Dr Sarah Burdett
My research focuses on representations of arms-bearing women in the British theatre during the French revolutionary and Napoleonic years. My debut monograph (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) foregrounds the extent to which Britain's perpetually shifting relationship with home and European nations, and the importation of new dramatic genres from Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century, serve to facilitate the emergence in Britain's patent theatres of a refashioned female warrior: one whose degree of agency, destructiveness, and heroism surpasses that of her 1790s predecessor.
I was awarded my PhD in English from the University of York In 2016, having been based in the department of English and Related Literature, and the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies. In 2017 I worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, where I collaborated with Professor Katherine Astbury (project lead), Dr Devon Cox (theatre historian) and Dr Diane Tisdall (musicologist) on the AHRC-funded project 'Staging Napoleonic Theatre'. I took on the role of dramaturge for the revival of two nineteenth-century melodramas performed at Portchester Castle and the Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond, Yorkshire, in July and August respectively.
I have been awarded and pursued Visiting Fellowships at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (BSECS-Bodleian Visiting Fellowship, Sep-Oct 2017, £1000), and the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC (Folger Shakespeare Short-term Visiting Fellowship, Oct.-Dec. 2017, $5000). I have also received independent and collaborative research grants and bursaries from funding bodies including the Royal Historical Society (Conference Organisation Grant, £500); the York Georgian Society (Patrick Nuttgens Award, £500); British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Events Funding Grant, £250, and Annual Conference Bursary, £100); University of York's Humanities Research Centre (PG Project Grant, £500); York's Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies (PG Grant, £500); York's F.R. Leavis Fund (£250); and Warwick's Public Engagement Fund (£500).
I have co-organised academic colloquia and public workshops including 'Difficult Women, 1680-1830' (two-day academic conference, University of York, Nov. 2015); '19th-Century Melodrama: Practical Workshop and Audition' (part of SNT project - University of Warwick, in affiliation with Georgian Theatre Royal, Yorkshire, July 2017); 'Melodramatic Acting Styles and Traditions: A Level Workshop' (part of SNT project - University of Warwick, July 2017 - Sep. 2018, in affiliation with English Heritage at Portchester Castle); and 'Melodramatic Acting Styles: Adoption UK Workshop' (part of SNT project - University of Warwick, in affiliation with Adoption UK and FabLab Coventry).
I have devised, taught on, and convened English Literature and interdisciplinary modules at Universities including York, Plymouth, St Mary's, Warwick and UCL (present).
I am currently serving as general editor of the 'Teaching Romanticism' series of Romantic Textualities.
Email: [email protected]. Twitter: @sburdett22
Supervisors: Doctor Emma Major, Professor Harriet Guest, and Professor Katherine Astbury
I was awarded my PhD in English from the University of York In 2016, having been based in the department of English and Related Literature, and the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies. In 2017 I worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, where I collaborated with Professor Katherine Astbury (project lead), Dr Devon Cox (theatre historian) and Dr Diane Tisdall (musicologist) on the AHRC-funded project 'Staging Napoleonic Theatre'. I took on the role of dramaturge for the revival of two nineteenth-century melodramas performed at Portchester Castle and the Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond, Yorkshire, in July and August respectively.
I have been awarded and pursued Visiting Fellowships at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (BSECS-Bodleian Visiting Fellowship, Sep-Oct 2017, £1000), and the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC (Folger Shakespeare Short-term Visiting Fellowship, Oct.-Dec. 2017, $5000). I have also received independent and collaborative research grants and bursaries from funding bodies including the Royal Historical Society (Conference Organisation Grant, £500); the York Georgian Society (Patrick Nuttgens Award, £500); British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Events Funding Grant, £250, and Annual Conference Bursary, £100); University of York's Humanities Research Centre (PG Project Grant, £500); York's Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies (PG Grant, £500); York's F.R. Leavis Fund (£250); and Warwick's Public Engagement Fund (£500).
