Louise McCray

Thesis title: Books, Reading and Knowledge in the Work of William Godwin

Undergraduate teaching

  • Tutor for English Literature 2 (2017)

Research summary

Louise McCray has studied English Literature at the Universities of Exeter and Cambridge, with a special focus upon the period 1700-1830. Her research interests concern the activity of reading as a cultural construct, and in particular the relationship between literary portrayals of reading and wider cultural-historical attitudes towards knowledge. Her MPhil work explored the language of reading in the work of Jonathan Swift, William Godwin and Henry Mackenzie.

Louise’s doctoral research, supervised by Professor Penny Fielding, investigates the way that books, reading and knowledge are portrayed in the work of William Godwin. By situating Godwin’s concerns about the social life of print in their cultural-historical context, the project will explore wider shifts in attitude towards the concept of reading, intellectual ‘enquiry’, and the various roles of the book within British society 1780-1830.

Affiliated research centres

Organiser

  • Conference organiser, 'Forms of Knowledge: A Literature and Philosophy Conference', University of Edinburgh, November 2017
  • Conference chair, Eighteenth Century and Romantic Studies Graduate Conference, University of Cambridge, April 2015

Papers delivered

  • ''[P]eril in the means of its diffusion': William Godwin on Truth and Social Media', NASSR Annual Conference, Ottawa, August 2017
  • ''The true end of reading’: Godwin, Reading Advice, and the Legacies of Religious Dissent', BSECS Annual Conference, St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford, January 2017
  • 'Reading and Tactility in the work of William Godwin', Eighteenth Century and Romantic Studies Graduate Conference, University of Cambridge, April 2015

  • 'Does soundbite culture harm research, or help it?', IncitingSparks.org, July 2016
  • 'Devouring books: why the reading-eating metaphor matters', Aeon Magazine, June 2016
  • 'Why reading is a fundamental threat to identity', IncitingSparks.org, May 2016

  • 2015 – present: AHRC DTP Studentship
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