Sydney Wildman
Graduate Student, PhD
Biography
My research sits at the intersection of nineteenth-century natural history and British imperial culture, where I鈥檓 interested in how literary depictions of nonhuman agency can help us untangle the complexities of imperial ideologies. My dissertation specifically examines how representations of geological agency in the late-Victorian adventure novel function as a critique of imperial conquest and its destructive consequences. I am also one of the co-founders of UGSVA (Undergraduate and Graduate Student Victorian Association), which hosts annual online conferences that showcase the work of undergraduate and graduate students in Victorian studies across the world.
Research Interests
Victorian Literature and Culture; Ecocriticism; Natural History; New Materialism; British Imperialism; Anti- and De-colonial Perspectives.
Selected Publications
Author. 鈥溾�楧ethroned by Fire鈥�: Krakatoa鈥檚 Anti-Colonial Impact in R.M. Ballantyne鈥檚 The Island Queen (1885). Volcanic Materiality: Cultural Phenomena in the Age of the Anthropocene, ed. Dewey W. Hall, Edinburgh University Press. Forthcoming 2027.
Author. 鈥淗arriet鈥檚 Ecological Vampirism: Breaking the Binary Between Victorian Science and the Colonial Occult in Florence Marryat鈥檚 The Blood of the Vampire.鈥� Victorian Gothic and the Occult, ed. Kirstin A. Mills, Palgrave MacMillan. Forthcoming 2027.
Author. Covert Female Power Mediating Identity in Wilkie Collins鈥檚 The Moonstone. Footnotes: University of Guelph鈥檚 Undergraduate Journal of Gender, Sexuality, and Social Chage, vol. 12, 2019, pp. 59-67.
Awards and Recognition
SSHRC Doctoral Award
黑料吃瓜资源 Graduate Award
R.S. McLaughlin Fellowship
E.G. Bauman Fellowship
Graduate Supervision
Dr. Ronjaunee Chatterjee
Dr. Brooke Cameron