Dr Ruth Livesey Reader Deputy Director of the Centre for Victorian Studies ruth.livesey@rhul.ac.uk

| Career | Research | Publications | Teaching |

CAREER

I joined the department in 2002 after completing two years of a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at Birkbeck College. I received a BA (Hons) in English Literature from the University of Oxford in 1994, where I was awarded a college scholarship at University College. I then studied for Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Women's Studies at the University of Warwick with the aid of scholarships and awards from the E.S.R.C., Warwick University Graduate Award Scheme and the British Academy.  I was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2006 and am currently on the editorial boards of The Journal of Victorian Culture; 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century http://www.19.bbk.ac.uk/index.htm and I am also on the advisory board of Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies http://www.ncgsjournal.com/.

RESEARCH

My general area of research brings together the history of ideas and nineteenth century literature. I am currently embarking on a major project, provisionally entitled The Stage Coach: Time, Narrative and Modernity, 1740-1870 which will explore the figure of the British stage coach as a vehicle of thought and a material conveyance of the written word. My last book, Socialism, Sex and the Culture of Aestheticism in Britain, 1880-1914 (Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2007), focused on the relationship between socialism and aestheticism at the turn of the last century. The study examines the lives and work of socialist activists and writers including William Morris, Olive Schreiner, Edward Carpenter and Clementina Black.

Other aspects of my work include ongoing research and publication on philanthropy, social investigation and narratives of the city at the end of the nineteenth century. All aspects of my research are informed by a longstanding interest in the histories and representations of gender and class.

PUBLICATIONS

Book:
Socialism, Sex and the Culture of Aestheticism in Britain, 1880-1914 (Oxford University Press, for the British Academy, 2007).

Selected Journal Articles:

‘The Representation of the People and Our Mutual Friend’, Keywords: A Journal of Cultural Materialism 5 (2007) 10-26.

‘Socialism in Bloomsbury: Virginia Woolf and the Political Aesthetics of the 1880s’ Yearbook of English Studies 37:1 (2007) 126-144.

'Dollie Radford and the Ethical Aesthetics of Fin-de-Siècle Poetry', Victorian Literature and Culture 34:2 (2006) 495-517.

‘Morris, Carpenter, Wilde and the Political Aesthetics of Labor’, Victorian Literature and Culture 32:2 (2004) 601-616.

'Reading for Character: Women Social Reformers and Narratives of the Urban Poor in Late Victorian and Edwardian London' Journal of Victorian Culture 9.1(2004) 43-47.

'The Politics of Work: Feminism, Professionalisation and Women Inspectors of Factories and Workshops' Women's History Review 13:2 (2004) 233-261.

Chapter in Book:

'Women Rent Collectors and the Rewriting of Space, Class and Gender in East London, 1870-1900' in Women and the Making of Built Space in Britain, 1870-1940 ed. Elizabeth Darling and Lesley Whitworth (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007) pp. 87-107.

In Progress:

''Slums, Model Dwellings and the People: Mrs Humphry Ward, Walter Besant and the Question of Interiority' in The History of Social Investigation: A Reconsideration ed. Rosemary O'Day (Ashgate forthcoming).

'Manhood or Money Suffrage: The Representation of the People and Our Mutual Friend'. In preparation for The Representation of Capital, 1700-2000: Speculation and Displacement ed. Robert Balfour (Ashgate).

TEACHING

Current Undergraduate Teaching

EN1107	Inventing the Novel
EN2206	Gaskell, Eliot and Dickens
EN3202	Nineteenth Century Literature and Culture: Special Option
EN3201	Romantic and Victorian Literary Theory and Criticism

Postgraduate Teaching:

I contribute to the department's MA in Victorian Media and Culture and will be teaching several seminars on the core course Victorian London in addition to options on the novel and aestheticism in context.

Research Supervision:

I am currently responsible for several PhD students preparing theses on a range of nineteenth-century subjects including, for example, 'The New Woman and the Marriage Question at the Fin de Siècle' and 'The Figure of the Female Detective, 1850-1900'. I would be interested in hearing from students considering doctoral research in any area related to my research interests, but in particular those proposing to work on either the literature of social investigation or women writers, gender and sexuality at the Fin de Siècle.

Other Activities:

As Deputy Director for the Centre for Victorian Studies at Royal Holloway I have organised a number of events that have brought renowned scholars of the period to the College and offered opportunities for our own research students to showcase their work. In Spring 2004 I curated a series of seminars funded by the Royal Holloway Humanities and Research Centre (http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Research/harc/) and the Department of English entitled 'Locating Nineteenth-Century Aesthetics: Interdisciplinary Conversations on the Politics of the Arts, 1800-1910'. In June 2005 I co-organised the international conference Victorian Europeans (http://www.english.ex.ac.uk/conferences/victorian-europeans.shtml) at Royal Holloway which was the first collaborative event between the Centre for Victorian Studies at Royal Holloway and its equivalents at Birkbeck College and the University of Exeter. Current projects include assisting the Curator with the launch of the Virtual Picture Gallery (www.rhul.ac.uk/Visitors-Guide/picture-gallery), an invaluable digital resource recording the unique nineteenth-century art collection housed in the Picture Gallery at Royal Holloway. I am also planning a fresh seminar series for spring 2007. Please feel free to contact me if you want any further information about the Centre and its activities.

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