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Dr E Wyn James

Overview

Dr E Wyn James Position: Reader Email: JamesEW@cardiff.ac.uk
 Telephone: +44(0)29 208 75394
Fax: +44(0)29 208 74604
Extension: 75394
Location: Humanities Building

Research Interests

After a period as Research Officer in the Department of Education at Aberystwyth University, and seventeen years as Director of the Evangelical Press of Wales, Dr E. Wyn James was appointed Lecturer in Modern Welsh Literature in the School of Welsh at Cardiff University in 1994, where he is now Reader and co-Director of the Cardiff Centre for Welsh American Studies.

Dr James plays an active role in the cultural and academic life of Wales. He is Secretary of ‘Cylch Llyfryddol Caerdydd’ [The Cardiff Bibliographical Society], Editor of the Bulletin of the Welsh Hymn Society, Chair of the Ethnology Section of the University of Wales Alumni Association, and former Chair of the Welsh Folk-Song Society and the Welsh bibliographical society, ‘Cymdeithas Bob Owen’. He is a member of the International Ballad Commission and was Organiser of the 38th International Ballad Conference, held in Cardiff in 2008.

His research interests include the following:

  • hymnology, folk-poetry and broadside ballads
  • identity, religion and popular culture in modern Wales
  • the Welsh in the Americas
  • gender in modern Welsh literature
  • the literature of Methodist and evangelical movements
  • the cultural networks of modern Welsh literature
  • textual criticism and the history of printing and publishing
  • the Welsh-language culture of south-east Wales
  • literary manifestations of the anti-slavery and missionary movements

Teaching Profile

BA in Welsh: Year One First Language
  • CY1743 Llenyddiaeth Gymraeg
BA in Welsh: Year Two and Final Year
  • CY2318 Dadeni a Diwygiad 1550–1900
  • CY3488 Cyflwyniad i Lenyddiaeth yr Ugeinfed Ganrif
  • CY2349 I Fyd y Faled
  • CY3617 Merched a Llên yn y Cyfnod Modern
  • CY3835 Williams Pantycelyn a’r Emyn
  • CY2468 Llên y Ddinas
  • CY2466 Llên Cymru Ddiwydiannol
  • CY3465 Hanes y Ddrama
  • CY2678 Saunders Lewis
  • CY2126 Blas ar Ymchwil
MA in Welsh
  • CYD038 Canu Poblogaidd y Cymry 1660-1860
  • CYD043 Wales and America

Publications

Selection of Publications

An edition of six letters between Thomas Charles and Sally Jones dated 1779–80, in Michael A. G. Haykin, The Christian Lover: The Sweetness of Love and Marriage in the Letters of Believers (Orlando, Florida, 2009), 45–60. ISBN 978-1-56769-111-5.

Welsh Ballads and American Slavery’, Welsh Journal of Religious History, 2 (2007), 59-86. ISSN 0967-3938.

‘Bala and the Bible: Thomas Charles, Ann Griffiths and Mary Jones’, Eusebeia: The Bulletin of the Jonathan Edwards Centre for Reformed Spirituality (Toronto, Canada), 5 (2005), 69-98; reprinted in Journal of the Merioneth Historical and Record Society, 15:2 (2007), 185-200. ISSN 1353-8632.

‘Painting the World Green: Dafydd Iwan and the Welsh Protest Ballad’, Folk Music Journal, 8:5 (2005), 594-618. ISSN 0531-9684.

‘An “English” Lady Among Welsh Folk: Ruth Herbert Lewis and the Welsh Folk-Song Society’, in Folk Song: Tradition, Revival, and Re-Creation, ed. Ian Russell & David Atkinson (Aberdeen, 2004), 266-83. ISBN 0-9545682-0-6.

‘Dafydd William, Llandeilo Fach: An Eighteenth-Century Glamorgan Hymn-Writer’, Morgannwg, 47 (2003), 3-23. ISSN 0959-4655.

‘Ballad Implosions and Welsh Folksongs’, in Ballad and Ballad Studies at the Turn of the Century, ed. Nicolae Constantinescu (Bucharest, 2001), 101-17. ISBN 973 99595 9 8.

“The New Birth of a People”: Welsh Language and Identity and the Welsh Methodists, c. 1740-1820’, in Religion and National Identity: Wales and Scotland c. 1700-2000, ed. Robert Pope (Cardiff, 2001; reprinted 2005), 14-42. ISBN 0 7083 1662 X.

‘Watching the White Wheat and That Hole Below the Nose: The English Ballads of a Late-Nineteenth-Century Welsh Jobbing-Printer’, in Bridging the Cultural Divide: Our Common Ballad Heritage, ed. Sigrid Rieuwerts & Helga Stein (Hildesheim, Germany, 2000), 177-94. ISBN 3 487 11016 4.

Dr E. Wyn James: Select Bibliography

Research

Research Projects

Director (with Dr Bill Jones): Cardiff Centre for Welsh American Studies

Editor (with Professor Peredur I. Lynch): Cronfa Baledi [A Computerised Index to Printed Welsh Ballads of the Eighteenth Century] (School of Welsh, Bangor University/School of Welsh, Cardiff University, 2006–)

Editor: Welsh Ballads Website (Cardiff University Library, 2006–)
A website dedicated to the study of Welsh ballads which is an invaluable resource for research into all aspects of Welsh life and culture during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Editor: Gwefan Ann Griffiths Website (Cardiff University Library, 2003–)

Editor: Bwletin Cymdeithas Emynau Cymru (1978–) ISSN 0969-5109

Postgraduate Students

Current Research Students

Sulien Morgan (PhD): The response of Welsh Americans to the Nationalism of Plaid Cymru, 1925-1979

Walter Ariel Brooks (PhD): The role of creative literature in Welsh periodical print culture in Argentina, 1865-1945