Victorian Legacies

In this episode I'm joined by my Dracula Vibes panel, Drs Madeline Potter, Theadora Jean and Daniel Kasper!

We discuss how Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's novella Carmilla influenced Dracula, and the legacy Le Fanu's work has today. We consider the queer elements of the work, as well as the way Anglo-Irish identity features in Le Fanu's writing. We think about the way frame narrative benefits Gothic literature overall, and also how a Le Fanu renaissance could be occurring in academia and beyond, to raise the profile of these Gothic works.

Bios:

Dr Madeline Potter is an early career teaching & research fellow in the long 19th century at the University of Edinburgh. She works on 19th century gothic literature and theology, with a focus on monstrosity.. Her academic monograph, Theological Monsters: Religion and Irish Gothic, is forthcoming with University of Wales Press. She is also writing a trade book, The Roma: A Travelling History, to be published by The Bodley Head in the UK and Harper Collins in the USA.

Dr Theadora Jean is a Gothic scholar and writer. She recently completed her creative-critical doctorate at Royal Holloway, and her research specialisms include the 19th century, Dracula adaptation, Romanticism, anti-racism, and interdisciplinarity. Her creative work is published under the name T.S.J. Harling.

Dr Daniel Kasper is an Instructor of English at the University of Texas Arlington, studying the Gothic, Dracula, Shirley Jackson, Victorians, and feminism. His work appears in the journal Women's Studies, the collection Shirley Jackson: A Companion, and is forthcoming in an edited collection on Gothic Nostalgia, talking about Mary Poppins Returns.

Check out the panel's Le Fanu suggestions:

• Carmilla
• In a Glass Darkly
• Uncle Silas
• Green Tea
• Schalken the Painter
• Madam Crowl's Ghost

Episode Credits:

Episode Writer, Editor and Producer: Emma Catan
Music: Burning Steaks (by Stationary Sign) - obtained via EpidemicSound

Check us out at the following social media pages and websites!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/victorianlegaciespodcast
Twitter: @victorianlegac1
Instagram: @victorianlegaciespodcast
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/victorianlegacies.bsky.social
Website: https://emmacatan.wordpress.com/victorian-legacies-podcast/
Email: [email protected]

In this episode I'm joined by Natasha Booth-Johnson, who is researching into the intersections between queerness and politics in the works of nineteenth-century writers Edith Simcox, Mona Caird, and Isabella Ormston-Ford. We discuss how these writers were active in political movements and the ways in which their work also connects with queerness (as a broad concept involving sexuality, gender, and overall non-conformity).

We also discuss the QueerNineteen website, which is a useful resource for scholars to publish short pieces, but also for the general public to access about topics involving queer studies; this sparks some chat about how information about 'non-heteronormative' identities has and is controlled in everyday life., such as the education system.

About my guest: Natasha is an AHRC-funded PhD student at the University of Birmingham. She is researching queer fiction by politically active female authors between 1882 and 1914. She has been running the website QueerNineteen since July 2022. Her research interests lie primarily in unconventional practices and marginalised communities, and she has previously completed work on Decadence and Spiritualism.

This was recorded in early 2023 (January) hence the notes about industrial action!

For more information on Tasha's work, check out the details below:

Twitter: @QueerNineteen | @nkarlz
Website: https://www.queernineteen.com/

Check out Tasha's suggestions:
Mr Sunshine - on Netflix

Episode Credits:
Episode Writer, Editor and Producer: Emma Catan
Music: Burning Steaks (by Stationary Sign) - obtained via EpidemicSound

Check us out at the following social media pages and websites!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/victorianlegaciespodcast
Twitter: @victorianlegac1
Instagram: @victorianlegaciespodcast
Website: https://emmacatan.wordpress.com/victorian-legacies-podcast/
Email: [email protected]

