Helen Rogers
Lecturer in Cultural History
Research Interests
Much of my research has been concerned with questions of politics, self-representation, performance and writing. While working on women and radical culture in the nineteenth century I became fascinated by a number of working women writers who do not fit readily into existing accounts of nineteenth-century class and gender identities, such as the Scottish poets Janet Hamilton and Ellen Johnston, the Christian periodical writer Marianne Farningham, the actress and radical orator Elizabeth Macauley, and the prison visitor Sarah Martin. I have also written on the history of fatherhood and, in particular, relationships between fathers and daughters.
Current Projects
I am working on a study entitled ‘Prison Voices’ based on the prison visitor and dressmaker Sarah Martin (1791-1843) and her relationships with inmates in Yarmouth Gaol. The project explores crime and punishment, charity and Christianity, literacy, writing and identity from the perspectives of the labouring poor. With Michael Sanders (University of Manchester) and Deborah Mutch (DeMontford University) I am planning a Digital Archive on working-class writing, in collaboration with the Working-Class Movements Library.
Publications (Selected)
Books
Gender and Fatherhood in the Nineteenth Century (edited with Trev Broughton; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
including: (with T. Broughton) "The Empire of the Father", 1-28 ; & "'First in the House': Daughters on Working-class Fathers and Fatherhood", 126-137
Women and the People: Authority, Authorship and the Radical Tradition in Nineteenth-century England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000)
Journal Articles
"Any Questions? The Gendered Dimensions of the Political Platform in Nineteenth-Century England" Nineteenth-Century Prose 29.1 (2002), 118-132
Book Chapters
"In the Name of the Father: Political Biographies by Radical Daughters", in David Amigoni (ed.), Life Writing and Victorian Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 145-163
"Women and Liberty", in Peter Mandler (ed.), Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 125-155
"Victorian Studies in the UK", in M. Taylor & M. Wolff (eds.), The Victorians Since 1901: Histories, Representations and Revisions (Manchester University Press, 2004), 244-259
"'What Right Have Women to Interfere with Politics?': The Address of the Female Political Union of Birmingham to the Women of England (1838)", in T. G. Ashplant & Gerry Smyth (eds), Explorations in Cultural History (London: Pluto Press, 2001), 65-100
External Professional Activities
Digital Reviews Editor for the Journal of Victorian Culture.
Postgraduate Teaching and Supervision
I have supervised PhD theses on Chartist poetry; William Blake and esoteric culture; public health reform and Punch Magazine.
Teaching: Undergraduate
I teach modules on the cultural histories of class and the family; the period courses “Power and the People: Britain 1790-1850” and “Conflicts of Culture: 1850-1899”; and a module on literary and cultural theory.
