Sam Bailey
Doctoral Student in Literature - Sam’s thesis is entitled 'The Social Life of Erotic Books in Eighteenth-century England'
Research Project Title:
The Social Life of Erotic Books in Eighteenth-century England
Supervisors:
Dr Joseph Hone + Prof Kate Chedgzoy
Contact Details:
Email: s.bailey4@ncl.ac.uk
Research Interests:
- Descriptive bibliography
- Queer & Trans* studies
- Pornography studies
- Book history
- The history of sex and gender
- The history of reading practices
- Eighteenth-century print culture
- Eroticism in the eighteenth century
Brief Outline of Research Project:
My project examines the production, transmission and consumption of erotic print from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century. I bring together the methods of descriptive bibliography and queer studies to newly consider the role of pornography in the sexual politics of this period. I am interested primarily in who interacted with pornography in this period, and how they did so. Much of the focus of pornography studies has been on a private, usually male, individual reading novels for sexual pleasure in the comfort of his own home. I seek to reassess this figure as the icon of eighteenth-century pornography studies and instead focus on how pornography was made by multiple collaborating hands; how it was sold in shop windows and on the street; and how it was read in the company of others, in clubs, coffee houses, and taverns.
Other
Research Groups:
Newcastle University Manuscript and Print Studies Group (NUMPS) – Co-convenor
North-East Eighteenth Century and Romantic Studies Forum (NEECRS) – Member
Newcastle University Middle-Modern Group – Member
Newcastle University Medieval and Early-Modern Studies Group (MEMS) – Member
Memberships:
British Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS)