Course | The Brontës, Revisited, Reappraised, Reimagined (virtual)[in-progress]

About the Instructor

Sophie Franklin is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tübingen, specialising in the Brontës, violence, nineteenth-century literature and culture, and afterlives. She completed her PhD at Durham University in 2019, where she explored representations of violence in Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë’s work; and she is the author of Charlotte Brontë Revisited: A View from the Twenty-First Century, published by Saraband in 2016 and reissued in 2018. 

Dr Claire O’Callaghan is a Lecturer in English at Loughborough University, U.K. Her research focuses on Victorian and neo-Victorian literature and culture, with an emphasis on gender, sexuality and the body. Claire is an expert on the Brontës. She is the author of Emily Brontë Reappraised (Saraband, 2018) and she has also written on Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Emily’s poetry, contemporary reworkings of Wuthering Heights, and the Brontë biodrama, To Walk Invisible (2016). Claire was the co-editor of a special issue of Brontë Studies devoted to the theme of ‘coarseness’ in the Brontës and she was the instigator and organiser of Brontë2020, an one-day digital event to raise money for the Brontë Parsonage following its initial closure in the wake of Covid-19. She is now an Associate Editor of Brontë Studies. Claire’s current research is looking at Charlotte Brontë’s commentary on her siblings’ experiences of tuberculosis in 1848.  

Adelle Hay is a PhD student at the University of Loughborough. Her research focuses on Anne Brontë’s changing literary and personal reputations, and how these have been affected by the posthumous editing of her works. Prior to starting at Loughborough, Adelle had trained as a physicist, graduating from the University of York with an MPhys in 2010. Adelle’s lifelong interest in books and literature eventually resulted in a career change and in 2020, after three years working as a bookbinder, her first book Anne Brontë Reimagined: A View From The Twenty-first Century was published by Saraband. Her technical experience and lifelong interest in the Brontës inspired the PhD project, which combines digital humanities, textual editing, and cultural heritage.