Topics in British Cultural History:
Victorian Britain, Ireland, & Empire

Elizabeth Green Musselman (“Dr. GM”)
Spring Semester 2002
Department of History | course #16-533-01
Southwestern University
meets: T/Th 1-2:15 pm | Olin 222

description

Cultural historians seek to understand how people have attached meaning to their lives through the expression of ideas, art, science, performance, consumption, sport and other cultural forms. This course will examine various aspects of British, Irish and British imperial cultural history. In other words, we will concentrate in this course on understanding identities, or how British subjects have used various kinds of self-expression to give meaning to their lives.
       The topic for Spring 2002 is Victorian Britain, Ireland, and the British Empire. In the Victorian period (1837-1901), Britain enjoyed industrial and imperial dominance over much of the world. It also experienced a relative peace, opening up resources for cultural development. Throughout the course will focus on two tensions – one spatial, the other temporal – that lay at the heart of this heady period’s culture. One of these two tensions lay between inclusion and exclusion. Victorians, like people in so many other cultures, vigorously debated the spatial boundaries of who “counted” as British, English, Irish, Scottish, white, Protestant, respectable, masculine, feminine and so on. The other tension lay in the equally vigorous Victorian debates over whether British/Irish/imperial cultures (and specific elements within them) were improving or degenerating over time. Our examination of these two tensions in Victorian culture will also include a running discussion of gender, race, ethnicity, and class issues.
       No specific prior knowledge of British history is expected, but students should realize that this course is upper-level, and as such involves intensive reading (about 150 pages a week) and an original research paper. Students are encouraged to take this course after having taken a course in British or nineteenth-century history or culture, such as 16-523 British History since 1688, 10-643 Victorian Literature, 71-373 Modern Art II, or 16-213 Modern Europe – but none of these courses is a prerequisite. The Women’s Studies Program recognizes this class as an allied course.

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I encourage you to contact me by e-mail, rather than voice mail. Come see
me during my office hours for issues that are better discussed face-to-face.
 

office	Mood-Bridwell 216
e-mail	greenmue@southwestern.edu I do not generally check e-mail between 10 a.m. Friday and 1 p.m. on Sunday.
telephone	512.863.1595
office hours	T 2:30-4 p.m., W 11 a.m.-noon in Mood 216 Th 9-10 a.m. in the Cove or by appointment

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In this course, you must complete the following assignments. To calculate your final grade, I will multiply each of your assignment grades by the percentage given for each assignment, and add those numbers together. See the policies section for more information about grading.

1. 11 response papers (35% of final grade):
Click here for some model papers.

You will write a one-page, focused response paper for every two days (one week) of reading. (Since we have readings assigned for eleven of the fifteen weeks of the semester, you will write eleven response papers in all.) You do not need to do additional research to write these papers; rather, they are designed to encourage you to think closely about – and to keep up with – our assigned readings.
       You may experiment with the content and form of your response papers, but in each of your papers you must make a focused argument about part of one or more of the week’s texts, and support that argument with significant evidence from those texts. In other words, I am asking you for your opinions in these papers, but they must be opinions that are informed and well-supported by our assigned texts, not groundless speculations or gut feelings. If you have knowledge from outside the course that seems relevant, please do incorporate it into your response papers, but always cite that material appropriately as well.
       A response paper is not a summary of the readings. Rather, in your papers you should do one or more of the following: examine the consequences, strengths, and/or weaknesses of an author’s argument; compare the perspectives of two or more authors; discuss an interesting, admirable, appalling, or contradictory aspect of British cultural identity as revealed by our texts; analyze how the course themes of inclusion/exclusion and progress/decline are illuminated by our texts. Your papers should be very focused, not off-hand musings or diary entries.
       I encourage you to discuss your ideas about the readings with others – especially with other students in the class and peer consultants at the Debby Ellis Writing Center. However, you must ensure that what you submit as your response paper is your own work. In other words, if you borrow an idea from someone else (even an idea given to you in conversation), you must indicate to whom you owe the idea in a footnote. If you do not acknowledge your intellectual debts, you are plagiarizing.
       I will collect your response papers every few weeks and give you feedback and a grade on them.
       Criteria for grading this assignment: depth and originality of analysis (do you really try to think carefully about the implications of the readings, or do you simply summarize or state the most obvious points about the texts?); ability to synthesize insights from a variety of different texts; quality of your writing.

At the end of the semester, you will turn in a 10-12 page original research paper on some aspect of Victorian cultural history. At earlier points in the semester, you will submit various elements of that paper for smaller portions of your grade. These early assignments are designed partly to push you to keep making progress on your research, and partly so that I can give you feedback on that progress.
       An original research paper in history answers a significant question and offers evidence for its arguments from primary and secondary sources. Primary sources are texts produced by people living in the period under study. For Victorian history, then, primary sources are texts produced by people living during the period 1837-1901. Secondary sources are texts produced by people living after the period under study. In our case, secondary sources are texts produced by people living in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries. An original research paper involves serious consideration and analysis of printed sources, as opposed to (the worst-case scenario) a haphazard patchwork of undigested facts and quotes from the internet.
      The citations and bibliography in your paper should follow MLA style.

a. paper topic & research question (3% of final grade):

Early in the semester, you will indicate to me the topic of your research paper and the question that you will seek to answer in your paper. Ultimately, the answer you give to your research question will be the thesis of your paper.
       Make sure that your question asks about Victorian cultural history. For example, suppose you selected the topic Darwinism. Some good cultural history research questions would be:

• How did Darwinism challenge British racial identity in the Victorian period?
• In what areas of popular culture was Darwinism most firmly rejected?
• What cultural beliefs about gender influenced Darwin’s ideas about mating?

