Digital Humanities

This article considers offers a definition, overview and assessment of the current state of Digital Humanities particularly with regard to its actual and potential contribution to literary studies. It outlines the history of Humanities Computing and Digital Humanities, its evolution as a discipline including its institutional development and outstanding challenges it faces, and considers some of the most cogent critiques it has faced, particularly from North American based literary scholars, some of whom have suggested it represents a threat to centuries old traditions of humanistic inquiry and particularly to literary scholarship based on the tradition of close reading. The article shows instead that Digital Humanities approaches gainfully employed offer powerful new means of illuminating both context and content of texts, to assist with both close and distant readings, offering a supplement rather than a replacement for traditional means of literary inquiry. The digital techniques it discusses include stylometry, topic modelling, literary mapping, historical bibliometrics, corpus linguistic techniques, and sequence alignment, as well as some of the contributions that they have made. Further, the article explains how many key aspirations of Digital Humanities scholarship, including interoperability and linked open data, have yet to be realised, and considers some of the projects that are currently making this possible and challenges that they face. The article concludes on a slightly cautionary note: what are the implications of the Digital Humanities for literary study? It is too early to tell

Improving on nature: Eugenics in utopian fiction

There has long been a connection between the concept of utopia as a perfect society and the desire for perfect humans to live in this society. A form of selective breeding takes place in many fictional utopias from Plato’s Republic onwards, but it is only with the naming and promotion of eugenics by Francis Galton in the late nineteenth century that eugenics becomes a consistent and important component of utopian fiction. In my introduction I argue that behind the desire for eugenic fitness within utopias resides a sense that human nature needs improving. Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) prompted fears of degeneration, and eugenics was seen as a means of restoring purpose and control. Chapter Two examines the impact of Darwin’s ideas on the late nineteenth-century utopia through contrasting the evolutionary fears of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) with Edward Bellamy’s more positive view of the potential of evolution in Looking Backward (1888). Chapter Three uses examples from three late-nineteenth-century feminist utopias to highlight the aspirations within these societies to use science to transform women’s social position and transcend the biological determinism of their reproductive role. Chapter Four focuses on the social theory and utopian fiction of Charlotte Perkins Gilman to illustrate how eugenics becomes part of her vision of progress for women and the human race as a whole. Chapter Five turns to dystopian fiction from H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Charlotte Haldane and Katherine Burdekin to examine how eugenic ideas retained an element of idealism even in the context of the dystopias of the first half of the twentieth century. Chapter Six looks at the fate of eugenics in utopian fiction after the Second World War and argues that the resurgence of utopianism in the form of the ecological utopia continue to rely on eugenics, population control and manipulation of human behaviour to succeed. My conclusion argues that eugenics is a utopian idea with enduring appeal despite the disastrous effects of its practical implementation, and that utopian and dystopian fiction offer an important lens through which to understand the hopes and fears represented by the different versions of eugenics and the current debates over genetic enhancements and transhumanism

"In Formlessness and Appetite": Modernist Form and Imperial Food Politics, 1890-1922

My dissertation explores the impact of the British Empire's food system upon the culture of the Anglophone world. I argue that the experiments we collect under the auspices of literary modernism emerged in response to the social conditions created by imperial Britain's newly-industrialized eating economy. The texts I investigate, including works by Thomas Hardy, E. M. Forster, Joseph Conrad, and James Joyce, sought new strategies to represent what Joe Cleary calls "the spectacle of lived unevenness" that this shift in economy produced. For instance, as industrial food production erased distinctions between rural and urban spaces, traditional genres that relied upon these categories were pushed into new and hybrid artistic territory. My first two chapters summon ecocritical insights to analyze the transformation of pastoral and country house novels, which admit increasing aesthetic strangeness and chronological distortion into their figurations of reality. Later chapters utilize Marxist and biopolitical frameworks to examine the political impact of the food system upon colonies like Ireland, ultimately linking modernism's disjointed narrative forms to the nutritional stratification created by imperial agribusiness. By reading literary experimentation in light of the empire's food history, my work revises the perception of modernism as a fundamentally urban phenomenon and reveals its early engagement with the challenges of resource production and consumption that still haunt our political and environmental discussions in the wake of globalization.Doctor of Philosoph

19th Century Emigration from Cornwall as Experienced by the Wives 'Left Behind'

The 19th century is recognised as a period of mass emigration from Cornwall, with a significant proportion of the male population leaving to work overseas, mainly in the mining industry. Less appreciated is that many of these migrants were married men who left wives and children behind in Cornwall. This study seeks to shed some light on the experiences of these women, known as ‘married widows’. It adopts a multi-faceted approach, which draws upon crowd-sourcing and digital resources, in combination with more traditional methodologies. Scattered and fragmentary qualitative evidence (drawn from correspondence, newspapers, remittance and poor law records, supplemented by personal testimony recorded in family histories) is examined within a quantitative framework produced by an innovative database created from census records and a longitudinal study of outcomes. This thesis describes how tens of thousands of wives were ‘left behind’ in the mining communities of Cornwall, and the wide range of resources they drew upon in the absence of their husbands. It examines the interaction between the wives and the State in the form of the Poor Law and the Courts, identifying a pragmatic response to the needs of the emerging transnational nuclear family. Male migration from Cornwall is revealed to vary widely in type, intent and duration, leading to great diversity of experiences and outcomes for the wives ‘left behind’. The establishment of temporary male labour emigration from the Cornish mining communities is shown to have occurred earlier than in many other emigration centres, creating greater potential for cultural acclimatisation to the challenges of spousal separation. The findings of this study challenge existing, generalised, perceptions of the wives as passive victims in the Cornish emigration story. Levels of destitution or desertion appear low compared to the scale of the phenomenon, and wives are shown as active participants and influential voices in family strategies. Nonetheless, this study highlights the vulnerability and greater risks faced by the wives ‘left behind’, and identifies financial and emotional insecurity as common elements of their experience. This thesis demonstrates a methodology and reveals insights that might be applied to the study of wives ‘left behind’ in other parts of the British Isles, and a comparator for existing studies of those elsewhere in the world