In this episode I'm joined by Valentina Gaio. Like myself, Valentina's research interests are broad, from popular culture to crime and horror, and we initially discuss the contemporary 18th century media depiction of the French Revolution. Our main topic today, however, centres on Victorian views of food (specifically slum inhabitants' diets), and the similarities to contemporary 21st century food campaigns. Specifically, we focus on Valentina's study on Jamie Oliver's public campaign, and how Victorian/19th century attitudes towards poverty, disadvantaged communities, diet, and how to help marginalised people maybe have not changed as much as we might initially imagine

About my guest: Valentina is a PhD student at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, who's currently preparing for her comprehensive exams. Her field of interest is Modern Popular Culture with a focus on crime and horror. She is interested in queer themes, social structures and hierarchies, and grief. She is currently working on an investigation of contemporary English reporting of the French Revolution. In addition to her academic work, she is an editor of the literary journal The Lamp and a prose writer. She received her BA in Modern Foreign Cultures and Languages at the University of Parma, her MA in English Studies at the University of Venice, and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of St Andrews in Scotland

For more information on Valentina's work, check out the details below:

Instagram: @popcompromp
https://queensges.wordpress.com/reps/
"Let Them Eat Nuggets": https://20vg41.wixsite.com/thedoldrums/post/let-them-eat-nuggets

Check out Valentina's suggestions: (lInks to these can all be found in Valentina's article above)

Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast London by Ellen Rosson
"Food and the Cooking of the Working Class about 1900" by Eunice Schofield
"The provision of school meals since 1906: progress or a recipe for disaster?" by Alan Finch
"Jamie Oliver's War on Nuggets" by Dan Olson
Sunless Skies, a Lovecraftian videogame with a Neo-Victorian setting.

Valentina is helping to organise the Queen's Graduate Conference in Literature, so here is the live CFP: https://queensges.wordpress.com/queens-graduate-conference-in-literature-2/


Episode Credits:
Episode Writer, Editor and Producer: Emma Catan
Music: Burning Steaks (by Stationary Sign) - obtained via EpidemicSound

Check us out at the following social media pages and websites!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/victorianlegaciespodcast
Twitter: @victorianlegac1
Instagram: @victorianlegaciespodcast
Website: https://emmacatan.wordpress.com/victorian-legacies-podcast/
Email: [email protected]

In this episode I'm joined by Dr Danielle Dove, whose research focuses on dress and fashion history, material culture, and literary celebrity. We consider how dress can be linked to the uncanny, utilising new materialism and object-oriented ontology theories to explore the idea that objects (such as items of dress) have a form of agency, and how neo-Victorian sartorial objects seem to have an impact or effect on the protagonists. Particularly, they often have a form of memory (physical or psychological) of past wearers. We think about how second hand or vintage clothes evoke memories of the Victorian period, and the wearers who came before us. We consider the continued fascination with period dress, despite the impracticalities of wearing some of those outfits today, and the enduring legacy of the 19th century in relation to dress and material culture.

About my guest: Dr Danielle Dove is Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of Surrey. Her research and publications centre on Victorian and neo-Victorian literature with a specific emphasis on dress and fashion history, material culture, and literary celebrity. She is the co-editor of Neo-Victorian Things: Re-Imagining Nineteenth-Century Material Cultures in Literature and Film (2022, Palgrave Macmillan) and is currently working on her monograph provisionally titled Victorian Dress in Contemporary Historical Fiction (forthcoming with Bloomsbury).

For more information on Danielle's work, check out the details below:
Twitter: @Danielle_M_Dove
Academic profile: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/people/danielle-mariann-dove

Check out Danielle's suggestions:
Richard Flanagan - Wanting
Diana Souhami - Gwendolen: A Novel
Barbara Ewing - The Petticoat Men

Episode Credits:

Episode Writer, Editor and Producer: Emma Catan
Music: Burning Steaks (by Stationary Sign) - obtained via EpidemicSound

Check us out at the following social media pages and websites!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/victorianlegaciespodcast
Twitter: @victorianlegac1
Instagram: @victorianlegaciespodcast
Website: https://emmacatan.wordpress.com/victorian-legacies-podcast/
Email: [email protected]

In this episode I'm joined by Céleste Callen, who researches into time and temporal experience in 19th century literature. Specifically, we discuss her PhD which utilises the works of Henri Bergson as a lens through which to read the works of Charles Dickens. We discuss how for Bergson, time is a subjective experience rather than linear, and how this impacts on the standard novel construction, in addition to narrative voice (such as in David Copperfield). We think about how time became more standardised and important for the Victorians (and other 19th century societies), with the introduction of the railways, Greenwich Mean Time, all of which show how temporality intersected with (and impacted from) modernity. We discuss how the pandemic impacted our sense of time, and how the 19th century constructions (such as working weeks, timetables etc) endure in different ways today.