By contrast, here are some questions that are not appropriate (with the reasons they are not appropriate given in parentheses):

• How did Darwinism influence Victorian culture? (Much too broad. Better: How did Darwinism influence Victorian novels in the 1870s-90s?)
• Why did Darwin leave medical school and start to pursue a career in natural history? (Seems more interested in biography than in Victorian culture. Better: How did the culture and identity of the elite classes shape what professions young men like Darwin entered?)
• Which intellectuals were Darwinism’s strongest defenders? (Potentially too much about disembodied ideas, not enough about the life of ideas in the culture. Also, the answer to this question would not be a very interesting thesis if you just listed and described Darwin’s defenders. Better: In what forums did Darwinism’s strongest defenders communicate their ideas, and how were those ideas received by their audiences?)

       The more preliminary research you have done before writing your question, the more focused your question will be. I therefore recommend that you peruse several sources on your topic before writing your research question.
       You will almost certainly subtly shift your topic and research question as you proceed with your research. However, you must consult with me before making a radical change to your topic/question.
       Criteria for grading this assignment: specificity and feasibility of your question (do you demonstrate enough preliminary knowledge of the subject to be able to ask a focused research question that you can reasonably answer in a semester of research?); clarity of your topic and question (is it clear from what you have written what you plan to research?); appropriateness of your topic and question for Victorian cultural history.

b. thesis statement & annotated bibliography (10% of final grade):

The next stage of your research process will be to commit (at least tentatively) to a thesis statement, and compile an annotated bibliography of the most important sources you are using in your research.
       Though it may seem crazy, one of the most valuable steps you can take early in your research process is to write a thesis statement. At this stage of your research, what do you believe will be your main argument in your final paper? In other words, given the research question you set out for yourself and now that you have conducted more research, how do you think you would answer your own question? Your thesis statement should be only a brief paragraph. Before writing your thesis statement, read this brief document, which defines clearly what a good thesis statement looks like and how to write one.
       Your annotated bibliography must include at least six sources, none of which may be internet sources. (The bibliography in your draft and final paper may include internet sources, though I discourage this, and internet sources may constitute no more than 10% of the bibliography. See my internet policy below.) At least one of your sources must be a primary source of some significant length.
       In compiling your bibliography, you must attempt to locate sources on each of the four on-line databases listed in the resources section below. If you do not include a source from one or more of these databases, attach a printed example of a relevant source from this/these database(s) and write a brief note on this print-out about why you did not include this/these source(s) in your bibliography. For example, if your annotated bibliography includes sources that you found in the SU library catalog, WorldCat, and JSTOR, you would need to attach a print-out of one relevant source that you found in Historical Abstracts.
       In brackets [ ] at the end of each citation, indicate how you located this source, e.g., which database, browsing the shelves, research librarian, recommendation by a faculty member, etc.
       For guidelines about what an annotated bibliography is and how to write one, see this useful web site. In your annotations, use the “combination” and “complete sentence” styles that this site describes. Your bibliography should follow the rules of MLA style.
       Bring four copies of your thesis statement and annotated bibliography to class with you on the due date.
       Criteria for grading this assignment: focus and clarity of your thesis statement; scope and completeness of your bibliography and the research you used to compile it; evidence in your annotations that you have a good understanding of your sources and how they can aid your research; following the guidelines for writing thesis statements and annotated bibliographies in the sites linked above.

c. draft of research paper (12% of final grade):

Writing a draft of your research paper gives you the opportunity to make a rigorous first attempt at your final paper. You should make this draft as complete and polished as you possibly can; the more complete and polished it is, the more I can give you focused, useful feedback, and the less work you will have to do at the very end of the semester.
       length: Your draft must be no shorter than 8 pages, and no longer than 14.
       components: Your draft must include a clearly stated thesis, MLA in-text citations, analysis of at least one substantial primary source, conclusion, and updated bibliography (do not include annotations).
       completeness: If you discover in the process of writing your draft that you are missing information that you need to make your argument complete, you may leave a gap and indicate to me in brackets [ ] what you plan to insert in the final version of the paper. However, you may only do this in a limited way; do not leave major gaps or numerous minor gaps in your argument. This provision also does not change the fact that you need to write 8-14 pages in your draft.
       audience: Write it as though your audience were all the members of our course. Think to yourself as you write what you would and would not need to explain to them, what they might and might not find compelling and plausible.
       Criteria for grading this assignment: clarity and focus of thesis; all claims that are not common knowledge supported by correctly cited evidence; relative completeness of draft; clarity of organization; quality of writing; presence of all the basic components described above; suitability for an audience of fellow students in this course.

d. research paper (25% of final grade):

When working on this final version of your paper, I expect you to seriously revise, not just edit, your draft. If you make only surface-level changes, you will simply receive the same grade on the final paper that you received on the draft. Consider these wise words on revision from Mark Hellstern, Gregory M. Scott, and Stephen M. Garrison in their History Student Writer’s Manual (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1998):

Revising is one of the most important steps in assuring the success of your paper. Unpracticed writers often think of revision as little more than making sure all the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed, but it is much more than that. Revising is reseeing your work, looking at it from other perspectives, trying always to read your work through the eyes of your audience. Subjecting your entire, hard-fought draft to cold, objective scrutiny is one of the toughest activities to master, but it is absolutely necessary. You must make certain that you have said everything that needs to be said clearly and logically (33).

