Susan Hamilton, PhD, MA, BA (Hons)

Email

suhamilt@ualberta.ca

I am currently working on two projects. The first attempts a media history of 19thC animal welfare campaigns, including the role of photography in the articulation and documenting of practices for the “humane treatment” of animals, and the work of seriality in creating and maintaining communities of action. The second, tentatively titled Everyday Feminism: Serialising Women’s Politics in the Nineteenth Century Press, explores the intersecting histories of the nineteenth century press and feminism. It asks how shifting ideas about the press through the course of the century – from the educative ideal of the 1840s to the New Journalism of the 1880s, shape serial writing strategies by women journalists exploring women’s political disabilities in this period. This project considers the impact of emerging concerns about mass behaviour, serialization and the common reader, to explore the ways in which women journalists constituted diverse audiences in the periodical press.

Representative publications

“Dogs’ Homes and Lethal Chambers: the Humane Worlds of Victorian Homes for Lost Dogs." In Ron Morrison and Laurence Mezzano, eds., Animals in Victorian Literature and Culture. Forthcoming from with Palgrave Macmillan

“’[T]o bind together in mutual helpfulness’: Genre and/as Social Action in the Late Victorian Anti-Vivisection Press," Journal of Modern Periodical Studies 6.2 (2015): 134-60.

“Hajjin- Photographed from Life,” Victorian Review,40.1 (2014): 28-31.

"Reading and the Popular Critique of Science in the Victorian Anti-vivisection Press: Frances Power Cobbe’s Writing for the Victoria Street Society," Victorian Review 36.2 (2010): 66-79.

“Women’s Voices and Public Debate” Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1830-1914. Edited by Joanne Shattock. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

"Marketing Antifeminism: Eliza Lynn Linton's' 'Wild Women' series and the possibilities of periodical signature," in Anti-Feminism and the Victorian Novel. Edited by Tamara Wagner, (Cambria, 2009).

Frances Power Cobbe and Victorian Feminism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Editor with Janice Schroeder. Women's Education in Britain, 1840 -1900. 6 volumes. History of Feminism Series. Routledge, 2007.

Editor, Animal Welfare and Anti-Vivisection, 1870 - 1910: Nineteenth-Century British Woman's Mission. 3 volumes. London: Routledge, 2004.

Editor, Criminals, Idiots, Women and Minors: Nineteenth-Century Writing by Women on Women. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 1995, 2nd edition, 2004.

I would be happy to supervise students in the broad fields of Nineteenth century literature and cultural studies and Animal Studies. I have particular interests in: Victorian and early 20thc feminisms, Victorian and early 20thC media history, media and Victorian animal welfare campaigns. 

I am currently supervising three doctoral students and serving on three supervisory committees. Current and/or recent supervisions include: the language of spirituality in late Victorian feminist writing; the workhouse and 19thC print culture; 19thC vegetarianism and the idea of self-conduct; mid-19thC evangelical print culture; early 19thC Canadian periodicals.