Rachel Feldberg

Thesis

Thesis

‘Fountains of Knowledge: middling women’s engagement with the production, use and transmission of Natural Knowledge, 1740-1810’.

Supervisor: Mark Jenner

Research

Research

My thesis addresses the ways in which women of the middling sort engaged with the production, use and transmission of Natural Knowledge in the latter half of the long eighteenth century, through their domestic and educational activities and their participation in public events. It investigates the intersection between Natural Knowledge and everyday household enterprise, the impact of print material and networks of sociability, and the ways in which women constructed their ideas of the natural world through visits to proto-industrial sites and attendance at science lectures and demonstrations.

My research draws on a range of sources including recipe books, diaries, correspondence, directional manuals, material objects, newspapers and periodicals and is supported by a WRoCAH Doctoral Fellowship funded by the AHRC.

My broader research interests include newspapers/newspaper culture in eighteenth century Jamaica and the impact of gender and religion on eighteenth century ideas of embodiment. I also have a longstanding interest in the interface between archives and the public. In 2021, I wrote and directed a series of short films based on mass observation-style interviews gathered by Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree for his study English Life and Leisure (1951) as part of a Jane Moody Scholarship. In 2022, supported by WRoCAH, I created a range of resources encouraging families and children to engage with the contents of Burton Constable Hall’s Cabinet of Curiosities.

Papers and publications

Papers and publications

Papers

• ‘Distance 2020: Online Conferences and Reimagining the International Academic Landscape’ in The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, Special Issue, Scholarship in a Time of Crisis, Summer 2020. University of Illinois. Co-authored with Kurt Baird, Sharon Choe, Holly Day and Francesca Kavanagh.
• '"I attribute these pains to the Weather": Winifred Constable's Clinical Eye, 1768-1774', Student Conference: 'Studying Herstories', Women's History Network, London (online) March 2021.

Publications

• 'Absent Bodies? Gouty Brethren and Sensitive Hearts in William Constable’s Letters from the Grand Tour 1769-1771' in Letters and the Body, ed. Karen Harvey, Sheryllynne Haggerty and Sarah Goldsmith, (Routledge, forthcoming, 2021).

Blog

• ‘Absent Bodies?: Illness, Embodiment and the Articulation of Gender, Winifred and William Constable (1768-1773)’ Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies Website, University of York 2020.

Conferences

• “’I spoilt the first by doing them too quick’: Middling Women and Ways of Knowing in the Late Eighteenth Century”, CECS PG Forum, University of York (October 2022)
• “‘Numerous and Attentive Listeners: Middling Women and the Transformative Demands of Polite, Public and Domestic Science”, CECS PG Forum Annual Postgraduate Conference, University of York (September 2022)
• ‘From Crocodiles to the Structure of the Universe: Jane Ewbank and Natural Knowledge’, York Festival of Ideas (June 2022) ‘Untold Stories of Chocolate’, Realising Opportunities Lecture and Seminar, University of York (June 2022)
• “Beyond ‘Polite Science’: Middling Women and Forms of Knowledge in the Late Eighteenth Century”, Annual Postgraduate Research Conference, University of York, History Department (October 2021)
• ‘“A Great Fountain of Practical Knowledge”: Non-elite women's production and use of 'natural knowledge' in the dyehouse 1740-1810’’, York-Bielefeld-Lund Graduate Conference (June 2021)
• ‘Non-elite Women’s Production, Consumption and Use of Natural Knowledge. 1740-1810’, Institute of Historical Research ‘British History in the Long Eighteenth Century Seminar’ Lightning Talks (March 2021)