They also give the following tips for revision:

1. Give yourself adequate time for revision.
2. Read the paper carefully.
3. Have a list of specific items to check.
4. Check for unity, the clear and logical relation of all parts of the thesis.
5. Check for coherence.
6. Avoid unnecessary repetition (33-34).

When you hand in your final research paper, you must attach your marked-up draft.
       Criteria for grading this assignment: all of the qualities listed under criteria for grading draft + thoroughness of revision (based both on my comments and your own careful re-reading of your draft).

This is a fundamentally discussion-based course, so not only does much of your grade depend on your prepared participation, but so does the entire success of the course. You do not need to say fantastically clever and insightful things whenever you open your mouth; all I ask is that you be willing to take some risks and try out some ideas with the rest of the class.
       I do insist that even shy students participate regularly in class discussion. However, if you truly need an alternate method for participation, come see me during my office hours and we will work out alternative arrangements. See below for information about keeping a reading journal as one possible alternative method of participation.
       I will give unannounced quizzes if it becomes clear that much of the class is not keeping up with the reading. If you are absent on a day that a quiz is given, you cannot make it up (unless you have a documented excuse for your absence).
       Criteria for grading this assignment: frequency of your participation (this includes asking intelligent questions); quality of your comments; your ability to get other students talking by raising questions or debating other students directly; constant and alert attendance; extra quizzes, if necessary.

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1. attendance: I expect you to attend every class except for those days on which you have a documented medical or other legitimate emergency or religious observance. I do not plan to keep careful track of your absences. However, you should realize that every absence will seriously harm your final grade, since you will not have participated fully in discussions and will not have heard all the lectures.

2. lateness:Do not arrive late to class. If you are regularly late, I will ask you to leave. I have this strict policy because lateness is disrespectful not only to me, but also to your fellow students.

3. grading: The maximum percentages awarded for course assignments add up to 100. I use a standard grading scale:
 

If your grades consistently improve over the course of the semester and if your class presence is consistent and attentive, I will consider shifting your final grade up to the next level. For example, if your final course grade worked out to an 86, but your grades had consistently improved during the semester and you were a consistent and attentive class participant, I would consider shifting your final grade up to a B+.

4. late assignments: Unless otherwise noted, assignments are due at the beginning of class on the day they are due. For every 24 hours that an assignment is late, your assignment grade drops two-thirds of a letter grade (e.g., from B to C+). For example, if you turned in your paper topic and research question any time between 1 p.m. on 29 Jan., and 1 p.m. on 30 Jan., I would consider it a day late and mark it down two-thirds of a letter grade. Weekend days count.
       If you turn in an assignment after the deadline: in the upper-right-hand corner of the assignment, note what date and time you handed it in (the honor code binds you to tell the truth here), and slide it under my office door.
        If you have a medical or other legitimate emergency that directly interferes with your handing in an assignment on time, you will need to provide me with a documented excuse in order to avoid late penalties. Arrange a documented excuse through Academic Services (x1286).

5. honor code issues: You must hand-write and sign the full honor code on each assignment in this class. That means writing out and signing your name after the following:

I have neither given nor received aid on this examination [paper, etc.], nor have I seen anyone else do so.

6. internet sources: On any written assignment, no more than 10 percent of your sources may be internet sources. The following do not count as internet sources, and you may use as many of them as you wish: articles from full-text databases like JSTOR and Project Muse; online primary sources (texts written by historical actors that have been re-published on the web); internet sources that I have approved in advance of your writing the assignment.
       See this site for information about how to determine the scholarly value of a web site.

7. disabilities: Southwestern University will make reasonable accommodations for persons with documented disabilities. Students should provide documentation and schedule an appointment with the Academic Services coordinator (Mood 311; 863-1286) at least two weeks before services are needed. In each class where a student requests academic accommodations, the student must meet with the faculty member teaching the course at least one week prior to the requested accommodation.

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You will find the following at the university bookstore. Many of these books are also on reserve in the library.

• Matthew, Colin, ed. The Nineteenth Century: The British Isles 1815-1901. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
• Bourke, Angela. The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1999.
• Metcalf, Thomas R. Ideologies of the Raj. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
• [Wells, H.G. The Time Machine. There is a free, on-line version of this famous novel linked below. If you prefer to read a hard copy, I would suggest buying one of the abundantly available used copies. I have not ordered any hard copies of the book for the bookstore.]
• Victorian Culture Reader [This is a course packet that will be available through the SU bookstore.]

