University of Glasgow

Victorian Illiteracies: Conceptualising the Unorthodox Reader in the Nineteenth-Century Novel

Academic History:

September 2014 PhD English Literature (University of Glasgow)

September 2013 – September 2014 MLitt Victorian Literature (University of Glasgow)

September 2009-June 2013 MA (Hons) (University of Glasgow)

Supervisors:

Dr Rhian Williams (University of Glasgow)

Prof Christine Ferguson (University of Stirling)

Current project:

Louise’s PhD project, provisionally titled 'On Not Reading the Victorian Novel', will consider the representation & significance of characters who are marked as non-readers in the Victorian novel for a multitude of reasons, such as disability, learning difficulty, lack of access to education, or a rejection of education. It will examine the wider significance of illiterate representation in relation to formal anxieties of the novel, contemporary educational reform, class tensions & the understanding of disability.  

Research Interests:  

• Illiteracy in the C19th Novel
• Victorian fiction
• Disability Studies – particularly, learning difficulties
• Medical Humanities
• Neo-Victorian Musical
• History of dyslexia

Publications:

Louise Creechan, ‘Terminal Truths: Children’s Literature, Cancer & Its Metaphors’, HARTS and Minds, Vol. 1, No. 3 (March, 2014),

Scholarships/Awards:

• AHRC DTP Award
• School of Critical Studies Postgraduate Research Funding Award 2014
• Victorian Popular Fiction Association Postgraduate Grant 2014
• Carnegie-Cameron Taught Masters Bursary 2013-14
• Justin Langham Memorial Trophy for Outstanding Achievement in Sport
• Full Blues
• University of Glasgow Talented Athlete Programme

First published: 1 October 2014