Current PhD Students

Madeleine Mikinski

Thesis Title:

Credit and Credibilty: Trust-based structures and the transmission of gossip in Jane Austen's adult work.

Supervisor:

Professor Jennie Batchelor

Description:

Maddy's dissertation explores practices of trust in the exchange and evaluation of gossip in Jane Austen's novels, especially within the context of the eighteenth-century credit economy.  In Austen's work, gossip is a community project, circulating via complex social webs.  Such exchanges of "news" are-like traditional, localised credit structures-dependent upon interpersonal trust, built up over repeated, collaborative interaction with neighbours.  Throughout the eighteenth century, however, such community-based economies were being phased out in favour of a centralised credit apparatus capable of financing Britain's industrial and colonial ambitions.  By mapping her novels' community-based gossip economies onto these dynamic credit structures, Austen cleverly illustrates the implications of such expansion on decisions of interpersonal and institutional trust. 

Maddy earned her MLitt in Romantic and Victorian Studies from the University of St Andrews.  Her master's research focused on laughter and comedic exchange in Wuthering Heights, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and Jane Eyre.  She also holds a BA in English and a BS in Journalism from the University of Kansas.  All of these accolades were made possible by the love, support, and performative indifference of her two cats, Boxie and Sharky.