Whether you will enjoy and learn a great deal from this class is almost entirely up to you and your commitment to the reading. Thoughtful reading is both active and responsive. As a general rule, thoughtful engagement either (a) uses readings as the basis for formulating interesting discussion questions; (b) uses readings as a basis to probe and develop an interesting positive argument of your own; and/or (c) treats an author/work as an opponent worth refuting and correcting on points of fact, interpretation, or theory.
       It is not enough, in other words, for you to read merely (or primarily) for comprehension. I fully expect you to engage the many works we will encounter this semester in an active dialogue, and to be prepared to share the fruits of your dialogue with the members of our class at each and every meeting.
       To this end, you might find it useful to keep careful and detailed notes or a journal of your readings in which you pose questions, probe interesting ideas, outline arguments, etc. Such a journal would not only be helpful in preparing for class discussions, but would be an excellent way to record and chart the development of your own dialogue with the authors/works on which we are focusing our critical attention.

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Each date listed below tells you what topic we will discuss in class, and what you need to have read in preparation for that day’s class.
VCR = Victorian Culture Reader;  = a date on which response papers are due;  = a date on which part of the research paper assignment is due.
 

T Jan 15: Introduction to the course and to cultural history
 

read:

Bonnell and Hunt, “Introduction” [VCR]

R Jan 17: Introduction to Victorian Britain
 

read:

1. course syllabus 2. Matthew, pp. 1-38

T Jan 22: Victorian society and economy
 

read:	1. Matthew, pp. 41-112
note:	After a half hour of regular class time, we will go to the library, where librarian extraordinaire Carol Fonken will give us a tour of research strategies and tools for this course.

R Jan 24: Industrialization and culture
 

read:

1. Wiener, chs. 1-3 [VCR] 2. Freeman, “Education and Social Reproduction” [VCR]

T Jan 29: Discussion of paper topics and research strategies
 

images to use in class:	Tintern Abbey
due:	paper topic and research question

R Jan 31: History and rural nostalgia
 

read:	1. Wiener, “The ‘English Way of Life’?” [VCR] 2. BBC’s background on the Jacobites [on-line reading] 3. Pittock, “Reality and Romance” [VCR]
recommended film:	Dr. Thom McClendon is screening “Passage to India” for his Colonial / Postcolonial Worlds class tonight at 7 in Olin 110. The film concerns India in the last days of the Raj (British rule). He has kindly invited interested students from outside the class to attend.

T Feb 5: Ireland’s Great Famine
 

read:	1. Ó Gráda, “Famine, Great” [VCR] 2. Eagleton, “Heathcliff and the Great Hunger” [VCR] 3. Ó Gráda, “Famine Memory” [VCR]
due:	response papers 1-3 (covering readings from 15-31 Jan.)

R Feb 7: Rural Ireland – a case study (part 1)
 

read:	Bourke, chs. 1-4
for use in class:	ground plan of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon prison, 1791 Bentham at University of London William Butler Yeats, introduction to Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888)

T Feb 12: Rural Ireland – a case study (part 2)
 

read:	Bourke, chs. 5-7
for use in class:	excerpts from Knox, Races of Men (1850) Celts as apes

R Feb 14: Rural Ireland – a case study (part 3)
 

read:

Bourke, chs. 8-epilogue

T Feb 19: Consumption, part 1 – cannibals and vampires
 

read:

Malchow, “Cannibalism and Popular Culture” [VCR]

R Feb 21: Consumption, part 2 – imperial fashion and fetishism
 

read:	1. Matthew, pp. 135-60 2. Munich, “Genealogies in Her Closet” [VCR] 3. McClintock, “Soft-Soaping Empire” [VCR]
fyi:	The People’s Charter (discussed in Munich)
note:	Today we will address issues directly related to this year’s Brown Symposium on globalization (Feb. 21-22). Please attend as many of these important events as possible. You bring an important perspective to the symposium discussion, since you have been studying Victorian Britain, an earlier globalized culture.

T Feb 26: India as British self and other – background
 

read:	Metcalf, pp. 1-65
due:	response papers 4-6 (covering readings from 5-21 Feb.)

R Feb 28: India as British self and other – the creation and ordering of difference
 

read:	Metcalf, pp. 66-130
images to use in class:	“The Madras Hawker” & “Group of Thugs (India),”The Leisure Hour, 1853 & 1870 respectively “Princes and Chiefs of Western India,” The Graphic, 1873 “Legends of Many Lands. No. 18. -The Silken Cord; or, The King Hunter of the Deccan: An Indian Legend,” Boys of the British Empire, 1883 “An Indian Uprising,” Chums, 1897

T Mar 5: India as British self and other – coping with contradiction
 

read:

1. Metcalf, pp. 160-214 2. Elphinstone, “Indian Customs and Manners” [on-line reading] 3. Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant” [on-line reading]

R Mar 7: Thesis statement and annotated bibliography workshop
 

due:	thesis statement and annotated bibliography (bring 4 copies)
in class:	You will share and discuss your thesis statement and annotated bibliography with other students in a small group. We will also have a whole-class discussion of successful strategies for moving forward with your research paper.

