Stirling University Presents

Biography

 

I came to the University of Stirling in late 2013 to study on the internationally renowned postgraduate course, The Gothic Imagination MLitt. where my main area of interest (and subsequent dissertation) focused on the clinical history of epilepsy and its treatment in Victorian Gothic writing. I received my B.A (Hons.) from Bath Spa University (2009-2012) in English Literature. Here, I developed a passion for Gothic literature and completed a dissertation on the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. In addition to my academic experience, I have spent four years working for national charities assisting prison visitors, and I have also voluntarily contributed website articles for various local branches of the mental health charity MIND. As of 2014, I am now working towards my PhD. at Stirling and I am due to present a research paper entitled “Migrations of Madness” at the International Gothic Association 2015 Conference (July 28th-1st August, Vancouver, BC).

My main areas of focus are directed towards the treatment of mental health challenges in modern and contemporary Gothic fictions. More broadly, my interests include: medical science of the 19th century; the treatment and clinical origins of epilepsy; social stigma; psychoanalysis; the grotesque; “survivor” poetry; queer theory; Victorian Gothic writing; asylum register and patient case-files (of the nineteenth-century); the writings of Patrick McGrath, and the films of David Lynch. 

 

My Topic: "Epilepsy and the Victorian Gothic: invisible illnesses and atavistic bodies"

 

Victorian Gothic fictions have a longstanding tendency to pathologise degeneracy and moral atavism. Contributing to discussions within medical humanities, this workshop presents a historicised evaluation of sociological, psychological and scientific writings featuring epilepsy, aiming to contextualise its symptomatic presence in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). Using extracts of Victorian patient files, obtained from the archives of Stirling District Asylum, documented institutional abuses are –perhaps for the first time – exposed and critically analysed. Here, our workshop will interrogate whether Gothic evocations of epilepsy can be considered monstrous, or, if such writings actually encourage a body of ill-health to speak on its own terms.