Jim Watt

Profile

Biography

BA, MA, PhD (Cambridge)

I did my BA and PhD at Cambridge, and then had two years of a Junior Research Fellowship at St Catharine’s College before coming to York.  My first book Contesting the Gothic: Fiction, Genre and Cultural Conflict 1764-1832 was published by Cambridge UP, and British Orientalisms, 1759-1835 is forthcoming with Cambridge. My teaching interests are primarily in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and I am the convenor of the Intermediate Option Module 'Inventing Britain'. I'm especially interested in British identities, in relation both to empire and - as explored by the Gothic - the past.

Research

Overview

My first book was on Gothic fiction, and I continue to be interested in the meanings of the Gothic in the late eighteenth century, in particular in the period during and after Britain’s war in America. My second book, British Orientalisms, 1759-1835, is especially interested in historicizing the terms on which Britons may have regarded themselves as 'open' to Eastern others in the period between the 'year of victories' in the Seven Years' War and Macaulay's 'Minute on Indian Education'.

I'm currently working on three main projects:

• A book by the provisional title of The Comedy of Difference, exploring forms of popular Orientalism in the Romantic period
• An edited collection titled The Grand Tour in Britain and Ireland, dealing with domestic tourism before the railways
• The Citizen of the World volume in the new Cambridge edition of the works of Oliver Goldsmith, ed. Michael Griffin and David O'Shaughnessy

Supervision

I have supervised PhD and MRes dissertations on a wide range of topics and I'd welcome enquires from anyone interested in doing research on anything related to any of the above.