Projects
These projects are run directly by the Centre and by affiliated students and researchers.
On this page:
See also:
Current projects
Gothic Tours
The Gothic Tours project develops and maintains an annotated map of country homes, and other sites of historic interest, which have played an important part in shaping the Gothic imaginary from the eighteenth century to the present day. The site identifies places to visit and includes brief accounts of their significance to the Gothic tradition.
The map has been put together by members of The Centre for the History of the Gothic at the University of Sheffield and will be periodically updated to include new sites of interest. We will be developing the map to include places throughout the UK.
Visit the Gothic Tours site.
Gothic Bites
The Gothic Bites project is generously funded by the University of Sheffield Arts Enterprise Scheme for Widening Participation. It is run by Professor Angela Wright and Dr Helena Ifill from the School of English in association with Rajnish Madaan of Neesh-Productions LTD. The Gothic Bites website is run by the Project Officer, Kate Gadsby-Mace.
See @GothicBites on Twitter.
Reimagining the Gothic
Reimagining the Gothic is an on-going project, initially coordinated by Sheffield Gothic and now rehomed with The Ghoul Guides, a project run by former University of Sheffield postgraduates.
It aims to cultivate and showcase interdisciplinary projects in Gothic studies to a broad academic and non-academic audience.
See @TheReimagining on Twitter.
Gothic Bible
The Gothic Bible Project constitutes an interdisciplinary approach to investigating instances within the Bible and Gothic fiction (ie literature, drama, and film) that demonstrate an interplay between biblical concepts or iconography and the literary Gothic mode, which began with the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764-5).
For more information see the Gothic Bible webpage, and @GothicBible on Twitter.
Monographs and research projects
Andrew Smith, Gothic Fiction and the Writing of Trauma, 1914-1934: The Ghosts of World War One
Andrew is currently writing a monograph on the Gothic and the First World War for Edinburgh University Press, titled Gothic Fiction and the Writing of Trauma, 1914-1934: The Ghosts of World War One.
“The book explores how representations of spectral soldiers were employed to culturally manage the trauma of war. I explore ghosts in a number of different contexts: the literary, the war memoir, scientific accounts of shell-shock, and psychoanalysis.
How to make sense of the war requires making sense of the dead of the war and how and why they died. The soldier-ghost, I argue, ultimately requires a form of cultural exorcism in order for a postwar world to move on.”
Angela Wright, the AHRC-funded Ann Radcliffe, Then and Now project
Ann Radcliffe, Then and Now is a three-year AHRC-funded project that seeks to re-establish Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823) as a major figure in British literature of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, as well as to commemorate her as a pioneering writer whose influence is still of considerable cultural significance today. Find out more via the project's website, Instagram, and Bluesky.
Angela Wright and Michael Gamer (eds), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ann Radcliffe
One output of the Ann Radcliffe, Then and Now project is the forthcoming Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ann Radcliffe, the first full, scholarly edition of Radcliffe’s works which will appear between 2025-7. Angela is editing The Mysteries of Udolpho, and Michael is editing The Italian; or, the Confessional of the Black Penitents. Working with general co-editors Gamer and Wright are Project Co-Leads Katrina O’Loughlin (Brunel University), Deborah Russell (University of York), and Dale Townshend (Manchester Metropolitan University), and volume editors Elizabeth Bobbitt (University of York), Tom Duggett (Xi’an Jiaotong–Liverpool University) and Robert Miles (University of Victoria). Rosie Whitcombe (University of Sheffield) is the project’s Research Associate.
Angela Wright and Dale Townshend (eds), Cambridge Elements in the Gothic series
Angela is also one of two general editors of a new book series coming from Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Elements in the Gothic, with titles in the series forthcoming from 2023.