My thesis, provisionally entitled Bodies, Consumption and Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Western Literature, investigates the composite parts of the ancient Egyptian body exhumed, consumed and dispersed by Western travellers by bringing non-fiction and fiction into conversation and examining the cultural impact that Egyptology had on the publishing industry. I am especially interested in the fiction writers Edgar Allan Poe, Theophile Gautier and Louisa May Alcott. I am similarly interested in the travel writings and public lectures of travellers including George Robbins Gliddon, Harriet Martineau, Giovanni Battista Belzoni, and Richard Robert Madden.
More broadly, I am interested Gothic fiction (especially body horror, American Gothic and eco-Gothic), depictions of the body and cannibalism in literature, and wider representations of ancient Egypt in nineteenth and twentieth century literature.