Title/Reference No.: ‘Medical Creativity in Eighteenth-Century Literature’ (Ref:EXT19/HUM/LAWLOR)
Deadline for Applicants: 15th November 2018
Location: University of Northumbria
‘Medical Creativity in Eighteenth-Century Literature’ (Ref:EXT19/HUM/LAWLOR)
This studentship is funded by the Leverhulme Trust as part of the three-year Major Project, WRITING DOCTORS: REPRESENTATION AND MEDICAL PERSONALITY ca. 1660-1832. The project itself deals broadly with writing by and about doctors and other health practitioners, including midwives, apothecaries, quacks, cunning-women and so on. The project team consists of Professor Clark Lawlor, Professor Emeritus Allan Ingram, Dr Leigh Wetherall-Dickson and Dr Helen Williams, as well as a post-doctoral Research Assistant working on an anthology of female medical writings. The postgraduate student will be assisted in narrowing the broad title provided here, and will have considerable scope to focus on their interests within the topic provided.
We will provide full details of the entire project’s scope to interested applicants, but, in short, the PhD thesis is intended to examine some aspects of the little-studied phenomenon of writing doctors and its wide social effects, whether it be representations of medical practitioners in literature and art, or creative works written by medical people. We expect that, within the broad title of ’medical creativity’, the student will begin with a survey of works by ’writing doctors’ in the period, and to identify a broader base of health practitioners’ writings. Part of this task of identifying and analysing medical writings will be to tease out issues of genre: clearly some of these works will be literary in the most obvious sense, but others will manifest creativity in more subtle ways, such as the medical case study.
The student will narrow the thesis to concentrate on specific works, both literary and medical
(however defined) to be identified by the student, and will discuss matters such as generic expectations, literary style, and the relationship of style to content. The status of the author regarding gender, religion, nationality and so on will be a significant aspect of the thesis as well.
The student will benefit from the many opportunities afforded by this major project and the wider team of period experts at Northumbria, including funding for archival and other research, academic and public speaking, and publishing under its auspices. We will be happy to support collaboration with external arts and cultural organisations if that is of interest to the candidate.
Eligibility and How to Apply:
Please note eligibility requirement:
• Academic excellence of the proposed student i.e. 2:1 (or equivalent GPA from non-UK universities [preference for 1st class honours]); or a Masters (preference for Merit or above); or APEL evidence of substantial practitioner achievement.
• Appropriate IELTS score, if required.
• Applicants cannot apply for this funding if currently engaged in Doctoral study at Northumbria or elsewhere.
For further details of how to apply, entry requirements and the application form, see: https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/research/postgraduate-research-degrees/how-to-apply/
Please note: Applications that do not include a research proposal of approximately 1,000 words (not a copy of the advert), or that do not include the advert reference (e.g. RDF18/…) will not be considered.
Deadline for applications: 15 November 2018
Start Date: 7 January 2019
Northumbria University is an equal opportunities provider and in welcoming applications for studentships from all sectors of the community we strongly encourage applications from women and under-represented groups.
https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/research/postgraduate-research-degrees/research-degrees/
Funding Notes
The studentship is available to all Home and EU students with a full stipend, paid for 3 years at RCUK rates (for 2018/19 this is £14,777 pa) and includes full Home/EU fees
References
Clark Lawlor and Akihito Suzuki (eds), Sciences of Body and Mind, Vol. 2 of Literature and
Science 1660-1834 [anthology], Gen. Ed. Judith Hawley, 8 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2003).
Clark Lawlor, From Melancholia to Prozac: a History of Depression (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Clark Lawlor, Consumption and Literature: The Making of the Romantic Disease (Basingstoke: Palgrave,
2006).
Allan Ingram and Leigh Wetherall-Dickson (eds), Disease and Death in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture: Fashioning the Unfashionable (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
Depression and Melancholy 1660-1800, ed. Leigh Wetherall-Dickson and Allan Ingram (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012), 4 vols.
Helen Williams, [with Richard Terry], eds., Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, by John Cleland (Toronto: Broadview, 2018)