Popular participation in public events and ceremonies in Cardiff in the twenty-first century

The study investigates present-day public events and ceremonies in Cardiff, and how they reflect, illustrate or employ traditional forms of communal activity. It employs the theoretical and empirical approaches of folkloristics, which deals with the identification, documentation and analysis of traditional material and expressive forms. Unusually, the study considers activities of popular origin and habitual practices of institutional origin on the same basis. It is framed largely by practice theory both generally and as applied within folkloristics, but with appropriate recognition given to the significance of performance theory. The topic is addressed through the observation of a range of activities and their associated forms of public engagement. The study was limited to activities taking place outdoors in daylight within the city centre and Cardiff Bay, with most fieldwork between 2010 and 2013. Three themes are addressed: socialising, protesting and remembering. A few activities are largely unorganised, but the majority are organised by public authorities and/or commercial bodies or by members of the public acting together. Many events have been launched in the past decade, and have become established within a recognisable cultural calendar, albeit the concept of a present-day ‘ritual year’ cannot be justified. As the capital city of Wales, certain institutional activities associated with the state, i.e. United Kingdom, are enacted. In contrast, there are few formal celebrations of Cardiff or Wales as such. Informal expressions tend to illustrate the cultural norms of the mainly English-speaking south-east, but the increasing presence of Welsh-speakers is becoming more noticeable, although there are few regular events centred on the language

Food Co-ops in Austerity Britain Negotiating politics, aid and care in changing times

This thesis is concerned with experiences of social, political and economic change in Britain. In an era of fluctuating food prices, precarious subjectivities and environmental concerns, everyday issues such as food (a basic human need and right) become significant sites through which to offer a grounded perspective on how everyday citizens configure their social and financial worlds in relation to these changes. By focussing on two grassroots, retail food co-ops in London which were born of different eras, this thesis explores the ways in which each food co-op negotiates different visions and values relating to food-based politics, models of aids, practices of care and community building. Within this context, contradictory visions and practices can become intertwined – some more closely aligned with the co-operative ideal of mutual aid, others with less egalitarian models of charitable giving, or individualised practices and values of politics, aid and care. While this country has been going through processes of reform (often characterised as neoliberal reform) since the 1970s, the financial crisis of 2008 and resultant period of austerity had a significant impact on the nature of politics, the economy and the lives of everyday citizens in Britain. These political economic shifts have done much to inform and adjust the ideals, practices and structures of these two food co-ops. The social histories presented here, therefore, help to contextualise how each food co-op has been structured and informed by the social worlds around them; how their foundations were moulded by a particular moment in time; and, how they sit within the present, at times a little uncomfortably. This social, cultural, political economic and historical context is, therefore, fundamental to how food co-ops operate, and how they operationalise the basic principles of co-operativism

The human ecology of need and relief on the Lincoln Heath, c.1790-1850

This thesis examines the extent of change and continuity in experiences of need and relief at the local scale within the transitional period between the Old and New Poor Laws. In doing so, it tests the impact of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act against both the dynamic nature of welfare in the waning period of the Old Poor Law and the importance of localised socio-economic factors. Methodologically, the thesis moves away from common framings currently adopted by the literature. Instead, it grounds analysis in a human ecological methodology which aims to examine relationships and impacts between people and their local environment. Research is embedded within Lincolnshire, an understudied area in the context of English and Welsh welfare historiography, and focusses on ten proximate parishes on the Lincoln Heath, a distinct geological region of the county. Change and continuity between poor laws was mixed. The main aims of the New Poor Law were generally administrative and restrictive in nature, aiming to restructure the management of the poor law and curtail outdoor relief for the able-bodied. This thesis argues that these goals were broadly met within the area of study. The administrative variation evident under the Old Poor Law was largely erased through unionisation and the formation of New Poor Law salaried staff. In addition, this thesis suggests a reduction in outdoor relief given to able-bodied males under the New Poor Law, with this cohort being a key target of the Poor Law Amendment Act itself and later special and general orders issued by the Poor Law Commission. The creation of union workhouses multiplied the potential for indoor relief to be a composite factor of relief outcomes under the New Poor Law, generally standardising the experience of the workhouse within the poor law union area in comparison to a mixed indoor relief expression evident under the Old Poor Law within the area of study. However, dominant parish ratepayers staffed key administrative positions under both poor laws, leading to broad demographic persistence in some aspects of administration. Despite the growth of poor law staffing under the New Poor Law, salaried positions within poor law unions were filled by local choice, meaning such staff became part of a rearticulated forum of poor law management which exhibited elements of continuation. Additionally, periods of increased need and levels of poor law receipt remained temporally variable across the period of study, with the New Poor Law not negating the fact that these often relied on localised economic conditions. Similarly, there was a broad continuity in the demography of receipt under both poor laws, with cohorts such as women, children and the elderly being dominant. Outdoor relief remained the primary poor law relief outcome into the New Poor Law, seeing continuation with previous practice, particularly from the 1820s onwards as outdoor relief seemingly became the dominant relief outcome in the parish selection. Moreover, the poor law itself always sat in relation to other avenues of relief within a broader mixed economy of welfare, with individuals amalgamating differing strands of support within personal relief strategies. As such, the impact of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act was nuanced, with conclusions on the extent of change and continuity often dependent on the framing of questions asked. What is clear, however, is that the poor law in its localised expression was embedded in an underlying socio-economic locale, impacting how it was conceived, managed and utilised