Tamsin Spargo
Reader in Cultural History, and Director of the School of Media, Critical and Creative Arts
Research Interests
My research interests are diverse, ranging from seventeenth- to nineteenth-century nonconformist culture and writing, to theories of representing the past, sexuality, crime and regional identity. I have written for both academic and wider readerships and the film rights to my last book, the recovered history, based on extensive archival research in the United States, of a forgotten American train robber and prison protestor, Wanted Man: The Forgotten Story of an American Outlaw (Bloomsbury 2004), are being represented by the Rod Hall Agency.
Current Projects
I am currently writing about the experience of writing biography from a post-structuralist perspective, with particular reference to Wanted Man.
I am engaged in new research in the role of food production and consumption in the formation of past and present regional identities with particular reference to Cornwall and am writing a novel set in contemporary Cornwall.
Publications (Selected)
Books
Wanted Man: the Forgotten Story of an American Outlaw (London: Bloomsbury 2004)
Reading the Past: Literature and History, a Reader in Cultural Criticism (edited; Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000)
Foucault and Queer Theory (Icon Books, UK / Totem Books, USA, 1999)
Journal Articles
"Dead Men's Shoes", History and Theory Protocols 7: Layers of Time: Life, Death, Memory (Jerusalem: Belazel University, February 2008) http://bezalel.secured.co.il/zope/home/en/1201170255
"The Fathers' Seductions: Improper Relations of Desire in Seventeenth-Century Nonconformist Communities", Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 17.2 (Fall 1998), 255-268
"Queer Theories/Cultures", The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory vols 3, 4 and 5 (Blackwell, 1997-1998)
Book Chapters
"Bunyans Abounding or the Names of the Author", in N.H. Keeble (ed.), Reading Dissenting Writing (Oxford & New York: Peter Lang, 2002), 79-102
"I being taken from you in presence: Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners and Claims to Authority", in Larry Trudeau (ed.), Literary Criticism vol. 70 (Detroit: Gale, 2001)
"Renaissance and Seventeenth-Century Religious Writing", Annotated Bibliography of Resources for English Studies (Swets & Zeitlinger CD-ROM, 1998)
Reviews for British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Bunyan Studies, European Journal of English Studies, Speech and Drama, Times Literary Supplement.
External Professional Activities
Vice-President of the International John Bunyan Society in 2006-7 and was invited to give two plenary addresses at the Society's Triennial Conference at Darmouth College, NH in August 2007.
Undergraduate Teaching
I am not currently teaching on undergraduate modules but my past teaching has covered areas including seventeenth-century literature and history, critical and cultural theory, reading the past, Shakespeare, and the cultural history of food.
