Current PhD Students

Joshua Povall

Thesis Title:

Troubling Englishness: Spinning “Cottonopolis” in the Mid-Nineteenth Century English Periodical

Supervisor:

Professor Jon Mee

Description:

My doctoral research explores the dynamic emergence of “Cottonopolis” in the mid-nineteenth century press. In my research, I consider Victorian periodicals as nexuses of fact and fiction where ideas of national identity were often contested and reassembled. My thesis analyses metropolitan periodicals, primarily focusing on Charles Dickens’ Household Words (1850-1859), and regional periodicals from the North West of England, such as The Manchester Guardian. As Manchester and the surrounding region took on a new prominence in the mid-nineteenth century national imaginary, my research explores how papers in the North West responded to, repurposed and recirculated metropolitan representations of the region. In exploring this dialogue, my study makes use of postcolonial theoretical paradigms to question assumptions about the stability of Englishness within England itself. Accommodating the emergence of an ‘other’ England to traditional ideas of the nation was a troubling process that sparked an uneven dialogue between the regional and metropolitan press that, in many ways, has never been resolved.

My doctoral project is AHRC funded through the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities (WRoCAH).