Dr Michelle Faubert

Visiting Fellow in Romantic Literature

Department: Humanities

ADSS Michellefullsizr Staffprofile 255 I have lived, studied and worked in Canada my whole life. For my interdisciplinary Master’s thesis at the University of Regina, I focused on Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophy and the poetry of the Victorian Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins. My PhD dissertation (University of Toronto) is a cultural study of how Romantic-era writers responded to the definitions of insanity that were becoming increasingly important markers of identity during this period of the birth of psychology.

After teaching Romantic and Victorian literature courses for a couple of years at the University of Toronto, I was awarded a two-year SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada)) postdoctoral fellowship to develop, at the University of Western Ontario, a study of British psychologists who wrote poetry in the Romantic period. I only accepted one year of the award because I was hired at the University of Manitoba for a full-time, tenure-track position teaching Romantic literature, which I still hold. I was promoted from Assistant to Associate Professor in early 2010 at the University of Manitoba and, in the summer of 2010, I was elected Visiting Fellow at Northumbria University, where I collaborate with the long eighteenth-century group on publications and research projects. I have published widely on Romantic and Victorian literature and am a reviewer for several international journals in the areas of Romantic literature, early feminism, the Scottish Enlightenment, and the history of medicine.

Talking Point

Affiliations and Memberships:

British Society for Literature and Science
Modern Language Association of America
North American Society for the Study of Romanticism
International Conference on Romanticism
Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English
Centro Interdisciplinare di Studi Romantici

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

My research on Romantic literature focuses on the history of psychology and insanity in the Romantic period, early feminism (especially the work of Mary Wollstonecraft), the Scottish Enlightenment, and literary and professional identity. My monograph delineates how a hitherto little-known group of psychologist-poets, who grew out of the liberal literary-medical culture of the Scottish Enlightenment and used poetry as an accessible form to communicate emerging psychological, cultural and moral ideas – concepts which were echoed by so many canonical Romantic poets that we now think of them as distinct features of Romantic literature.

My next major publication, due to come out at the end of 2010 with Palgrave Macmillan press, is a volume of essays I have co-edited with Thomas Schmid at the University of Texas, El Paso, called Romanticism and Pleasure. I am presently working on an edition of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Mary, A Fiction and The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria for Broadview Press, as well as a volume on early medical writings on depression, which I am co-editing with Allan Ingram at Northumbria University. This volume is part of a 4-volume set called Depression and Melancholy, 1660–1800, which will be published by Pickering & Chatto.

Professional Activity

Teaching

I have taught many different courses at both the postgraduate and undergraduate level, including courses on Romantic literature (one generalist, one on the novel written by women, one on the long poem, and one on the theme of medicine during the period), the cultural construction of madness, religion and literature, and the Victorian novel.

Postgraduate Supervision

I supervise and have sat on committees for postgraduates, funded both by the University of Manitoba and SSHRC, in the field of Romantic literature, medicine, law, and human rights.

Sponsors and Collaborators

Funding Awards:

(Unless otherwise stated, all funds are in Canadian dollars)
- Association of Commonwealth Universities Titular Fellowship (Summer 2010-11; ₤5,000); The Gordon and Jean Southam Fellowship
- University of Manitoba SSHRC Research Grant (Fall 2009; $6,163.74)
- University of Manitoba SSHRC Travel Grant (Fall 2009; $781.33)
- Dean’s Office Funding; Faculty of Arts, University of Manitoba (Fall 2009; $1000, with top-up to $400 from Department of English, Film, and Theatre).
- Arts Proposal Development Fund award; Faculty of Arts, University of Manitoba (2009; $1000)
- URGP Grant (University Research Grants Program), University of Manitoba (2006-2007; $4,259)
- SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) Postdoctoral Fellowship; awarded for two years at $70,000, accepted for one at $35, 000 (2005-2006)

Key Publications

Rhyming Reason chosen by Pickering & Chatto as their sole nomination for the British Society for Literature and Science (BSLS) Prize for 2009.
http://www.pickeringchatto.com/titles/1627-9781851969555-rhyming-reason

Romanticism and Pleasure. Volume of essays; co-edited with Thomas Schmid. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2010. (forthcoming) Please see http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=400892

“Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Beddoes, and ‘The Golden Age’ of the 1790s”; journal article; European Romantic Review (forthcoming)

“John Ferriar’s Psychology, James Hogg’s Justified Sinner, and the Gay Science of
Horror-Writing.” Essay in Romanticism and Pleasure. Edited by Michelle Faubert and Thomas Schmid. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. (forthcoming)

---, and Thomas Schmid. “Introduction: A Reassessment of Romanticism’s Disciplinary
Delights.” Romanticism and Pleasure. Edited by Michelle Faubert and Thomas Schmid. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. (forthcoming)

“Nerve theory, Sensibility and Romantic Metrosexuals.” Romanticism and the City. Ed. Larry Peer. Palgrave Macmillan. (forthcoming)

“Nathaniel Cotton and James Beattie: Graveyard Verse as Psychological Therapy for the Melancholy.” The European Spectator. (forthcoming)

Full list of Publications

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Research at Northumbria

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