ENGH 458: RS: Topics in Literary Research
ENGH 458-001: Spectacular Bodies in 19th Cen
(Fall 2025)
04:30 PM to 07:10 PM W
Peterson Hall 1111
Section Information for Fall 2025
Several factors converged in nineteenth-century Britain to produce a new—or at any rate increased—focus on the human body as an object of scrutiny. These factors included British imperialism and a new age of exploration that focused on the Far East and Global South; a growing culture of popular entertainments that included so-called “illegitimate theater,” the evolution of old-style menageries and wild animal shows into circuses and other extravagant spectacles, and the beginning of the modern zoo. Meanwhile an explosion in print culture, thanks to new technologies such as the steam press, allowed images to be reproduced and disseminated much more easily and cheaply than in the past, leading to a virtual explosion of caricatures and graphic satires for the public to consume. Add to all of this advances in medical science and the increasing professionalization of healthcare—and particularly mental healthcare—which put emphasis on the case study and on the sufferer as an object of study, and you have what we might call a culture of spectacle, with the human body as its central object.
In this course we will explore the spectacular, or spectacularized, nineteenth-century body through a variety of texts. Beginning with depictions of Emma, Lady Hamilton, whose semi-private performances were a sensation in the late eighteenth century, we will go on to look at quasi-scientific responses to public displays such as the 1825 Living Skeleton exhibit within the context of nineteenth-century entertainment culture, ethnographic displays, and the origins of the modern zoo. We will look at the phenomenon of fasting women and explore one case in detail before turning to Charles Dickens’ 1861 novel Great Expectations as a kind of encapsulated representation of the nineteenth-century preoccupation with anomalous, disordered (or traumatized), and spectacular bodies. Along the way we will read historical and theoretical discussions of entertainment culture and explore some of the historical background on early scientific discourse about eating disorders.
This section has controlled enrollment. Please email Professor Samuelian at ksamueli@gmu.edu for permission to register.
Course Information from the University Catalog
Credits: 3
This course is graded on the Undergraduate Regular scale.
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