Dr Susan Matthews

 

Job Title: Senior Lecturer (English Literature) Telephone: +44 (0)20 8392 3634 Email Address: Susan.Matthews@roehampton.ac.uk

Current Research

My next project (Multiplication) is a study of philanthropy and the politics of fertility in the years before and after Malthus.

Research Interests

William Blake; Visual and verbal text; visual arts and public culture in the Romantic period; literature and the Bible; philanthropy and the politics of fertility,especially Jonas Hanway and Hannah More ; the twentieth century reception of William Blake; the artist's book; annotation and marginalia; cultural representations of prostitution; literature and disease; representations of pregnancy and birth; Joanna Southcott; the graphic novel.

I would welcome applications from Phd candidates working in any of these specialist areas. I have supervised Phds on William Blake and gender; Margaret Atwood; and am currently supervising students working on The Spectator in its European context, and on Susan Coolidge.

Forthcoming publications

Blake, Sexuality and Bourgeois Politeness, Cambridge Studies in Romanticism, 2010.

'Blake, Hayley and Homophobia', in Queer Blake edited Helen Bruder and Tristanne Connolly, Palgrave Macmillan 2010.

'An alternative national gallery: Blake’s 1809 Exhibition and the attack on Evangelical culturelake's Alternative National Gallery', Tate Papers ed. Martin Myrone and David Blayney Brown.

'‘A son of taste and of the muses’: Malkin, Blake and the role of art in the culture of rational dissent' in ed. Angus Whitehead and Mark Crosby, William Blake: Severe Contentions and the Burning Fire of Thought Palgrave, 2010.

Selected Publications

Chapters in Books
'The Surprising Success of Dr Armstrong', p193-207 in ed. Steve Clark and Tristanne Connolly, Liberating Romantic Medicine , Pickering and Chatto, 2009

'Impurity of Diction: The 'Harlots curse' and dirty words', in ed. Sarah Haggarty and Jon Mee, Blake and Conflict, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

'Fit audience tho' many': Pullman’s Blake and the anxiety of popularity, p205-224 in Blake, Modernity and Popular Culture, ed. Steve Clark and Jason Whittaker, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

'Africa and Utopia: Refusing a local habitation', p104-120 in The Reception of Blake in the Orient, ed. Steve Clark and Masashi Suzuki, London: Continuum, 2006.

'Blake, Hayley and the History of Sexuality', p83-101 in Blake, Nation and Empire ed. Steve Clark and David Worrall, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

'Rouzing the Faculties to Act': Pullman's Blake for Children', p125-134 in
His Dark Materials Illuminated: Critical Essays on Philip Pullman's Trilogy, ed. Millicent Lenz and Carole Scott, Wayne State University Press, 2005.

'Fiction of the Romantic Period', p298-314 in The Romantic Period: A Bibliographical Guide ed. Michael O'Neill, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.

'Gender', p150-181 in Romantic Period Writings 1798-1832: an Anthology , ed. Zachary Leader and Ian Haywood, London and New York: Routledge, 1998.

'Women Writers and Readers', in Romantic Writings ed. Stephen Bygrave, London: Routledge, 1996.

'Jerusalem and Nationalism', p79-100 in Beyond Romanticism: New Approaches to texts and contexts 1780-1832 ed. Stephen Copley and John Whale, London: Routledge, 1992. Reprinted p80-100 in Blake ed. John Lucas, Harlow: Longman, 1998.

‘Matter too Soft: Pope and the Women’s Novel’ in Pope: New Contexts ed. David Fairer, Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990



Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals

‘“Happy Copulation”: Blake, visual enthusiasm and gallery culture’ Romanticism on the Net , Romantic Spectacle 46, May 2007, guest-edited by John Halliwell and Ian Haywood

Teaching Expertise

Undergraduate courses include: Telling Stories: an introduction to narrative theory; Romanticism core set; William Blake and the Twentieth Century.

I convene the MA in Women, Gender and Writing and teach on the Religion and Literature MA.