Literature in English, British Isles | Open Access Articles

Fifteen Years Of Open-Access, Feminist Editing And Beyond: Laura L. Runge Transitions From Editor-In-Chief To Co-Director Of Abo Editorial Board As Of Abo Vol. 16, No. 1, Kelly Plante

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This is an editor's note thanking Laura L. Runge for her more than 15 years service as the founding editor of ABO. The current editors thank Laura for her foundational work and we commit to carry on her editorial vision.

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Retrospective: The Burney Centre, Mcgill University, 1945-2024, Peter Sabor

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

The origins of McGill University’s Burney Centre go back to 1945, when Joyce Hemlow was appointed to McGill’s Department of English. After publishing a major biography of Frances Burney in 1958, Hemlow initiated what she termed the Burney Project: a research centre devoted to producing scholarly editions of the journals and letters of Burney and her father, the music historian Charles Burney. The Frances Burney edition was completed, in 25 volumes, in 2019; five volumes of the Charles Burney edition have appeared to date, with a sixth and final volume to follow. Joyce Hemlow was succeeded as Director of the …

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A Review Of The South Central Society For Eighteenth-Century Studies (Scsecs) Annual Conference (Pinehurst, Nc 19-21 February 2026), Laura Runge-Gordon

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A conference review for the South-Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference held in Pinehurst, North Carolina February 19-21, 2026. The conference was organized by SCECS President Catherine Parisian and featured the keynote speaker Peter Radford.

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A Review Of Willow White's Feminist Comedy: Women Playwrights Of London (University Of Delaware Press, 2024), Mattie Burkert

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A review of Willow White's Feminist Comedy: Women Playwrights of London by Mattie Burkert.

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A Review Of Karen Bloom Gevirtz 'S The Apothecary's Wife (University Of California Press, 2024), Annika Mann

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A review of Karen Bloom Gevirtz's The Apothecary's Wife by Annika Mann.

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Teaching Frances Burney's Evelina With Netflix’S Bridgerton, Willow White

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This pedagogical essay explores strategies for teaching Frances Burney's first novel Evelina (1778) through comparison with Netflix's popular series Bridgerton. The essay demonstrates how Bridgerton's widespread popularity has renewed interest in Georgian literature and provides an engaging and accessible entry point for undergraduate students to explore Evelina's themes of social anxiety, gender, and coming of age.

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Teaching A Stand-Alone Course On Burney, Lorna J. Clark

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This essay outlines a stand-alone course on Frances Burney, suggesting that she offers a good entry point into eighteenth-century studies. Given that she wrote in so many genres—novels, plays, journals, and letters—such a course avoids the narrowness which often marks a single author course. In twelve weeks, the course studied ten works: four novels, five plays (three comedies and two tragedies) and a selection of journals and letters. The latter describes well-known figures in Burney’s social and literary networks in eighteenth-century London and leads to discussion of techniques of the epistolary, of diary-writing and of women’s life-writing. Burney’s novels are …

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Lifelong Learning: Approaches To Teaching Frances Burney’S The Wanderer To Adults, Miriam Al Jamil

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

The construction of a course for adult learners who are not studying for a qualification or credits but rather for enjoyment and engagement with learning for its own sake, requires an approach centered on needs which may not be entirely academic. Drawing on students’ individual life experiences while avoiding assumptions based on familiarity with the material shapes the course and offers many benefits. The essay is based on teaching Workers Education Association (WEA) courses and proposes the structure of a literature course on Frances Burney’s 1814 novel The Wanderer. It selects thematic content which resonates with older learners, such …

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Introduction: Concise Collection On Teaching The Works Of Frances Burney, Dana Gliserman Kopans

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This short essay introduces a Concise Collection special issue on teaching Frances Burney. The collection brings together a range of texts and approaches to them and demonstrates that Burney can be successfully taught to students outside of the graduate context.

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A Review Of Books And Borrowing 1750–1830: An Analysis Of Scottish Borrowers' Registers, Sophie Coulombeau

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

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A Review Of Deborah Weiss's Women And Madness In The Early Romantic Novel: Injured Minds, Ruined Lives, Jennifer L. Nault Ms

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A review of Women and Madness in the Early Romantic Novel by Jennifer Nault.

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Teaching Phillis Wheatley Peters’S Morals On Words And Actions In American Literature To 1860, Don Holmes

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This article argues that teaching Phillis Wheatley-Peters (c. 1753-1784) as a moral authority during the American Revolution provides a robust historical framework for fostering an empowering humanism in students. When Phillis Wheatley Peters wrote to Indigenous Mohegan Minister Samson Occom (1723-1792) in 1774, she expressed satisfaction with his reasons for recognizing the conditions faced by enslaved Africans in North America. Her didactic perspective aimed to enlighten her readers about the limitations of the human condition: “This I desire not for their Hurt, but to convince them of the strange Absurdity of their Conduct whose Words and Actions are so diametrically …

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Framing Affect: Close Up To Feeling With Women At The Eighteenth-Century Theatre On The Twenty-First Century Screen, Ros M. Ballaster Professor

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Period films and television dramas of the twenty-first century use scenes of attendance at the theatre by women in the (long) eighteenth century as a test of their capacity to feel. Such scenes provide an opportunity to measure the competing affordances of screen and stage regarding affect in the eighteenth century and our present moment. Explored are scenes of theatrical affect from Dangerous Liaisons (1998) to The Duchess (2008), Harlots (2017), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), Bridgerton (2020). The figure of the liberated, educated, and aesthetically sensitive woman serves in period fiction on stage, screen and page more …

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The Gendered Duality Of Coldness In The Portrayals Of Eliza Hayley, Francesca Blanch-Serrat

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

In the eighteenth century, coldness was defined, on the one hand, in relation to the body and the senses (a body that is lacking in heat) and on the other, to emotion (an individual lacking in passion). It was linked to illness and disability (Turner, 2012), equated to death, seen as both a cause and effect of physical decline and older age, and used as a synonym for low libido and infertility (Toulalan, 2015). In contrast to these negative connotations, coldness was also regarded as a remedy to temper the passions and to ensure longevity (Yallop, 2015), and taking cold …

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Curious Objects: Form And Feeling In Mary Leapor's Thing Poems, James Metcalf

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Mary Leapor (1722–1746) has long been recognized as something of a curiosity: a Northamptonshire kitchen maid with a rudimentary education who died at the age of 24, but who also wrote two volumes of poetry. In this essay I read Leapor’s “thing poems” to show how curiosity is also a supervening affective regime in her poetics. Minor and marginal, fixated by perverse objects which tend more to derail than deepen the production of knowledge, curiosity is an unsettling mode of inquiry because of its imaginative attachment to the strange stuff lurking within the ordinary as a diminished site of aesthetic …

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Managerial Forms: Narrative, Information, And Household Government In The Diaries Of Sarah Cowper, Robert Stearn

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

The diary of Sarah Cowper (written 1700-16) is characterized by elaborate techniques of information management and a sustained attention to the fractious emotional dynamics of her household. Bringing together historical scholarship on domestic service and literary analyses of organizing practices in print and manuscript, the article argues that the finding devices in Cowper’s seven-volume diary disclose a practical knowledge both textual and social—one which took the affective dynamics of the household as its object, but which was also shaped by and afloat in those dynamics. The article is in two parts. The first explores how Cowper’s information management practices were …

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Epic Anger And Shame In Lucy Hutchinson’S Order And Disorder, Mary Trull

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

In his didactic epic, De rerum natura, the Roman poet Lucretius rejects the unity of affect and genre in Homeric epic. Instead, in Lucretius anger is anti-heroic: the human race is demeaned by fear, cowering before a fabricated vision of vengeful gods. The gods are not angry, and human fear is therefore absurd, even shameful, since it leads to outrageous acts of appeasement that violate basic human decency. When Lucy Hutchinson, the first English translator of the full De rerum natura, approached the task of writing an epic version of the book of Genesis, affect was already a central, …

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Queer Excess And Hybrid History In Elizabeth Cary’S Edward Ii, Kelley K. Glasgow

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Elizabeth Cary’s prose history The History of the Life, Reign, and Death of Edward II (1627) follows the fourteenth-century king of England, whose love affairs with his favorite courtiers ultimately resulted in his overthrow and execution. She identifies Edward’s queerness, and his resulting lack of emotional control, as central to his inability to govern England, and as an example of the dangers of excessive emotions for her readers. Because of Edward II’s complicated publishing and attribution history, much of the scholarly effort around this text has been spent attempting to interpret it through Cary’s personal life and political aims. …

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Introduction: Affective And Emotional Encounters In/With British Women's Writing, 1600–1800, Anna-Rose Shack, Zoë Van Cauwenberg, Fauve Vandenberghe

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This special issue explores the methodological affordances of the fields of affect theory and the history of emotions in the study of women’s writing from the early modern period, the long eighteenth century and the Romantic period. It posits that the vocabularies of affect theory and the history of emotions offer a productive critical framework to approach historical women’s writing. In reading women’s writing through this lens, this special issue aims to model a theoretically flexible and historically informed approach to affect and emotions that may be taken up across and beyond traditional literary periodizations and in different forms of …

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Investigating The Relationship Between Noun Classes And Plant Folk Taxonomy In Chasu Language Of Kilimanjaro Region In Tanzania, Peter Rabson Mziray

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The current study investigates the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu (G 22). The study focuses on two objectives: the first objective is to describe the plant folk taxonomy in Chasu and the second objective is to determine the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu. Data were collected from rural villages in Same and Mwanga districts by using free listing, field interviews (jungle-walk-and-identify), and written texts containing Chasu plant names. The findings reveal that Chasu folk taxonomy reflects different ethnobotanical categories; including a unique beginner which is mmea/mimea ‘plant(s)’, and three life …

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Interspecies Responsivity In Early Modern Drama And Animal Performances, Taylor C. Culbert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation proposes an expansive, interspecies definition of performance that uses behavior rather than cognition as the decisive feature and illustrates how such a definition can reshape our approach to theatre and performance history. Using the concept of responsivity, which refers to the embodied and affective ways that humans and non-human animals acknowledge and react to one another, I trace human–animal interactions across a variety of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century performance genres, from the aristocratic stag hunt and entertainments involving trained animals to the plays of Molière and Shakespeare. Drawing on my experience training animals, I offer a new perspective on …

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"You Know The Rules": A Dramatic Experiment In Aromantic Literary Theory, April Chronowski

English

This paper proposes a new literary theory framework based on the zine "an aromantic manifesto" by yingchen and yingtong, as well as the work of Erving Goffman, using theater as a device to examine romantic relationships. Blending English and sociology, I focus each chapter on a different literary period and examine two plays each: early modern (Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing), modern (Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Djuna Barnes' "To The Dogs"), and contemporary (Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9 and Margaret Edson's W;t). In tandem with analysis of formal elements---like …

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Reading With Aunt Bunty: Intergenerational Feminism And Eighteenth-Century Studies, Alison Conway

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This essay asks: what might an intergenerational reading practice look like for feminist critics working in eighteenth-century studies? What could be learned from reading the political and institutional conditions that have shaped reading practices, past and present, in relation to each other? I consider, here, the case of Q.D. Leavis. Reading Leavis, as well as other women who studied at Cambridge in the early twentieth century, shows me how profoundly I have been shaped by Virginia Woolf’s characterization of the university and literary history’s marginalization of women writers. What would it mean to consider the eighteenth century through the lens …

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A Review Of Kristin M. Girten's Sensitive Witnesses: Feminist Materialism In The British Enlightenment, Peter West

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A review of Sensitive Witnesses by Kristin M. Girten by Peter West.

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A Review Of Glenn Mcgillivray's Actors, Audiences, And Emotions In The Eighteenth Century: Communities Of Sentiment, Semane Parsons

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A Review of Glen McGillivray's book Actors, Audiences, and Emotions in the Eighteenth Century: Communities of Sentiment (2023).

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A Review Of Jennifer Maclure’S The Feeling Of Letting Die: Necroeconomics And Victorian Fiction, Jolene Zigarovich

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A review of Jennifer MacLure’s The Feeling of Letting Die: Necroeconomics and Victorian Fiction by Jolene Zigarovich.

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A Review Of Maeve E. Kane's Shirts Powdered Red: Haudenosaunee Gender, Trade, And Exchange Across Three Centuries, Melissa Adams-Campbell

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A review of Shirts Powdered Red: Haudenosaunee Gender, Trade, and Exchange across Three Centuries, by Maeve Kane

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“Strange And Unusual Things”: Teaching The Speculative Fiction Of Margaret Cavendish, E Mariah Spencer

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Margaret Cavendish, a prolific author and natural philosopher, defies categorization with her multifaceted contributions to literature and philosophy. While she is recognized for her groundbreaking work in various academic fields, her literature also resonates within the realms of science fiction, weird fiction, and speculative genres. This essay explores innovative approaches to teaching Cavendish's work, particularly within the realm of speculative literature, using an interdisciplinary lens. Drawing on perspectives including monster theory and the concept of the abject, students are prompted to critically engage with Cavendish's texts. By examining themes such as the monstrous, the supernatural, and the occult, students uncover …

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Teaching Margaret Cavendish Through The Lens Of Scientific Anti-Realism, Kevin Lower

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673) only began receiving sustained attention by historians of philosophy in recent decades, but she is being rapidly integrated into the early modern philosophical canon. This essay explores one dimension of teaching Cavendish that presents difficulties for introductory philosophy students: her criticisms of experimental philosophy. Section one explains how I integrate Cavendish into the narrative of my course, identifying both historical and thematic strategies for including her in introductory philosophy courses. Section two describes methods for teaching Cavendish’s natural philosophy and identifies a pedagogical challenge to presenting her criticisms of experimental philosophy. In their first exposure to Cavendish, …

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Jumping Pens And Historical Vertigo: Teaching Cavendish In The Twenty-First Century, Anne M. Thell

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

"Jumping Pens" considers "historical and epistemological vertigo" as a useful pedagogical rubric for teaching the works of Margaret Cavendish (1623-73) in contemporary university classrooms. Specifically, it looks back across more than a decade of teaching Cavendish in diverse settings in order to show how exciting this author can be for students who are just starting out in the discipline of literary studies. As this essay argues, Cavendish can make us all better, more self-aware instructors, while also developing critical and historical acumen in our students.

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Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, British Isles

Fifteen Years Of Open-Access, Feminist Editing And Beyond: Laura L. Runge Transitions From Editor-In-Chief To Co-Director Of Abo Editorial Board As Of Abo Vol. 16, No. 1, Kelly Plante

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Retrospective: The Burney Centre, Mcgill University, 1945-2024, Peter Sabor

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A Review Of The South Central Society For Eighteenth-Century Studies (Scsecs) Annual Conference (Pinehurst, Nc 19-21 February 2026), Laura Runge-Gordon

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A Review Of Willow White's Feminist Comedy: Women Playwrights Of London (University Of Delaware Press, 2024), Mattie Burkert

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A Review Of Karen Bloom Gevirtz 'S The Apothecary's Wife (University Of California Press, 2024), Annika Mann

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Teaching Frances Burney's Evelina With Netflix’S Bridgerton, Willow White

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Teaching A Stand-Alone Course On Burney, Lorna J. Clark

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Lifelong Learning: Approaches To Teaching Frances Burney’S The Wanderer To Adults, Miriam Al Jamil

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Introduction: Concise Collection On Teaching The Works Of Frances Burney, Dana Gliserman Kopans

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A Review Of Books And Borrowing 1750–1830: An Analysis Of Scottish Borrowers' Registers, Sophie Coulombeau

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A Review Of Deborah Weiss's Women And Madness In The Early Romantic Novel: Injured Minds, Ruined Lives, Jennifer L. Nault Ms

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Teaching Phillis Wheatley Peters’S Morals On Words And Actions In American Literature To 1860, Don Holmes

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Framing Affect: Close Up To Feeling With Women At The Eighteenth-Century Theatre On The Twenty-First Century Screen, Ros M. Ballaster Professor

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

The Gendered Duality Of Coldness In The Portrayals Of Eliza Hayley, Francesca Blanch-Serrat

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Curious Objects: Form And Feeling In Mary Leapor's Thing Poems, James Metcalf

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Managerial Forms: Narrative, Information, And Household Government In The Diaries Of Sarah Cowper, Robert Stearn

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Epic Anger And Shame In Lucy Hutchinson’S Order And Disorder, Mary Trull

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Queer Excess And Hybrid History In Elizabeth Cary’S Edward Ii, Kelley K. Glasgow

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Introduction: Affective And Emotional Encounters In/With British Women's Writing, 1600–1800, Anna-Rose Shack, Zoë Van Cauwenberg, Fauve Vandenberghe

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Investigating The Relationship Between Noun Classes And Plant Folk Taxonomy In Chasu Language Of Kilimanjaro Region In Tanzania, Peter Rabson Mziray

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Interspecies Responsivity In Early Modern Drama And Animal Performances, Taylor C. Culbert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

"You Know The Rules": A Dramatic Experiment In Aromantic Literary Theory, April Chronowski

English

Reading With Aunt Bunty: Intergenerational Feminism And Eighteenth-Century Studies, Alison Conway

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A Review Of Kristin M. Girten's Sensitive Witnesses: Feminist Materialism In The British Enlightenment, Peter West

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A Review Of Glenn Mcgillivray's Actors, Audiences, And Emotions In The Eighteenth Century: Communities Of Sentiment, Semane Parsons

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A Review Of Jennifer Maclure’S The Feeling Of Letting Die: Necroeconomics And Victorian Fiction, Jolene Zigarovich

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A Review Of Maeve E. Kane's Shirts Powdered Red: Haudenosaunee Gender, Trade, And Exchange Across Three Centuries, Melissa Adams-Campbell

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

“Strange And Unusual Things”: Teaching The Speculative Fiction Of Margaret Cavendish, E Mariah Spencer

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Teaching Margaret Cavendish Through The Lens Of Scientific Anti-Realism, Kevin Lower

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Jumping Pens And Historical Vertigo: Teaching Cavendish In The Twenty-First Century, Anne M. Thell

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830