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Staff Profile

Dr Ella Dzelzainis

Senior Lecturer in Nineteenth Century Literature

Background

About me

I studied for an MA in Victorian Studies and a PhD at Birkbeck, University of London, took up a 3-year lectureship at Birkbeck and was then awarded a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. After a spell as a post-doc at both Birkbeck and King's College, London, I joined the School of English at Newcastle.

My research is interdisciplinary, located in the intersection between literature, feminist history and economic history in the long nineteenth century. I am particularly interested in the impact of T.R. Malthus's thought on nineteenth-century literature, especially the condition-of-England novel and writing by women in the period. My work has also taken a transatlantic turn, focusing on the way in which Britain responded to the idea of American democracy in a range of literary and visual forms. More recently, I have become working on the representation of antisemitism in mid-Victorian radical literature.

I enjoy talking about my research with a general audience. I was a guest on a panel on Malthus as part of the British Academy's 'Thinkers for our Time' series and was also delighted to contribute to a public talk on the Victorian Pseudosciences after a performance of Shelagh Stephenson's play, Harriet Martineau Dreams of Dancing at Live Theatre, Newcastle. I gave a public lecture on ‘Dickens, the Workhouse and the Fallen Woman’ at the Ripon Workhouse Museum and during the lockdown joined an online panel on ‘Foundlings in Victorian England’ with Jeanette Bright, the curator of the Foundling Museum, and the historian Professor Helen Berry.

BBC Radio 4 appearances include contributing to Melvyn Bragg’s 'In Our Time' programme on Harriet Martineau and, more recently, to an episode of Jonathan Freedland’s ‘The Long View’: in ‘The Drama of Scandal’ I compared the campaigning impact of Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna’s novel, Helen Fleetwood, on the passing of the Ten Hours Factory Bill with that of ITV’s ‘Mr Bates vs The Post Office’ on the post office scandal.

You can find the 'In Our Time' podcast here: BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Harriet Martineau

And ‘The Long View’ programme here: The Long View - The Drama of Scandal - BBC Sounds

 

Editorial work and memberships

I am on the editorial boards of Gaskell Journal, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, and Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature.

I am a board member of the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, Durham University, and on am also on the steering groups for its sister organizations: CNCS International and the International Nineteenth-Century Studies Association. Memberships include the British Association for Victorian Studies, the North American Victorian Studies Association and The Gaskell Society.

 

 

Research

Current work

Currently I am completing my book, Commerce Between the Sexes: Feminism and Political Economy in Industrial Fiction, 1832-1855. Other projects include editing volume 4 of Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition (on the 1840s) for Cambridge University Press (general editors of this new 10-part series are Gail Marshall, Andrew Stauffer and Marion Thain), as well as putting the finishing touches to a piece of work on G.W. M. Reynolds, antisemitism and citizenship. Once this is done, I'll be returning to my Malthus project, which considers the impact of Malthusian thinking on the literary representation of women, sex and money in the long nineteenth century.


Postgraduate Supervision

I enjoy supervising postgraduate research students in both English Literature and (for the critical component) Creative Writing, whether at MLitt, MPhil and PhD level. My own work is interdisciplinary, so I particularly welcome applications from postgraduate research students who wish to work in areas across or between disciplines. My Malthus research means I am interested in supervising topics that explore sex, sexuality and/or economics in nineteenth-century prose, plays and poetry. Projects that think about literature’s engagement with political, historical and religious ideas, on nineteenth-century women’s writing in all its forms, on the transatlantic reception of texts and ideas, or on Victorian feminism are always of interest. I am also a fan of major mid-century novelists such as Elizabeth Gaskell, the Brontës, and Charles Dickens.


My current students and their projects

Emily Chapman, ‘Haunted Landscapes and Female Identity’ (PhD, Creative Writing)

Caroline Gardner, ' Anger in the Work of Elizabeth Gaskell’ (PhD, English Literature)

Margaret Gray, ' Victorian Women Travellers and the Political Economy of Art: An Analysis of Commerce, Craftsmanship, and Nationhood in Travel Writing on the Middle East and Asia, 1844-1899’ (PhD, English Literature; funded by a Newcastle University Overseas Research Scholarship)

Anna Marie Hill, ‘Reproductive Politics in British Socialist Women’s Writing of the Long Fin de Siècle’ (PhD, English Literature)

James Inkster, ‘Self-Preservation: Ageing, Extinction and the Fictional Autobiography’ (PhD, English Literature)

Elizabeth Sands, ‘Spectres of Thatcherism: Melancholia and Spaces of Isolation in Contemporary Women’s Writing of the North’ (PhD, English Literature; funded by the Wellcome Trust)



 

 

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching

I contribute to Victorian Passions, a large, team-taught module at Stage 2 and am sole convener of Sex and Money: Economies of the Victorian Novel at Stage 3. I also supervise Stage 3 dissertations on nineteenth-century topics.


Postgraduate Teaching

I teach on Radicalisms, an optional module on the taught MA in English Literature. I also supervise MA dissertations.


Postgraduate Research Supervision

I am an experienced postgraduate research degree supervisor. For details of my current supervisees, see details under the Research tab.


Postgraduate Research Degree Examining

I have acted as internal examiner at Newcastle in both Literature and History and have externalled at Durham, Exeter, Leicester, Royal Holloway, and Birkbeck. I also act as an Independent Chair for research degree vivas for the University.



 

 

Publications