

'Food, Famine and the Abjection of Irish Identity in Victorian Representation,' in Marlene Tromp, Maria K. Bachman and Heidi Kaufman, eds, Fear, Loathing and Victorian Xenophobia (Ohio State University Press, 2012), pp. 153-180.

Conference Papers

“’When Hunger Rages Fierce and Strong:’ The Politics of Hunger in Victorian Illustrated Periodicals, 1840-49.”  Poetry, Politics and Pictures in the Nineteenth Century, University of Sheffield.  March 2010.

“The Art of Dining: The Exhibition of Taste in the Victorian Dining Room.”  Artistry and Industry: Representations of Creative Labour in Literature and the Visual Arts 1830-1900, University of Exeter.  Jul 2008.

“A Peculiarly Middle-Class Institution: Picnicking with the Victorians.”  British Association of Victorian Studies Annual Conference, University of Salford.  Aug 2007.

“Reading Recipes: The Victorian Cookery Book and its Literary Analogues.”  Print Culture and the Novel 1850-1900, Faculty of English, University of Oxford.  Jan 2007.

“Picturing the Past, Negotiating the Present: Reading the Photography of Lewis Carroll.”  British Association of Victorian Studies Annual Conference, University of Gloucestershire.  Sept 2005.

Invited Papers

'Fasting Girls and Fasting Knights: Abstemious Eaters in Tennyson's Idylls of the King'. Fasting and the Famished Body: Disordered Eating and the Gendering of Self-Starvation. Panel discussion, June 2012. Part of the 'Damaging the Body' series: http://damagingthebody.org/archive/panel-discussions-2012/

Research Awards

• 2003-05: Arts and Humanities Research Council Studentship (PhD)  
• 2002-03: University of Wales Postgraduate Studentship (PhD)      
• 2002: Victor Neo Prize, Cardiff University        
• 2001-02: Arts and Humanities Research Board Studentship (MA)