I have co-organised academic colloquia and public workshops including 'Difficult Women, 1680-1830' (two-day academic conference, University of York, Nov. 2015); '19th-Century Melodrama: Practical Workshop and Audition' (part of SNT project - University of Warwick, in affiliation with Georgian Theatre Royal, Yorkshire, July 2017); 'Melodramatic Acting Styles and Traditions: A Level Workshop' (part of SNT project - University of Warwick, July 2017 - Sep. 2018, in affiliation with English Heritage at Portchester Castle); and 'Melodramatic Acting Styles: Adoption UK Workshop' (part of SNT project - University of Warwick, in affiliation with Adoption UK and FabLab Coventry).
I have devised, taught on, and convened English Literature and interdisciplinary modules at Universities including York, Plymouth, St Mary's, Warwick and UCL (present).
I am currently serving as general editor of the 'Teaching Romanticism' series of Romantic Textualities.
Email: [email protected]. Twitter: @sburdett22
Supervisors: Doctor Emma Major, Professor Harriet Guest, and Professor Katherine Astbury
less
InterestsView All (18)
Uploads
Books by Dr Sarah Burdett
Published Papers by Dr Sarah Burdett
Conference Papers by Dr Sarah Burdett
Scholars have paid little attention to West's drama in its own right, and tend to conflate their somewhat disengaged readings of Female Heroism with their more thorough analyses of Maid. Consequently, it is commonly hypothesised that both dramas would have prompted homogenous readings from their Irish audiences. To adopt this stance, however, is to ignore not only West's fundamental deviations from Eyre's script, but to disregard also the differing cultural contexts within which the plays were read and staged. It is to overlook, in particular, the way in which Ireland's relationship with England had altered in the interim between 1794 and 1803. Published just three years after the passing of the Act of Union between England and Ireland, my paper illustrates the potential for West's tragedy to be interpreted as an anti-Union allegory. In contrast to prior scholars who have argued that, in accordance with Eyre, West dramatises Corday’s assassination of Marat as a pro-British event, I argue that, when situated firmly within its post-1800 context, West’s Corday can be seen to personify Irish independence, while the drama’s villain, Marat, acts as the embodiment of tyrannical British rule.
Scholars have paid little attention to West's drama in its own right, and tend to conflate their somewhat disengaged readings of Female Heroism with their more thorough analyses of Maid. Consequently, it is commonly hypothesised that both dramas would have prompted homogenous readings from their Irish audiences. To adopt this stance, however, is to ignore not only West's fundamental deviations from Eyre's script, but to disregard also the differing cultural contexts within which the plays were read and staged. It is to overlook, in particular, the way in which Ireland's relationship with England had altered in the interim between 1794 and 1803. Published just three years after the passing of the Act of Union between England and Ireland, my paper illustrates the potential for West's tragedy to be interpreted as an anti-Union allegory. In contrast to prior scholars who have argued that, in accordance with Eyre, West dramatises Corday’s assassination of Marat as a pro-British event, I argue that, when situated firmly within its post-1800 context, West’s Corday can be seen to personify Irish independence, while the drama’s villain, Marat, acts as the embodiment of tyrannical British rule.
Chapter one focuses on portrayals of public and political military women within two anti-Jacobin novels published in 1795 and 1801 respectively. It identifies the way in which the late eighteenth/early nineteenth-century novel, thoroughly devoted to domestic ideology, depicts women who favour the political and military sphere to the domestic, familial sphere, as monstrous and reprehensible. Chapter two analyses female warrior-ballads and historical narratives, and illuminates the way in which armed women exhibited in these genres are excused for their violence on account of their apolitical motives and sentimentalised portrayals, whilst arguing concurrently that the authors maintain a dissuasion of female militarism by delineating women as essentially unsuited to military activity, on account of the very characteristic which renders them virtuous; their delicacy. Chapter three, offering an analysis of literature produced by three radical authors, in 1799, 1796, and 1800, seeks to infer that, though indeed in the minority, anomalous depictions of armed women offered between 1793 and 1801, which conform to neither the political, monstrous, and condemned, nor the apolitical, sentimental and excused portrayal, did in fact exist. I reveal throughout this chapter the way in which the discussed radical authors grant their non-romanticised military women a heroic status, by intimating that it is the spirited armed woman, as opposed to the delicate, defenceless women, who is most capable of meliorating the nation.
Insight into the contents of the Drury Lane Prompter's Journal held at the Folger Shakespeare Library.