Rebecca Tierney-Hynes
Senior Lecturer
- English Literature
- School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
Contact details
Address
- Street
-
Rm 2.10
50 George Square - City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH8 9LH
Availability
Office hour: Tuesdays 1-2pm or by arrangement.
Background
Rebecca Tierney-Hynes studied at the University of Toronto (PhD), and taught at Suffolk University and the University of Waterloo before coming to Edinburgh in 2017. Her publications include a book, Novel Minds (Palgrave 2012), and articles on fiction, drama and eighteenth-century culture.
Undergraduate teaching
The Queer Eighteenth Century
The Novel and the Modern Self
Staging Enlightenment: Theatre 1660-1780
Early Modern Tragedy
Early Modern Comedy
The Novel in the Romantic Period
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Areas of interest for supervision
Rebecca is happy to entertain proposals in any area of eighteenth-century literature and culture. She particularly welcomes projects on fiction or drama before 1780, and on eighteenth-century intellectual history.
Past PhD students supervised
Kyle Malashewski - University of Waterloo PhD 2017
Research summary
Rebecca specialises in eighteenth-century fiction, drama and literary criticism. She is primarily interested in eighteenth-century theories of spectatorship and histories of emotion.
Current research interests
At the moment, she is working on a second book, tentatively called 'Laughing Matters: Comedy, Sympathy and the Ethical Spectator, 1660-1750.' In this book, she explores the way eighteenth-century comic playwrights and literary critics seize upon and rework empiricist notions of self-making in ways that ultimately allow us to see how our attachments to comic objects produce the mimetic emotions that define sympathy. She is also developing a new project on eighteenth-century tragedy, the passions and the ethics of passivity.Past research interests
Rebecca has published on ideas about fiction and theories of reading in empiricist philosophy; comedy and early political economy; and tragedy and the ethics of spectatorship.Knowledge exchange
Rebecca's current project, 'Laughing Matters', is funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship. Past funded projects have included a fellowhip with the Centre for the History of Emotions in Australia and an Insight Grant, awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for research on comedy and emotion.
Research activities
- The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation (Journal)
- Operatic Workings of the Mind
- ISECS International Congress on the Enlightenment
- ISECS International Congress on the Enlightenment
- 50th ASECS Annual Meeting
- Literature Compass (Journal)
- Comedy and the Ethics of Spectatorship
- Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies (Journal)
- Cambridge Early Career Fellowship scheme
- ASECS Conference to
- ASECS Conference to
- CSECS Conference to
- Sheridan, Theatre and Public Opinion Workshop and Conference
- Fielding’s Farcical Accidents
- Moving Minds to
- Farcical Politics: Fielding's Public Emotion
- Comedy and Caricature: Fielding’s Theory of Farce
- ASECS Conference to
- Fielding Feeling
- ASECS Conference to
Current project grants
Laughing Matters: Comedy, Sympathy and the Ethical Spectator, 1660-1750 - Leverhulme Research Fellowship Sept 2019-Dec 2020
Past project grants
Funny Feelings: Eighteenth-Century Comedy and the History of Emotion - SSHRC Insight Grant 2017-2020 - Declined
The Afterlife of Genre - Early Career International Research Fellowship - ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotion Jan-Mar 2016
-
Embodied politics: Marlborough, celebrity and secret history
(22 pages)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36019/9781644532676-014
Research output: › Chapter (peer-reviewed) (Published) -
The humour of humours: Comedy theory and eighteenth-century histories of emotion
(16 pages)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56646-3_5
Research output: › Chapter (peer-reviewed) (Published) -
Introduction: The novel as theory
(9 pages)
In:
The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, vol. 61, pp. 141-148
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ecy.2020.0011
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
[Review of] Reading Smell in Eighteenth-Century Fiction by Emily C. Friedman
(3 pages)
In:
Eighteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 33, pp. 164-66
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/ecf.33.1.164
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Book/Film/Article review (E-pub ahead of print) -
Review of Wendy Anne Lee’s Failures of Feeling: Insensibility and the Novel (Stanford, 2018)
(3 pages)
In:
The Review of English Studies (RES)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgz106
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Book/Film/Article review (Published) -
Scandal in Parliament: Political Celebrity, Public Opinion and Marlborough’s Biography
Research output: Contribution to Conference › Paper (Published) -
Semioperatic Semiotics: King Arthur and Corporate Englishness
Research output: Contribution to Conference › Paper (Published) -
Farcical politics: Fielding’s public emotion
(25 pages)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76902-8_7
Research output: › Chapter (peer-reviewed) (Published) -
Review of New Ages, New Opinions: Shaftesbury in his World and Today
In:
Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 41
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1754-0208.12458
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Book/Film/Article review (E-pub ahead of print) -
Entries on: Anon., The History Political and Gallant of the Famous Card, Portocarrero Archbishop of Toledo (1703); Anon, An Historical Account of the Sufferings and Death of the Faithful Confessor and Martyr, M. Isaac Le Fevre (1704); Anon., History of Prince Mirabel's Infancy, Rise and Disgrace: (1712: secret history, Harley and Marlborough); Anon., The Generous Rivals: Or, Love Triumphant (1713); Anon., The Ladies Tale (1714); Anon., Female Inconstancy Display'd in Three Diverting Histories (1732)
Research output: › Entry for encyclopedia/dictionary (Accepted/In press) -
Congreve’s common passions: Humor, affectation and the work of satire
(26 pages)
In:
Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture, vol. 50, pp. 421-447
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/00166928-4210955
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Tragic aesthetics: Eighteenth-century tragedy and passive spectatorship
(19 pages)
In:
Textual Practice, vol. 31, pp. 1217-1235
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2016.1237999
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Up Close and Personal: Celebrity Politicians and Modern Democracy
(4 pages)
Blog Post for ARC Centre for the History of Emotion › Other contribution (Published) -
Emotional economies: Centlivre’s comic ends
(24 pages)
In:
Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, vol. 45, pp. 83-106
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/sec.2016.0012
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Review of Henry Power’s Epic Into Novel: Henry Fielding, Scriblerian Satire, and the Consumption of Classical Literature
In:
Studies In The Novel, vol. 48, pp. 137-138
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Book/Film/Article review (Published) -
Novel Minds: Philosophers and Romance Readers, 1680-1740
(200 pages)
Research output: › Book (Published) -
Fictional mechanics: Haywood, reading, and the passions
In:
The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, vol. 51, pp. 153-72
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Hume, romance, and the unruly imagination
In:
SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, vol. 47, pp. 641-58
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Shaftesbury’s soliloquy: Authorship and the psychology of romance
In:
Eighteenth Century Studies, vol. 38, pp. 605-21
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published)