T Mar 12 & R Mar 14: Spring break – class does not meet

T Mar 19: Angels of the house
 

read:

1. Matthew, pp. 163-93 2. Winter, “A Calculus of Suffering” [VCR]

R Mar 21: Art, design, and gender roles
 

read:	1. Cunningham, “Gender and Design in the Victorian Period” [VCR] 2. Kestner, “The Challenged Paterfamilias” [VCR] 3. Morris, “Art and Commerce” [VCR]
images to use in class:	Lilly Martin Spencer, Young Husband, First Marketing (ca. 1854) George Cruikshank, The Bottle (1847) Ford Madox Brown, Work (1852-65)

T Mar 26: Urban dangers and delights
 

read:

1. Walkowitz, “‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’” [VCR] 2. Bailey, “Music Hall and the Knowingness of Popular Culture” [VCR]

R Mar 28: Cultural schizophrenia
 

read:	1. Walkowitz, “Jack the Ripper” [VCR] 2. Stevenson, chapter 10 of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [on-line reading]
due:	response papers 7-9 (covering readings from 26 Feb.-26 Mar.)

T Apr 2 & R Apr 4: Class does not meet so that you can complete your research paper draft.
You can find me in the Cove during class time if you want to discuss your paper with me.

T Apr 9: Research paper draft workshop
 

due:	draft of research paper Please bring 3 copies to class. Only one copy needs to have the signed honor code.
in class:	post-mortem on draft writing

R Apr 11: Witnessing: spiritualism and photography
 

read:	1. Oppenheim, “Spiritualism and Christianity” [VCR] Everyone reads pp. 63-67, and 103-10. Mike, Tony, Amy, Gisele, Bonnie, Zabrina, Jennifer G.: read pp. 67-85 Christina, Sarah, Josh, Jennifer McA., Rebecca, Erin, Robert, Brice: read 85-103 2. Tucker, “Photography as Witness, Detective, and Imposter” [VCR]
images to use in class:	Arthur Conan Doyle A fairy offering Elsie Wright a flower Frances (Griffiths) and the Fairies (photographed in 1917 by Elsie) Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini

T Apr 16: Crises of faith
 

read:

1. Matthew, pp. 195-227 2. Turner, “The Victorian Crisis of Faith and the Faith That Was Lost” [VCR]

R Apr 18: Dr. GM out of town at a conference – class does not meet
[Begin reading The Time Machine – see 25 April below.]

T Apr 23: Degeneration and strange new worlds
 

read:	1. Chamberlin, “Images of Degeneration: Turnings and Transformations” [VCR] 2. Fayter, “Strange New Worlds of Space and Time” [VCR]
in class:	research papers handed back with comments If you have comments on one of the drafts you read, please type them up and bring them with you to class today.

R Apr 25: The end of the world as they knew it
 

read:

Wells, The Time Machine [on-line reading]

T Apr 30: Paper revision workshop
 

read:	my comments on your research paper draft Come to class prepared with questions and concerns about how to revise your draft into a polished final paper.
due:	response papers 10-11 (covering readings from 28 Mar.-25 Apr.) NOTE: Seniors are exempted from this assignment because of the earlier due date for the final version of the research paper.

R May 2: Wrap-up and course evaluations
 

in class:

course evaluations filled out today

F May 3: Final version of research paper due date FOR GRADUATING SENIORS – class does not meet
 

due:	final version of research paper due by 5 p.m. in Dr. GM’s office (Mood 216)

R May 9: Final version of research paper due date FOR ALL STUDENTS NOT GRADUATING IN MAY – class does not meet
 

due:	final version of research paper due by 6 p.m. in Dr. GM’s office (Mood 216)

First, I have listed the topics each student has selected for their paper. Following that is an extensive, but certainly not exhaustive, list of topics from which you might choose for your research paper. For each topic, you would need to find a cultural historical angle. In other words, ask yourself, “How can I investigate this topic in a way that tells me something about the meaning of British lives and/or British identity?”
       See the list of books below for more ideas for research topics.
 

student	topic
Mike Bell	change in British naval power
Tony Bonds	art in revolutionary and post-revolutionary Ireland
Amy Boyle	marriage: courting and rituals
Gisele Brown	classical education and male homosociality
Bonnie Casson	Victorian sensation novels and the British bourgeois woman’s definition of the self
Zabrina Diaz	racism and defining “others”
Jennifer Getson	fantasy subjects in Victorian illustrations and paintings
Christina Gillett	corsets
Sarah Horton	female clothing
Josh Lindloff	Jack the Ripper
Jennifer McAndrew	rise of cultural nationalism and the Gaelic Revival in Ireland (1890s-1916)
Rebecca McRae	Victorian women scientists
Erin Nau	hypochondria and hysteria
Robert Romig	Cecil Rhodes as an icon of imperialism
Brice Tanner	governesses and governessing

• railways
• the Great Exhibition of 1851
• museum displays, zoos, gardens
• evangelicalism
• missionaries
• styles of religious worship
• philanthropy
• university or school life
• musical theater, e.g., Gilbert and Sullivan
• music hall
• pubs
• popular science
• Samuel Smiles and valorizing the working man
• domestic service: governesses, maids, butlers
• “polite” pastimes: hunting, botany, painting
• photography
• shopping
• dress, e.g., kilts/tartans, corsets
• children’s books, games, toys
• pets
• seaside holidays
• exercise/sport: walking, mountaineering, bicycling, tennis
• hysteria, neurasthenia, other nervous disorders and/or their cures (e.g., water cures)
• opium
• spiritualism
• fairies
• funerals and/or mourning
• romanticizing the past: ancient Greece/Rome, Arthurian Britain, medieval Scotland (e.g., in Sir Walter Scott)
• the Arts and Crafts movement
• furniture and/or home design
• the pre-Raphaelites
• Ruskin’s views of beauty
• realism in painting
• British culture’s effects on major authors: e.g., Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Elizabeth Gaskell, John Stuart Mill, Charles Darwin, the Brontë sisters, Matthew Arnold, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rider Haggard, George Bernard Shaw, Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling
• ... or the readership for their works
• sexuality at the turn of the century, e.g., Oscar Wilde
• the women’s suffrage movement
• consumption of imperial products: foods, fashions, etc.
• the definition of race as a concept

The following resources will aid you in the research for your paper.

