Transatlantic C19 Talk: Renee Fox, UC Santa Cruz
Transatlantic C19 Talk: Renee Fox, UC Santa Cruz
Monsters or Miracles: The Necromantics and the Field of Monster Studies
This talk will offer an overview of Professor Renee Fox’s recent book, The Necromantics: Reanimation, the Historical Imagination, and Victorian British and Irish Literature (The Ohio State UP 2023), situating it not only within the fields of Victorian Studies and Irish Studies but also the emerging field of Monster Studies. The talk will address the development and stakes of the project and show how this work has been instrumental in building a new UC Santa Cruz Center for Monster Studies. Hosted by the Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Group and the CLCS.
About the Speaker:
Renee Fox is an associate professor of literature and the Jordan-Stern Presidential Chair for Dickens and Nineteenth-Century Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work examines how British and Irish writers reimagine histories in and of the 19th century, focusing particularly on the political, aesthetic, and gendered forces that transform the past into familiar and useful history. Her monograph, entitled The Necromantics: Reanimation, the Historical Imagination, and Victorian British and Irish Literature (The Ohio State University Press, 2023), looks at the ways monster stories/poems by writers like Mary Shelley, Robert Browning, and Bram Stoker reflect on changing ideas about the form and function of history across the 19th century.