Jonathan Perris

Thesis title: The infection of London: Gothic imperialism and metropolitan class culture, 1790-1820

Supervisor: Dr Timothy Michael

Research interests: political discourse and satire in the Romantic period; Gothic imperialism; colonial and anti-colonial discourse; the British empire and slave trade; class, economics and literary culture; the history of literary and cultural theory.

Teaching: I am a Graduate Teaching and Research Scholar in English 1700-1850 at Oriel College, where I tutor on FHS Paper 4 (1660-1760), FHS Paper 5 (1760-1830), and FHS Prelims Paper 3 (1830-1910).

Doctoral research: My research examines how a number of imperial attitudes and cultural motifs emerged from the metropolitan literary and popular culture of the eighteenth century. In particular, the thesis studies the affect, imagery and narrative technique of early Gothic novels and political satire alongside the anxiety of metropolitan class restructuring as a result of expanding empire and capital markets. I suggest corollaries between these and the trope that Britain was in various ways being 'infected' by colonial contact.

Forthcoming work:  'God lives in the Sun': The subversion of Eurocentrism in William Blake's 'The Little Black Boy' (European Romantic Review, 2022); this paper examines the connection between Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative and Blake's 'The Little Black Boy', suggesting the latter as a direct and sardonic response to the liminal voice constructed in slave narratives such as the former.