On-line databases
Your research process must include the use of each of the following. Descriptions are based on those given on the SU library page.

• SU library catalog
• Historical Abstracts [Indexes the world’s periodical literature in non-US history and the related social sciences and humanities from 1450 to the present. Articles in Historical Abstracts derive from over 2,100 scholarly journals published in more than 50 languages.]
• WorldCat [Lists complete holdings of library collections worldwide including the SU library. I would recommend using this database early in your research process so that you can have plenty of time to order through interlibrary loan any books you want that are not in SU’s collection.]
• JSTOR: Journal Storage Collection Online [An electronic archive of scholarly journals from the humanities, social sciences, and the natural sciences. Each of the 100+ titles is an essential or primary one for its field. The JSTOR database is unique because the complete backfiles of core scholarly journals (excluding the most recent five years) have been digitized, starting with the first issues, many of which date back to the 1800s. Users can browse the complete table of contents for every volume and issue, or search for words or phrases in the full text of the article, author and abstracts. JSTOR displays articles in page-image format.]

1. Reference works

Arnold, Bruce. The Art Atlas of Britain and Ireland. London and New York: Viking, 1991. [REF 1st floor 708.2 Ar64a]

Bayly, C. A., ed. Atlas of the British Empire. New York: Facts on File, 1989. [REF 1st floor 909.0971 At65]

Biedermann, Hans. Dictionary of Symbolism: Cultural Icons and the Meanings behind Them. New York and Oxford: Facts on File, 1992. [call #302.222 B475k]

Bindman, David, ed. The Thames and Hudson Encyclopaedia of British Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1985. [REF 1st floor 709.41 T329]

Boylan, Henry. A Dictionary of Irish Biography. 3rd ed. Niwot, Colo.: Roberts Rinehart, 1998. [REF 1st floor 920.0415 B696d 1998]

Cevasco, G. A., ed. The 1890s: An Encyclopedia of British Literature, Art, and Culture. New York: Garland, 1993. [REF 1st floor 941.081 Ei62]

Chambers, Robert. The Book of Days; A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities in Connection with the Calendar, including Anecdote, Biography and History, Curiosities of Literature, and Oddities of Human Life and Character. 1862-64. Reprint. Detroit, Gale Research Co., 1967. [Available on-line.]

Crawford, Anne, et al., eds. The Europa Biographical Dictionary of British Women: Over 1000 Notable Women from Britain’s Past. Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research Co., 1983. [REF 1st floor 920.72 Eu74]

Crawford, Elizabeth. The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866-1928. London: UCL Press, 1999. [REF 1st floor 324.623 C856w]

David, Deirdre, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. [823.809 C144]

Dictionary of Literary Biography series. Includes volumes on British Reform Writers, 1832-1914; British Fantasy and Science-Fiction Writers before World War I; British Travel Writers, 1837-1875; British Travel Writers, 1876-1909; British Short-Fiction Writers, 1800-1880; British Short-Fiction Writers, 1880-1914; Late-Victorian and Edwardian British Novelists; Nineteenth-Century British Literary Biographers; British Children’s Writers, 1800-1880; British Children’s Writers, 1880-1914; British Short Fiction Writers, 1880-1914; British Poets, 1880-1914; Victorian Women Poets; British Mystery Writers, 1860-1919; British Literary Publishing Houses, 1820-1880; British Literary Publishing Houses, 1881-1965 and Nineteenth-Century British Book-Collectors and Bibliographers [REF 1st floor 928.1 D561]

Eagle, Dorothy, Hilary Carnell, and Meic Stephens, eds. The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to Great Britain and Ireland. 2nd ed. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. [REF 1st floor 820.9 Ox25 1992]

Ford, Boris, ed. The Cambridge Cultural History of Britain, vol. 7. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. [700.941 C144c v.7]

Gardiner, Juliet, and Neil Wenborn, eds. The Columbia Companion to British History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. [REF 1st floor 941.003 H629]

Gascoigne, Bamber. Encyclopedia of Britain. New York: Macmillan, 1993. [REF 1st floor 941 G211e]

Gilbert, Martin. Atlas of British History. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. [REF 1st floor 911.42 G374a]

Gilmour, Robin. The Victorian Period: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, 1830-1890. London and New York: Longman, 1993. [820.9008 G426v]

Haigh, Christopher, ed. The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. [REF 1st floor 941 C144]

Isaacs, Alan, and Jennifer Monk, eds. The Cambridge Illustrated Dictionary of British Heritage. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. [REF 1st floor 941 C1445]

McCormack, W. J., ed. The Blackwell Companion to Modern Irish Culture. Oxford and Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1999. [941.5 B568]

Mitchell, Sally. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 1988. [REF 1st floor 941.081 V666]

Reaney, Percy H. A Dictionary of English Surnames. 3rd ed. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. [REF 1st floor 929.4 R231d1]

