Dr Aileen Douglas B.A. (Dublin), M.A. (Delaware), Ph.D. (Princeton), F.T.C.D.
Associate Professor and Director of Research
Aileen Douglas’s research and teaching interests centre on the writing of the long eighteenth century; print culture; Irish writing; the disciplinary history of English studies; and working-class writing. Underlying connections between these diverse areas of study are her theoretical concerns with somatic experience and literary representation, with literary form, and with the history of writing.
She has supervised Ph.D and M. Litt. dissertations on eighteenth-century English and Irish fiction (particularly on Maria Edgeworth); on Jonathan Swift; on the eighteenth-century Irish book trade; on eighteenth-century aesthetics and on contemporary working-class Scottish fiction. She welcomes enquiries from prospective students considering research in the above areas and invites them to contact her by e-mail.
Her publications include Uneasy Sensations: Smollett and the Body (Chicago, 1995); a co-edited volume of essays, Locating Swift: Essays from the Dublin on the 250th anniversary of the death of Jonathan Swift (Four Courts, 1998); a chapter on the eighteenth-century novel in the Cambridge Companion to the Irish Novel (Cambridge, 2006), as well as a range of journal articles and book chapters on eighteenth-century fiction and print culture.
Present research projects include a monograph on the material history of writing; The Tendency of the Pen: Script in Print, 1680-1840 traces patterns of manual writing in print culture. The book canvasses the highly varied explanations for the neglect of literal writing given by Raymond Williams, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. It explores material, institutional and ideological contexts for the spread of manual writing. In its second part it uses a series of exemplary literary careers (those of Samuel Johnson, Maria Edgeworth and Joseph Barker) to consider connections between the reproduction of script and questions of literary representation and authority.
Aileen Douglas is also co-General Editor of 'Early Irish Fiction, 1680-1820' an IRCHSS-assisted project which provides critical editions of Irish fiction in the designated period. For this series she has co-edited Sarah Butler, Irish Tales (Four Courts Press, 2010) and Elizabeth Sheridan, The Triumph of Prudence over Passion (Four Courts Press, forthcoming 2011).
She has held various administrative posts within the School of English, including that of Head of Discipline (2006-8). Since July 2008 she has served as Senior Lecturer, the Annual College officer with responsibility for the admission and academic progress of undergraduate students, an ex-officio member of Board and of University Council.
Contact:
Dr Aileen Douglas
Room 4002
Arts Building
Trinity College
Dublin 2
e-mail: adouglas@tcd.ie