About my guest: Céleste Callen is a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests revolve around time and subjective temporal experience in nineteenth-century fiction. She holds a BA in English from King’s College London, where she wrote a dissertation exploring the deconstructed boundaries between childhood and adulthood in Dickens and Barrie. Her postgraduate dissertation explored the self's relationship to time in the works of Balzac, Stevenson and Wilde, which inspired her current doctoral project. Her PhD research explores subjective temporal experience in Dickens’ fiction, and more specifically argues that Dickens anticipates modern philosophy’s conception of temporal experience by reading his fiction through the lens of French philosopher Henri Bergson’s philosophy of time.

For more information on Céleste's work, check out the details below:
https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/celeste-callen

Check out Céleste''s suggestions:

Shola von Reinhold: Lote
Honoré de Balzac, La Peau de Chagrin (1831)
Charles Dickens, The Chimes (1844) and The Haunted Man (1848)

Episode Credits:

Episode Writer, Editor and Producer: Emma Catan
Music: Burning Steaks (by Stationary Sign) - obtained via EpidemicSound

Check us out at the following social media pages and websites!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/victorianlegaciespodcast
Twitter: @victorianlegac1
Instagram: @victorianlegaciespodcast
Website: https://emmacatan.wordpress.com/victorian-legacies-podcast/
Email: [email protected]

In this episode I'm joined by a special panel: Dr Madeline Potter, Theadora Jean, and Dr Daniel Kasper, who all research into Gothic literature (specifically, Dracula!) We discuss how their interest in Dracula began, and the different academic (and side) projects they have worked on. We focus on the positive and negative aspects of adaptations, and the assumptions we have (perhaps incorrectly gained) about the Dracula figure. Discussions also include ideas of monstrosity and how this is not reflected in adaptations; ideas of cultural sensitivity, especially when considering the Romanian folklore and setting, and whether the novel can be considered feminist.

TRIGGER WARNING: This episode features discussions around sexual assault/rape, and references to racism in literature.

About the panel: Madeline Potter is a postdoctoral fellow at Edge Hill University’s EHU19. She works on Irish Gothic literature and theology. Her first academic monograph, ‘Theological Monsters: Religion and Irish Gothic’ will be published by University of Wales Press, and she is currently editing a collection on vampires and theology.

Theadora Jean is a Gothic scholar and writer. She is currently studying for a Critical & Creative Writing PhD at the Royal Holloway, University of London, on the 'New Woman' in Dracula. Her own gothic tales are published under a pseudonym, T.S.J. Harling.

Daniel Kasper is an English Instructor at the University of Texas Arlington. He studies a wide range of Gothic texts including Dracula, with specific interests in feminist and biopolitical studies. He's been most recently published in Women’s Studies and Shirley Jackson: A Companion

For more information on our panel, check out the details below:

Thea's Twitter: @theadorajean / @tsjharling
Thea's writing portfolio: https://tsjharling.squarespace.com/
Listen with Audrey: https://www.listenwithaudrey.com/

Check out the panel's suggestions:

Sheridan Le Fanu: Carmilla; Uncle Silas
Bram Stoker: The Jewel of Seven Stars; The Lair of the White Worm
Midnight Mass - Netflix show
Florence Marryat: The Blood of the Vampire
Uriah Derick D'Arcy : The Black Vampyre: A Legend of St Domingo

Episode Credits:

Episode Writer, Editor and Producer: Emma Catan
Music: Burning Steaks (by Stationary Sign) - obtained via EpidemicSound