Schlueter, Paul, and June Schlueter, eds. An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. New York: Garland, 1988. [REF 1st floor 820.992 En19]

Scott-Kilvert, Ian, ed. British Writers. New York: Scribner, 1979 and 1984. [REF 1st floor 820.9 B7776, esp. vols. 5 & 6]

Todd, Janet, ed. British Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide. New York: Continuum, 1989. [REF 1st floor 820.992 B777]

Treasure, Geoffrey, ed. Who’s Who in British History: Beginnings to 1901. 2 vols. London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998. [REF 1st floor 920.041 W62]

Tucker, Herbert F., ed. A Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1999. [820.9008 C738]

Victorian Britain. Princeton, N.J.: Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 1997. [Reserve item at circulation desk 941.08 V666; this interactive PictureBase CD introduces life in Victorian Britain and its legacy to the present day. The pictures in the database are accompanied by fully descriptive text and sound and the themes can be traced by means of keyword searching.]

Who was Who. London: A. & C. Black, 1897-1990. [REF 1st floor 920 W61w; earlier volumes include many Victorian figures.]

Wood, Christopher. The Dictionary of Victorian Painters. 2nd ed. Woodbridge: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1978. [REF 1st floor 709.42 D56 v.4]

• Allen, Charles, ed. Tales from the Dark Continent. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979. [960.42 T143]
• Arnstein, Walter L., ed. The Past Speaks: Sources and Problems in British History. Vol. 2: Since 1688. 2nd ed. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1993. [941 P268 v.2]
• Bauer, Carol, and Lawrence Ritt, eds. Free and Ennobled: Source Readings in the Development of Victorian Feminism. Oxford and New York: Pergamon Press, 1979. [305.4 F875]
• Burnley, J. D. The History of the English Language: A Source Book. London and New York: Longman, 1991. [420.9 B936h]
• Burton, Antoinette, ed. Politics and Empire in Victorian Britain: A Reader. New York: Palgrave, 2001. [909.0971 P759]
• Harrison, J. F. C., ed. Society and Politics in England, 1780-1960; A Selection of Readings and Comments. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. [942 H246s]
• Hassam, Andrew. Sailing to Australia: Shipboard Diaries by Nineteenth-Century British Emigrants. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994. [304.894 H275s]
• Hellerstein, Erna Olafson, et al., eds. Victorian Women: A Documentary Account of Women’s Lives in Nineteenth-Century England, France, and the United States. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1981. [305.4 V666]
• Helmstadter, Richard J., and Paul T. Phillips, eds. Religion in Victorian Society: A Sourcebook of Documents. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985. [274.2 R2794]
• Johnson, Dale A., comp. Women in English Religion, 1700-1925. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1983. [280 W842]
• Kanner, Barbara. Women in Context: Two Hundred Years of British Women Autobiographers; A Reference Guide and Reader. New York: G. K. Hall; London: Prentice Hall, 1997. [305.40942 K133w]
• Kendall, Elizabeth Kimball, ed. Source-Book of English History, for the Use of Schools and Readers. New York and London: Macmillan, 1900. [942 K332s]
• Lee, Guy Carleton. Source-Book of English History. New York: H. Holt, 1900. [942 L512s]
• Levine, George Lewis, ed. The Emergence of Victorian Consciousness, the Spirit of the Age. New York: Free Press, 1967. [914.2 L578e]
• Lewis, Jane, ed. Before the Vote Was Won: Arguments for and against Women’s Suffrage. New York: Routledge & K. Paul, 1987. [324.623 B393]
• Palmegiano, E. M.. The British Empire in the Victorian Press, 1832-1867: A Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1987. [941.081 P182b]
• Poole, William Frederick. Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature. Rev. ed. 6 vols. Gloucester, Mass.: P. Smith, 1963. [REF 1st floor: IndxTabl 051 P789 (on shelf to the right of the reference section computer bank); this is the resource that Carol Fonken showed us that indexes articles published in major nineteenth-century British and American periodicals]
• Oram, Alison, and Annmarie Turnbull, comp. The Lesbian History Sourcebook: Love and Sex between Women in Britain from 1780 to 1970. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. [306.7663 L5632]
• Robinson, Jane, comp. Parrot Pie for Breakfast: An Anthology of Women Pioneers. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. [305.40941 P249]
• Thompson, David Michael, ed. Nonconformity in the Nineteenth Century. London: Routledge; Boston: K. Paul, 1972. [280.4 T372n]
• Vann, J. Don, and Rosemary T. VanArsdel, eds. Victorian Periodicals: A Guide to Research. 2 vols. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1978-1989. [052 V666]
• Williams, John A. From the South African Past: Narratives, Documents, and Debates. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. [968 W673f]

