Dr Melanie Bigold
BA Hons (Manitoba), MA (Toronto), DPhil (Oxford)
Senior Lecturer
School of English, Communication and Philosophy
- bigoldm@cardiff.ac.uk
- +44 (0)29 2087 5409
- 2.16, John Percival Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10 3EU
- Available for postgraduate supervision
Overview
Senior Lecturer in English Literature, whose work focuses on book history and women’s literary history during the late 17th to mid-18th centuries, with a particular interest in the role of the archive, manuscript culture, drama, and life writing.
Biography
I completed my undergraduate and masters degress in Canada at the University of Manitoba and University of Toronto, respectively. I majored in English with a minor in Drama during my undergraduate degree and then went on to a masters in Drama at the University of Toronto. I was awarded a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) doctoral fellowship to complete my Dphil at the University of Oxford, where I graduated in 2007. During 2007-08, I was awarded a Postdoctoral SSHRC Fellowship based at the University of Toronto, and was also a Plumer Visiting Fellow at St. Anne's College, Oxford. I joined Cardiff University in Autumn 2008.
I have taught on an Erasmus exchange at the University of Oslo, Norway (teaching masters modules in the History of the Book).
I have also held visiting fellowships at Chawton House Library, Hampshire, and the Huntington Library, California.
Publications
2019
- Bigold, M. 2019. Self-fashioning and poetic voice: Elizabeth Singer Rowe's authorial prerogative. Review of English Studies 70(293), pp. 74-94. (10.1093/res/hgy076)
2016
- Bigold, M. 2016. English ballet: a national art for the new Elizabethan moment. In: Morra, I. and Gossedge, R. eds. The New Elizabethan Age: Culture, Society and National Identity after WWII. International Library of Twentieth Century History London and New York: I.B. Tauris
2013
- Bigold, M. 2013. "The theatre of the book": marginalia and "mise en page" in the Cardiff Rare Books Restoration Drama Collection. [Online]. Occasional Papers Vol. 1. Cardiff: Centre for Editorial & Intertextual Research, Cardiff University. Available at: http://cardiffbookhistory.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/bigold.pdf
- Bigold, M. 2013. Women of Letters, Manuscript Circulation, and Print Afterlives in the Eighteenth Century: Elizabeth Rowe, Catharine Cockburn and Elizabeth Carter. Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and the Cultures of Print. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Bigold, M. 2013. Collecting, cataloguing and losing women writers: George Ballard's 'Memoirs of Several Ladies'. Working paper. Cardiff: Cardiff University.
2010
- Bigold, M. 2010. Letters and learning. In: Ballaster, R. ed. A History of British Women's Writing: 1690-1750., Vol. 4. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 173-186.
2006
- Bigold, M. 2006. Elizabeth Rowe's fictional and familiar letters: Exemplary enthusiasm and the production of posthumous thinking. British Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies 29(1), pp. 1-14. (10.1111/j.1754-0208.2006.tb00631.x)
Teaching
I have held lecturing posts at St. Anne's and Jesus Colleges (Oxford) and the University of Toronto. At Cardiff I teach on modules across the curriculum, including literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, drama, and book history.
Research interests
I have a number of upcoming and/or ongoing research projects:
1. Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2019-20) to complete a monograph and database on Women’s Libraries and Book Ownership, 1660-1820. A short article on this project can be found here: https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/research-fellowships/women%E2%80%99s-libraries-and-book-ownership-1660%E2%80%931820
2. Silent Witnesses: What Annotated Playbooks Can Tell Us About The History of Reading, Collecting and Using Books;
3. a joint biography of George Ballard (an antiquarian and historian of learned women) and Elizabeth Elstob (an early anglo-saxonist and one of the women Ballard 'rediscovered')
I also co-founded and co-convene the Cardiff Romanticism and Eighteenth-Century Seminar (CRECS - https://crecs.wordpress.com/) and the interdisciplinary Families, Identities, and Gender Research Network (FIG)
Supervision
I welcome enquiries from potential graduates who would like to pursue research in the following areas:
- history of the book;
- reading and reception studies;
- manuscript culture (including marginalia and epistolary studies);
- women's writing and women's literary history;
- philosophy, religion and literature in the long eighteenth century;
- life-writing:
- dramatic literature, dance, and performance studies;
My primary expertise are in the period 1600-1800, but I also welcome enquiries from students with an interest in all periods of drama, dance, and historical performance studies.
Current supervision
Past projects
Current and previous PhD supervision includes:
- The Emotional and Gendered Importance of Letter Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century in the Epistolary Network of the Canning Family.
- Eighteenth-Century Patronage
- The life and writings of Hester Thrale Piozzi
- Remapping Milton: Place, Space and Influence, 1700-1800
- Untimely Aesthetics: Shakespeare, Anachronism, and Prescence