Department of English

We will use the central insight of critical geography--that space is produced, rather than just found or filled--to examine the nineteenth-century expansion, elaboration, decoration, division and protection of the "spaces" of self, home, nation, and empire. How did the possibilities of emptiness and the comforts of abundances, the chill of austerity and the claustrophobia of hominess haunt Victorian spatial imaginings, and how do they continue to haunt our own? Geographical, psychoanalytic and sociological theory, as well as primary historical materials including sanitary reports and imperial surveys, will complicate our explorations of "novel spaces." Works may include C. Bronte's Jane Eyre, Nightingale's Cassandra, Dicken's Great Expectations, C. Kingsley's The Water Babies, Eliot's Daniel Deronda and Kipling's Kim. Requirements: lively class participation, one class presentation, two 10-12 page papers.