Studies in Romanticism at the University of Nebraska

The Department of English offers a broad range of undergraduate and graduate courses and seminars in the literature and culture of the Romantic period in Great Britain. While faculty in the area are involved in teaching and research in traditional canonical authors and subjects in the Romantic period, the department is especially noted for its leadership in the recovery and reassessment of historically neglected and marginalized writers, especially women. We are strongly committed to the interdisciplinary study of Romanticism within the larger parameters of European art, culture, history, and society, and from a broad variety of critical and theoretical perspectives.

• 3290 titles in English (1289 authors), including 1071 titles by women
• 3261 titles in French, including 509 titles by women
• 2653 titles in German
  

Added to these resources are comprehensive holdings is British periodicals, including

• the Early British Periodicals series, which includes a broad range of periodicals from the British Isles from the years primarily before 1800
  
• the English Literary Periodicals series, which covers the majority of English-language literary periodicals and journals beginning in the later 18^th century
• British Periodicals in the Creative Arts

The presence at the University of Nebraska of the Corvey Collection and these additional extensive microform archives, together with extensive other traditional print materials, facilitate the systematic study of British Romantic literature in its historical context within the contemporary print culture. Undergraduate and graduate students alike can study British Romanticism in detail here, both as a national literary and cultural phenomenon and as part of the international Romanticism that characterized the broader Continental European cultural scene at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth.

Some current research and electronic projects in Romanticism at UNL

Faculty and students at both the graduate and the undergraduate levels work on a variety of projects in both traditional and electronic materials and media. In addition, the program in Romanticism at UNL is increasingly involved with scholars at other institutions and with the publication and dissemination of their work. Some of these projects and initiatives can be sampled by following this link.

Romanticism and the International Scholarly Community: Connecting at UNL

As part of its commitment to the recovery of neglected Romantic-era authors, the Department maintains partnerships with several national and international scholarly research initiatives. Students are encouraged to be actively involved in these projects and to publish their work in a number of related electronic archives. The Department presently participates in these projects:

• The Corvey Project at Sheffield Hallam University; Sheffield, England
• CW3, the specialized electronic database project being developed and maintained at Sheffield Hallam University for the study of British women writers of the Romantic period
• Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780 - 1840 (formerly Cardiff Corvey), an electronic database and scholarly journal maintained at the University of Cardiff and focused primarily -- but not exclusively -- upon British fiction of the Romantic period
• BWRP, the electronic text base in British women poets of the Romantic period being developed and maintained at the University of California, Davis, and featuring works held in the extensive Kohler Collection at that university's Shields Library
• A new collaborative project with the University of California, Davis, intended to develop an electronic scholarly edition of the poetry of Scots women poets of the Romantic period: SWRP
• A project being developed at the University of Nebraska to provide an electronic edition of the works of Charlotte Turner Smith
• An electronic text and data base being developed at the University of Nebraska to make available contemporary critical reviews of authors in the Corvey, CW3, and BWRP collections

Faculty whose primary work includes Romanticism:

Stephen C. Behrendt. Interests include William Blake, the Shelley circle, literature and the other arts in Romanticism, and the illustrated book. Special interest in women writers - especially poets - of the Romantic period, and in theoretical issues of reception, canonicity, and peridodicity.

Tom Gannon. Native American literatures, British Romanticism, Ecology and literature.

R. D. Stock. Romantic-era interests include the later 18^th-century literature, the Johnson circle, and the Gothic.

Jack Vespa. British Romanticism, Literature of Sensibility, American Romanticism.

Laura Mooneyham White. Interests include Jane Austen, Coleridge, narrative, and later 19^th-century literature.

Last revised, 6/26/13