Kristin Samuelian

Kristin Samuelian

Kristin Samuelian

Professor

British literature and culture of the long nineteenth century, nineteenth-century British novel, materialist approaches to literature.

Kristin Samuelian received her PhD from Boston University. She teaches courses in nineteenth-century British literature and culture, the nineteenth-century novel, and research methods. She is the author of Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy in Print, 1780-1821 (Palgrave, 2010) and The Moving Body and the English Romantic Imaginary (Routledge, 2021). She has published essays in Studies in Romanticism, ELH, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, and in several anthologies of essays on nineteenth-century and Romantic-era literature and culture. She is editor of the Broadview Literary Texts edition of Jane Austen's Emma (Broadview, 2004; revised edition forthcoming). 

Current Research

My research focuses on representations of the body in a variety of discourses in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British culture—including fiction, medical discourse, graphic satire, print, and theatrical culture. My second book, The Moving Body and the English Romantic Imaginary, explored questions of national identity, gender, and class in British popular writing about dance, dancing, and dancers, from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century (https://www.routledge.com/The-Moving-Body-and-the-English-Romantic-Imaginary/Samuelian/p/book/9780367373559). My current book project, tentatively titled “Disorder: Anxiety, Hunger, and the Body in Romantic and Victorian Fictions,” explores how depression, anxiety, and other related disorders register on the body as represented in fiction, in public amusements, and in legal, medical, and quasi-scientific discourse from the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century.

Selected Publications

Monographs and editions:
The Moving Body and the English Romantic Imaginary. Routledge, 2021. Routledge Studies in Romanticism Series.

Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy in Print, 1780-1821. Palgrave MacMillan, 2010.

Emma, by Jane Austen.  Edited with an introduction, explanatory notes, and selected contemporary documents. Broadview Press, 2004, 2022 (forthcoming).  A Broadview Literary Texts edition.

Selected articles:
"Bodies in play: boxing, dance, and the science of recreation” (coauthored with Mark Schoenfield, Vanderbilt University). Playing Games in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America. Eds. Ann R. Hawkins, Erin Bistline, and Maura Ives. SUNY Press (forthcoming, 2021).

“Looking at the Case against Her: Intertextuality in Queen Caroline Prints.” The Green Bag (Spring 2021).

“The Politics of Extraction: Blackwood’s and The Imperial.” Romantic Periodicals in the Twenty-first Century: 12 Case Studies from Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Eds. Nicholas Mason and Tom Mole. Edinburgh UP, October 2020. Edinburgh Critical Studies in Romanticism Series.

“Nationalism, restoration, and Romantic ballet: Thackeray, Taglioni, and the good old (English) plan.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 41.5 (November 2019).

"Dancing in Time and Place: Figuring Englishness in Romantic Periodicals." ELH 83:3 (Fall 2016).

“Periodicals” (coauthored with Mark Schoenfield, Vanderbilt University).  Handbook to Romanticism Studies. Ed Joel Faflak and Julia M. Wright. Oxford: Blackwell Press, 2012. 

“Managing Propriety for the Regency: Jane Austen Reads the Book.” Studies in Romanticism (Summer 2009).

Courses Taught


ENGH 301, The Fields of English
ENGH 305, Dimensions of Writing and Literature
ENGH 333, British Novel of the Eighteenth Century
ENGH 336, British Novel of the Nineteenth Century
ENGH 432, Major British Authors
ENGH 458, Topics in Literary Research (RS) 
ENGH 642, Seminar in British Literature
ENGH 500, Research in English Studies
HNRS 110, Research Methods
HNRS 122, Reading the Arts
HNRS 130, Identity, Community, Difference
ENGH 202, Texts and Contexts

 

Recent Presentations

Conference presentations:

“Spectacular Disability: Cataloguing Disorder in Emma.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association (INCS) Conference, Knoxville, TN, April 2023.

“Narratives of Demolition: Trauma and Wasting in The Adventures of Caleb Williams.” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR) Conference, Liverpool, August 2022.

“Waste: Disordered Eating, Anxiety, and Recovery in Great Expectations.” Northeast Victorian Studies Association (NVSA) Conference, Baltimore, MD, April 2022.

“John Gay, Public Representation, and the Unruly Queen.” Southern Conference on British Studies Online Annual Meeting, November 2020.

“Periodical Elements: The Satirist, Aerial Uprising, and Romantic Theatricality.” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR) Conference, Chicago, IL, August 2019.

“Nationalism, restoration, and Romantic ballet: Thackeray, Taglioni, and the good old (English) plan.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association (INCS) Conference, Dallas, TX, March 2019.

“The Politics and Aesthetics of Extraction: Cultural Interventions in Blackwood’s and The Imperial.” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR) Conference, Providence, RI, June 2018.

“Extracting Enthusiasm: Blackwood’s and The Imperial.” Blackwood’s Bicentenary Conference, Edinburgh, July 2017.

“Bodies Odd and Ancient: Quadrille Dancing, Lady Hamilton, and Unruly Movement.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association (INCS) Conference, Philadelphia, April 2017.

“Figures of national discontent: performing modesty in Mansfield Park and Romantic ballet.” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR) Conference, Berkeley, August 2016.

“Rethinking the politics of dance in the post-Revolutionary period: im/mobility in Austen and beyond.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association (INCS) Conference, Atlanta, GA, March/April 2015.

“Signification and the Dancing Body, 1760-1826.” 16th Annual Oxford Dance Symposium, Wolfson College, Oxford, UK, April 2014.

Invited lectures:
“Engaging Ambiguity: Allusion and Intertext in Queen Caroline Prints.” Conference on “Trial by Media: The Queen Caroline Affair.” Yale Law School, New Haven, CT, October 2019.


“Strange disorders: nationalism and disease in Romantic-era writing about dance” Eighteenth/Nineteenth-Century Colloquium, Warren Humanities Center, Vanderbilt University, January 2013. 

 

In the Media

"Live from Pemberley" podcast, March 2022 - August 2023.