English and Related Literature
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- BA Fellowship: Emma Major
British Academy Fellowship for Emma Major
Posted on 14 April 2015
The Fellowship will give her a full year's dedicated research time, enabling her to visit libraries and archives, host a large international conference, and begin writing her second monograph.
‘Faithful Citizens 1789-1829’ explores the fascinating relationship between Protestant Dissent and citizenship in Britain in the period 1789-1829. Excluded by the Test and Corporation Acts from participation in public office, during the eighteenth century Dissenters had developed a strong civic presence in which their very separation from government was proof of their integrity: they claimed they had sacrificed personal advancement for the sake of religious truth. Rational Dissenters, as they were known, became influential in commerce, science, literature, and theology. However, British hostility to the French Revolution in 1789 rejuvenated lingering prejudices associating Dissent with revolution, violence and regicide. The years between 1789 and the eventual emancipation in 1828 and 1829 of both Protestant Dissenters and Catholics transformed ideas of citizenship. Examining the ways in which men and women (such as Anna Laetitia Barbauld, pictured) participated in political and religious discussions during these years will illuminate a neglected dimension of literary, political and theological debate.
The questions raised by the famous, forgotten, and anonymous writers of this period continue to resonate today, often suggesting a theology of citizenship that ultimately undermines Westphalian concepts of the nation state. In her work on global justice, Nancy Fraser has identified a transformation of the grammar of the theory of justice, one in which ‘the classic division of labor between theorist and demos’ is being rethought: similarly exciting possibilities can be glimpsed when the imprisoned radical Susannah Wright publishes a letter in The Republican in 1824 thanking her ‘Citizens and Townsmen’ for their support and signing herself ‘Your spiritual friend'.