Victorian Studies
Reflecting on what we can learn from nineteenth-century Britain
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Jesus According to Charles Dickens
It’s Hard to Write a Novel about Jesus
My first book looks at how Victorian novelists explored the Incarnation through fiction. In doing so, they shifted the focus from what Jesus did to who Jesus was: a real man in real history.
Now Available! VIJ 43 and My Article on Adam Bede
The Victorians Institute Journal, Volume 43 has just been released, along with my article on George Eliot’s re-historicizing of Jesus in Adam Bede,...
PUBLISHED | “’Not an Average Man’: Eliot’s Commonplace Heroic and the ‘Beautiful Story’ of Jesus in Adam Bede”
VIJ (Victorians Institute Journal) will be publishing my article on Adam Bede in their forthcoming issue (#43)! This article grew out of a chapter...
VIDEO | How can Adam Bede be Jesus? He’s such a prig…
For some people, thinking of Adam Bede as Jesus presents problems because Adam isn't always nice. In this video I look at George Eliot's Adam Bede,...
VIDEO | My Dissertation in 3 Minutes
In this video I give an overview of my dissertation, The Quest for a Novelistic Jesus: Literary Relationships with Jesus in Victorian Realism. I...
God’s Actions amid God’s Absence
Readers of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited often remark on the novel’s many profound, evocative reflections on Christian faith. And, to be fair,...
Class, Classification, and Jesus | The 2014 NAVSA Conference in London, ON
The North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA)’s annual conference was held in London, Ontario over the weekend. The conference brought...
VIDEO | Jesus and the Victorian Novel | A Dissertation Introduction
In the first of a series of videos, I introduce my Ph.D. dissertation by addressing three key questions: What did the Victorians think of Jesus?...
Kingsley and Narrative Form: The Mellon/ISLA Conversion and Literature Workshop At Notre Dame
The University of Notre Dame is a great place to be when working on anything related to Religion and Literature. This week, I participated in the...
Seeing Jesus through the Faith of Others
Recently, I’ve spent quite a bit of time with Charles Dickens’s least-read work: The Life of Our Lord. It is a slim volume that re-tells the story...
Jesus According to Charles Dickens
Between 1846 and 1849 Charles Dickens wrote The Life of Our Lord, a simplified version of Jesus’ life for his children, who ranged in age from...
Distance, Repentance and Embrace
Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations details the maturation of Pip, a young man specially selected by an unknown benefactor to become a “gentleman.” ...
Intellectual Adoration & the Victorian “Crisis of Doubt”
Victorian Britain—especially from 1859-1901—it is often described in terms of a “crisis of doubt.” Today we assume that this crisis in Christian...
Giving and Hospitality: Making Space for Others
To receive and to return gifts is no easy matter. How often has the kindly birthday or Christmas gift from a boss or acquaintance led to panic the...