Check us out at the following social media pages and websites!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/victorianlegaciespodcast
Twitter: @victorianlegac1
Instagram: @victorianlegaciespodcast
Website: https://emmacatan.wordpress.com/victorian-legacies-podcast/
Email: [email protected]

In this episode I'm joined by Dr Tom Ue, who has researched into authors such as George Gissing, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Edward Prime-Stevenson. We begin by discussing how Tom developed his PhD from his previous studies into George Gissing, and how Gissing's diaries show how well-read and well-connected he was. We consider Gissing's shift from working-class writing, and the ethical issues that still exist today surrounding writing about disadvantaged people, and possibly for them, rather than giving them agency. We marvel at how a nineteenth-century author like Gissing recognised this problem, and how this is a legacy that continues to be unpacked and challenged.

About my guest: Dr Tom Ue is Assistant Professor in Literature and Science at Dalhousie University. He is the author of Gissing, Shakespeare, and the Life of Writing (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming) and George Gissing (Liverpool University Press, forthcoming); the editor of George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming); and an editor of the journal Global Nineteenth-Century Studies (Liverpool University Press, 2022-present). Ue has held the prestigious Frederick Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship and he is an Honorary Research Associate at University College London.

For more information on Tom's work, check out the details below:

https://dal.academia.edu/TomUe
Twitter: @GissingGeorge

Check out Tom's suggestions:
Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
George Gissing - New Grub Street

Episode Credits:

Episode Writer, Editor and Producer: Emma Catan
Music: Burning Steaks (by Stationary Sign) - obtained via EpidemicSound

Check us out at the following social media pages and websites!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/victorianlegaciespodcast
Twitter: @victorianlegac1
Instagram: @victorianlegaciespodcast
Website: https://emmacatan.wordpress.com/victorian-legacies-podcast/
Email: [email protected]

In this episode I'm joined by Dr Louise Creechan, who has researched into Victorian and Neo-Victorian Studies. We begin by discussing her PhD in illiteracy and how the nineteenth century saw the rise of mass literacy in England, and the creation of 'normative' standards of achievement. This coincided with capitalist models for a 'productive workforce.' We think about this persists today, with funding dependent on school grades' success, and also how the hierarchical nature of the academy can limit potential for neurodiverse people, and other academics who may have barriers such as dyslexia. We consider the legacies of Victorian systems on class structures and social inequality, and also look at innovative approaches such as Louise's forthcoming monograph, and her funded Neo-Victorian musicals projects, which were a great form of public engagement.

About my guest: Dr Louise Creechan is a Lecturer in the Literary Medical Humanities at Durham University, specialising in Victorian literature, neurodiversity, and the history of (not) reading. She is an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker and her current project, The Legacy of the Dunce’s Hat, is about how the Victorians quantified stupidity and how these ideas saturate our current understandings of intelligence. She is the co-founder of the Narratives of Neurodiversity Network and she is also working on an edited collection, (Neuro)Divergent Textualities, that will attempt to define what a neurodivergent approach to literary scholarship would look like. Louise is also queen of the musicals and has published on and staged various Neo-Victorian musicals in the name of public engagement. She is also the co-host of the academic comedy podcast, LOL My Praxis.

For more information on Louise's work, check out the details below:

https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/louise-creechan/
LOLMyPraxis (Twitter): @lolmypraxis

Check out Louise's suggestions:
Sweeney Todd (Sondheim musical version)
Cliff Richard's Heathcliff
George Gissing - Workers in the Dawn

Episode Credits:

Episode Writer, Editor and Producer: Emma Catan
Music: Burning Steaks (by Stationary Sign) - obtained via EpidemicSound

Check us out at the following social media pages and websites!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/victorianlegaciespodcast
Twitter: @victorianlegac1
Instagram: @victorianlegaciespodcast
Website: https://emmacatan.wordpress.com/victorian-legacies-podcast/
Email: [email protected]

In this episode I'm joined by Dr Richard Jorge Fernández, who researches into the nineteenth-century Irish Gothic, especially the short story. We talk about how his interest in Irish literature began, and also about his current project which compares Galician literature and Irish literature, due to his own roots, and the similarities in these regions. We think about the issues colonial countries face, as well as immigrants and second-generation immigrants. Specifically, we consider how language comes into play, such as conflicting feelings about parent languages, how people react to hearing different accents, all of which play into the Othering concept. We discuss how these ideas were present in both 19th century contexts and today, and the importance of recognising privilege, and how literature can challenge this.

About my guest: Richard Jorge Fernández received his BA in English Studies at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and later on proceeded to enhance his knowledge in the field of literature with an MA in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at University College Dublin, where his minor thesis on the relation of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and the Gothic tradition was supervised by Declan Kiberd. He completed his PhD at the University of Santiago de Compostela researching the relationship between the short story and the Irish Gothic tradition in the writings of James Clarence Mangan, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker. He is currently teaching at the Department of Philology in the University of Cantabria.

For more information on Richard's work, check out the details below:

https://www.estudiosirlandeses.org/contributor/richard-jorge-fernandez/

Check out Richard's suggestions:

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu - In a Glass Darkly; Carmilla: The House by the Churchyard
Bram Stoker - Dracula's Guest
Kate Morton - The Forgotten Garden; The Distant Hours
M.R. James - Collected Ghost Stories
Maria Edgeworth - Castle Rackrent
Marcial Valladares - Maxina

Episode Credits:

Episode Writer, Editor and Producer: Emma Catan
Music: Burning Steaks (by Stationary Sign) - obtained via EpidemicSound

Check us out at the following social media pages and websites!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/victorianlegaciespodcast
Twitter: @victorianlegac1
Instagram: @victorianlegaciespodcast
Website: https://emmacatan.wordpress.com/victorian-legacies-podcast/
Email: [email protected]

In this episode I'm joined by Manon Burz-Labrande, who researches into the circulation of penny bloods and penny dreadfuls. We talk about how her research looks at how there are issues around canonicity, due to many publications being hidden still, meaning we return to the 'classics' . We observe how there were different ways of circulation beyond publishing, and how contemporary sources like Henry Mayhew reported on this. This leads to the different ways of consuming stories, communal reading, giving and lending books, and oral storytelling traditions.

About my guest: Manon Burz-Labrande is a doctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Vienna, Austria. Specialising in Victorian popular literature and culture, her PhD focuses on the exploration of the concept of circulation in and of the penny bloods and penny dreadfuls, through a literary and cultural analysis of their literary content, the discourses they triggered in nineteenth-century criticism, their place in the Victorian literary landscape and their circulation into Neo-Victorian fiction. She has written articles and reviews for Victorian Popular Fictions Journal, Polysèmes, Revenant Journal and Wilkie Collins Journal, entries for the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women’s Writing (ed. Lesa Scholl), and two chapters in upcoming edited collections on Victorian popular fiction. Her broader research interests include sound studies and the Gothic, and in 2021 she co-edited a special issue for Short Fiction in Theory & Practice entitled “More than Meets the Ear: Sound & Short Fiction.” She is also the managing editor of the forthcoming London’s East End: A Short Encyclopedia, edited by Kevin A. Morrison (McFarland, 2022).

For more information on Manon's work, check out the details below:

https://manonburzlabrande.com/

Spectral Sounds: Unquiet Tales of Acoustic Weird (part of British Library Tales of the Weird) - out in September 2022

Check out Manon's suggestions:

Vivian Shaw - Strange Practice
Ambrose Perry - The Way of All Flesh
E.S. Thomson - Beloved Poison

Episode Credits:

Episode Writer, Editor and Producer: Emma Catan
Music: Burning Steaks (by Stationary Sign) - obtained via EpidemicSound

Check us out at the following social media pages and websites!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/victorianlegaciespodcast
Twitter: @victorianlegac1
Instagram: @victorianlegaciespodcast
Website: https://emmacatan.wordpress.com/victorian-legacies-podcast/
Email: [email protected]