For centuries, continental Europeans have come to Wales for numerous reasons. During the Romantic period some came seeking a rural idyll, whilst others in the Victorian era travelled as industrial spies, and during times of war many refugees escaped to Wales to find shelter from persecution. Not only have continental Europeans left their traces…[Read more]

For centuries, continental Europeans have come to Wales for numerous reasons. During the Romantic period some came seeking a rural idyll, whilst others in the Victorian era travelled as industrial spies, and during times of war many refugees escaped to Wales to find shelter from persecution. Not only have continental Europeans left their traces…[Read more]

El artículo examina el relato de Jack London “La Peste Escarlata” desde la perspectiva de la actual epidemiología evolucionista, sosteniendo que su comprensión pesimista de la dinámica epidemiológica en poblaciones crecientes, y su visión catastrofista de la evolución, son esencialmente correctas y se hallan muy por delante de las ideas recibi…[Read more]

This article examines the concept of ecomasculinity – how masculinities and ecologies interact – through the lens of deep ecology, arguing (following Serpil Oppermann) that Pynchon’s postmodernist boundary collapsing informs deep-ecological interconnections for male characters previously embroiled in negative cycles of patriarchal dominance.…[Read more]

In Philip Roth’s The Human Stain (2000) and Percival Everett’s Erasure (2001) multiculturalism is described as moralistic and essentialist; both novels present black American male protagonists who feel victimized by multiculturalism. Although critics have maintained that the two novels present a universalist view of American identity, in this cha…[Read more]

This chapter explores links among food, class and gender in two memoirs written by contemporary American expatriates in France. The argument made is that references to French cuisine simultaneously create and resolve the tensions that arise in the texts when the authors describe their ideal and elitist lives to a presumed American female…[Read more]

The Victorian Era was one of transitions. Victorian Britain transitioned from a rural to urban society. It transitioned from an emergent empire to the dominant imperial power. It transitioned from a walking, water, wind, and animal-based transportation system to a steam-powered transportation system. It transitioned from a regional to national and…[Read more]

This is the PowerPoint presentation to accompany my comments for the Theoretical Foundations of Victorian Studies roundtable on January 7, 2021.

This chapter discusses two early anarchist conceptions of utopianism, a romantic conception associated with Gustav Landauer and a rationalist ideal linked to Peter Kropotkin. I argue that the differences have been exaggerated. Landauer and Kropotkin followed different paths, but they formulated their responses to utopianism in the same context,…[Read more]

This article examines William Morris’s idea of Englishness, considered through a critique of his concept of fellowship or community. It looks at the charge
that Morris wrongly neglected the importance of nationality as a focus for organization in socialism, preferring instead an internationalist ideal, based on an
unworkable model of s…[Read more]

This paper examines the politics of Morris’s understanding of art in socialism. At the centre of the analysis is the claim Morris makes for art’s democratisation and his commitment to the transformation of labour – into productive leisure – through art. The conditions for this transformation, namely, the abolition of commerce and the realisa…[Read more]

This chapter discusses William Morris’s rejection of anarchist communism as individualistic. The first discusses his treatment of anarchist communism as a generic form. It
examines his motivations for advancing the critique and sets out the key concepts on which he later relied to develop his analysis of decision-making. The relationship between…[Read more]

This article examines Ernest Belfort Bax’s interpretation of the French Revolution and traces the impact that his idea of the Revolution had on his philosophy and his political thought. The first section considers Bax’s understanding of the Revolution in the context of his theory of history and analyses his conception of the Revolution’s legacy,…[Read more]

In the ten years following the publication of the infamous Reports on the State of Education in Wales (1847) that had classified the Welsh population as a vice-ridden nation of working-class drunkards and promiscuous hoydens, the middle-classes in Wales strongly rejected this Anglo-centric condemnation at first in the press and, later on, in…[Read more]

This article shares the author’s exploratory journey as a senior professor eager to understand and to showcase digital scholarship during periods of faculty performance evaluations. In 2019, a previous article was submitted to this digital repository using a similar exploratory narrative; however, this article differs from the previous submission…[Read more]

Projects that bridge the humanities and sciences often attract attention from journalists, but evoke dismay from humanists who feel that their subjects of expertise have been misinterpreted. For the humanities to reclaim a place of pride in public conversation, humanists themselves need to embrace interdisciplinarity and take the lead in this…[Read more]

In an article that exposes the roots of Brexit-era Germanophobia, Rita Singer details how Welsh press coverage and poetry about U-Boat attacks on Welsh ships evolved into racialised depictions of German U-Boat combatants as ‘Huns’, monsters, ghouls and Satanic fiends