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Camp Hamlet

While wandering around the moors last week I started thinking a lot about performances of nostalgia. But when I got back I realized I already wrote about that last year in this review of ‘Cantina’ and the Fitzrovia Radio Hour, so I’m not going to rehash that for you. However, while I was (re)considering all … Continue reading

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Haworth

As you will already know, dear devoted reader, my second book is coming out in the autumn with McFarland press.  This book is a volume of collected essays by scholars from around the world and I feel deeply privileged to have been part of this project.  We are nearing the end of the marathon now, … Continue reading

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Merry Widows and Gay Divorcees: Gender & Power in Marriage Narratives

After reading my friend & colleague Dr Jem Bloomfield’s post on Twelfth Night and “Mapp and Lucia”, which focused on the discomforts caused by sexual tension (or imagined sexual tension) between sets of people in social power relationships of inequality, I had some follow-up thoughts.  For Jem, the focus of these two narratives on “the … Continue reading

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Walking the Bounds

When I was young, we were forced to read Ethan Frome for school.  I found this novel utterly infuriating because one of the major themes is that the titular character leads a depressed, reduced life because he’d “seen too many New England winters.”  Now, New England winters are tough, but they don’t KILL people.  Okay, … Continue reading

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The Opera Caped Crusader

I speak frequently and with affection about my velvet opera cape.   All academics are especially fond of playing dress-up: in formal situations we wear long black robes with silk cowls, oddly-shaped sleeves, and some seriously natty headgear.  You may have thought I got my PhD because I have a deep and abiding love of Learning.  … Continue reading