• The 1900 House. London: BBC, 1999. [video 941.08 N622 v. 1, v. 2]
• Anderson, Amanda. Tainted Souls and Painted Faces: The Rhetoric of Fallenness in Victorian Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. [820.9353 An23t]
• Bailey, Peter. Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian City. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. [941.081 B154p]
• Bailin, Miriam. The Sickroom in Victorian Fiction: The Art of Being Ill. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. [823.809 B156s]
• Bivona, Daniel. Desire and Contradiction: Imperial Visions and Domestic Debates in Victorian Literature. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1990. [820.9358 B549d]
• Brantlinger, Patrick, ed. Energy and Entropy: Science and Culture in Victorian Britain: Essays from Victorian Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. [306.45 En27]
• Brody, Jennifer DeVere. Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity, and Victorian Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. [820.9 B785i]
• Burton, Antoinette. At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-Victorian England. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. [305.8914 B953a]
• Chase, Karen. The Spectacle of Intimacy: A Public Life for the Victorian Family. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. [823.809 C386s]
• Coombes, Annie E. Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture, and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. [960.074 C781r]
• Cosslett, Tess. The “Scientific Movement” and Victorian Literature. New York: Harvester, 1982. [820.903 C822s]
• Cvetkovich, Ann. Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992. [823.809 C991m]
• Dale, Peter Alan. In Pursuit of a Scientific Culture: Science, Art, and Society in the Victorian Age. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989. [820.9 D155I]
• Davis, Tracy C. Actresses as Working Women: Their Social Identity in Victorian Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. [306.484 D298a]
• Dever, Carolyn. Death and the Mother from Dickens to Freud: Victorian Fiction and the Anxiety of Origins. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. [823.8093 D493d]
• Edwards, Clive D. Victorian Furniture: Technology and Design. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1993. [684.1 Ed95v]
• Filmer, Kath, ed. The Victorian Fantasists: Essays on Culture, Society, and Belief in the Mythopoeic Fiction of the Victorian Age. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. [823.809 V6662]
• Haley, Bruce. The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture. Cambridge: Harvard Press, 1978. [820.935 H137h]
• Harrison, Anthony. Victorian Poets and the Politics of Culture: Discourse and Ideology. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998. [821.809 H245v]
• Helmstadter, Richard J., and Bernard Lightman, eds. Victorian Faith in Crisis: Essays on Continuity and Change in Nineteenth-Century Religious Belief. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990. [274.2 V666]
• Knoepflmacher, U. C. Ventures into Childland: Victorians, Fairy Tales and Femininity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. [820.99282 k754v]
• Knoepflmacher, U. C., and G. B. Tennyson, eds. Nature and Victorian Imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.
• Kucich, John, and Dianne F. Sadoff, eds. Victorian Afterlife: Postmodern Culture Rewrites the Nineteenth Century. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. [820.9 V6663]
• Langland, Elizabeth. Nobody’s Angels: Middle-Class Women and Domestic Ideology in Victorian Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. [305.55 L265n]
• Ledger, Sally, and Scott McCracken eds. Cultural Politics at the Fin de Siecle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. [820.9355 C899]
• Levine, George. Darwin and the Novelists: Patterns of Science in Victorian Fiction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988. [823.809 L578d]
• Lightman, Bernard ed. Victorian Science in Context. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. [306.45 V666]
• Marshall, Gail. Actresses on the Victorian Stage: Feminine Performance and the Galatea Myth. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. [792.028 M356a]
• Mendus, Susan and Jane Rendell, eds. Sexuality and Subordination: Interdisciplinary Studies of Gender in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Routledge, 1989. [305.3 Se92]
• Michie, Elsie B. Outside the Pale: Cultural Exclusion, Gender Difference, and the Victorian Woman Writer. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. [820.9928 M582o]
• Milligan, Barry. Pleasures and Pains: Opium and the Orient in Nineteenth-Century British Culture. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995. [820.992 M621p]
• Morse, David. High Victorian Culture. Washington Square, N.Y.: New York University Press, 1993. [820.9 M835h]
• Munich, Adrienne. Queen Victoria’s Secrets. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. [941.081 M925q]
• Nead, Lynda. Victorian Babylon: People, Streets, and Images in Nineteenth-Century London. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. [942.12 N245v]
• Nelson, Claudia, and Lynne Vallone, eds. The Girl’s Own: Cultural Histories of the Anglo-American Girl, 1830-1915. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994. [305.235 G443]
• Parsons, Neil. King Khama, Emperor Joe and the Great White Queen: Victorian Britain through African Eyes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. [327.41 P255k]
• Peck, John. War, the Army and Victorian Literature. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998. [820.9358 P335w]
• Poovey, Mary. Uneven Development: the Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. [305.3 P799]
• Ritvo, Harriet. The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987. [636 R518a]
• Sinfield, Alan. The Wilde Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde, and the Queer Movement. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. [305.3896 W644s]
• Smith, Crosbie. The Science of Energy: A Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. [621.042 Sm53s]
• Stein, Richard. Victoria’s Year: English Literature and Culture 1837-1838. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. [820.9 St34v]
• Sussman, Herbert L. Victorian Masculinities: Manhood and Masculine Poetics in Early Victorian Literature and Art. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. [820.9353 Su82v]
• Vrettos, Athena. Somatic Fictions: Imagining Illness in Victorian Culture. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995. [823.809 V958s]

• The Victorian Web, compiled by George Landow at Brown University
• Bibliographical Resources for Victorian Study, compiled by Cathy Edgar [This bibliography is hardly comprehensive, but it can provide you with some good texts with which to start.]
• History On-line Resources, compiled by Tony Campbell of the British Library [Campbell has not only vetted history web sites for reliability, but has also categorized them by time period, geographic location, and subject area.]
• The Victorian Women Writers Project, Indiana University [transcriptions of works by British women

writers of the nineteenth century]