Dr Katarina Stenke PhD (Cantab); MPhil 18thc & Romantic Lit. (Cantab); BA Hons English; MEng ESE

Senior Lecturer in Eighteenth-century Literature

Dr Katarina Stenke joined the University of Greenwich in 2017 as Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century Literature. She teaches and supervises on a range of undergraduate and MA Literature modules, where she places a particular emphasis on bringing under-represented voices and perspectives into the syllabus. As co-organiser of a new Literature and Creative Writing seminar series on the theme of "Narratives," hosted by the Centre for Research & Enterprise in Language, she is also enthusiastic about the potential for literary studies to make connections with, and to illumine, other disciplines within both Arts and Sciences. 

Dr Stenke was born and attended school in Luxembourg before moving to Ireland and the UK to pursue higher education. She obtained her MPhil and PhD in Eighteenth-century Literature at the University of Cambridge, where she subsequently held a fixed-term career development post as Director of Studies and College Lecturer at Gonville and Caius College.

Responsibilities within the university

Senior Lecturer in Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century.

Katarina is module leader for level 5 core module "Literature in Context: Fiction after 1800"; level 6 module "Modern Identities: Literature of the Global Eighteenth Century"; and co-teaches on "The Canon: A Short History of Western Literature" (level 4 core). She also co-leads two level 7 modules, "The Commerce of Vice" (literature of Early Modern London) and "Research Skills for Literature Students," as part of the Literary London MA programme.

Katarina is also a member of the University's Centre for Research and Enterprise in Language, for which she co-convenes an interdisciplinary seminar series on "Narratives".

Recognition

British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS); Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP)

Research / Scholarly interests

Dr Stenke's research lies in the field of eighteenth-century British literature and seeks to elucidate intersections between abstract, even nebulous cultural concepts (such as 'greatness', or 'a good death' or 'the Orient') and historically particular, ideologically configured articulations of these in eighteenth-century manuscript and print. She has published peer-reviewed articles and chapters in the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Studies in the Literary Imagination and elsewhere on topics such as: politics of mourning in women's writing; being subversive in eighteenth-century religious verse; connections between orientalism and parochialism; and representations of mazes and statues in eighteenth-century poetry. She is currently preparing a monograph on eighteenth-century long poems; co-editing a collection of essays on 'impolite periodicals'; and researching representations of mass mortality in eighteenth-century verse by women.

Recent publications

Article

Stenke, Katarina (2018), Dissenting from Edward Young’s Night Thoughts: christian time and poetic metre in Anne Steele’s graveyard poems. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 41: JECS12534 (2) . pp. 273-288 ISSN: 1754-0194 (Print), 1754-0208 (Online) (doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1754-0208.12534).

Stenke, Katarina (2014), "The well-dissembled mourner": lightning's (dis)course in the still lives of Thomson's "Celadon and Amelia". Studies in the Literary Imagination, 46 (1) . pp. 19-46 ISSN: 0039-3819 (Print), 2165-2678 (Online) (doi: https://doi.org/10.1353/sli.2013.0007).

Stenke, Katarina (2014), ‘Devolving through the maze of eloquence’: James Thomson’s The seasons and the eighteenth-century verse labyrinth. Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies, 39: 1 (1) . pp. 5-23 1754-0208 (Online) (doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1754-0208.12248) NB Item availability restricted.

Publications

"Prose and General’ in Katarina Stenke, Bonnie Latimer, Kerri Andrews, and Chrisy Dennis, ‘Chapter XI: The Eighteenth Century (1700-1780)’, The Year's Work in English Studies 92-94 (2013, 2014 and 2015).

Review of Eric Parisot, Graveyard Poetry: Religion, Aesthetics and the Mid-Eighteenth-Century Poetic Condition (Ashgate, 2013) for SHARP News, the publication of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing, 20 August, 2016. http://www.sharpweb.org/sharpnews/2016/08/20/eric-parisot-graveyard-poetry-religion-aesthetics-and-the-mid-eighteenth-century-poetic-condition/

Book section

Stenke, Katarina (2017), A literary progenitor: Lancelot Addison, father of the more famous Joseph. In: Penelope J. Corfield, Leonie Hanan (eds.), Hats Off, Gentlemen! Changing Arts of Communication in the Eighteenth Century: Arts de communiquer au dix-huitième siècl. Honoré Champion, Paris . pp. 129-147 . ISBN: 9782745344366 NB Item availability restricted.

Presentations

Selected invited talks:

‘Mourning and making: representations of death in eighteenth-century women’s writing’, invited paper for ‘A Good Death: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Dying Well, 1700-present’, CRASSH (Cambridge, Jan. 2019).

‘Mr. Spectator imagines infinity: Enlightenment, Orient & Christian devotion in the periodical essay’, paper given as external keynote respondent at Dissertation Showcase Day for MA programme in Eighteenth-Century Studies, Kings’ College, London (June 2018)

‘Time of death: the metres of Anne Steele’s graveyard poems’, conference on ‘Nonconformist Women and their Literary Practices 1650–1850’, Dr Williams’s Library, Queen Mary University of London (London, May 2015).

‘Statues and lightning bolts: intertextual appropriation in James Thomson’s ‘Celadon and Amelia’’, research paper at Restoration to Reform research seminar, University of Oxford (November 2014).

Selected conference papers

‘Infidelity, magic, passion: the impolite bases of Addison’s Spectators’, part of co-proposed panel entitled “Impolite Periodicals: Down and Out with Mr Spectator’, Meeting of International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Edinburgh, July 2019).

‘“Death, in various shapes”: forms of destruction in Anne Finch’s “Upon the Hurricane”’ (1704), Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Orlando, Florida, March 2018).

‘Anne Finch’s “On the Hurricane” (1703) and John Dennis’s poetic enthusiasm: a comparative reading’, Annual Meeting of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (St. Hughes’ College, Oxford, January 2018).

‘“Eruptions, Earthquakes, the Sea wrought into a horrible Tempest”: towards a rehabilitation of the natural sublime via eighteenth-century poetry’, Mediating Climate Change, conference (University of Leeds, July 2017).

‘Elegy and refusal: the pious legacies of Anne Steele (1717-1778)’, Reputations, Legacies, Futures: Jane Austen, Germaine de Staël and their contemporaries, 1817-2017, conference held at Chawton House Library (Hampshire, July 2017). "

Presentations

Presentations

Selected invited talks:

  • ‘Mourning and making: representations of death in eighteenth-century women’s writing’, invited paper for ‘A Good Death: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Dying Well, 1700-present’, CRASSH (Cambridge, Jan. 2019).
  • ‘Mr. Spectator imagines infinity: Enlightenment, Orient & Christian devotion in the periodical essay’, paper given as external keynote respondent at Dissertation Showcase Day for MA programme in Eighteenth-Century Studies, Kings’ College, London (June 2018)
  • ‘Time of death: the metres of Anne Steele’s graveyard poems’, conference on ‘Nonconformist Women and their Literary Practices 1650–1850’, Dr Williams’s Library, Queen Mary University of London (London, May 2015).
  • ‘Statues and lightning bolts: intertextual appropriation in James Thomson’s ‘Celadon and Amelia’’, research paper at Restoration to Reform research seminar, University of Oxford (November 2014).

Selected conference papers

  • ‘Infidelity, magic, passion: the impolite bases of Addison’s Spectators’, part of co-proposed panel entitled “Impolite Periodicals: Down and Out with Mr Spectator’, Meeting of International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Edinburgh, July 2019).
  • ‘“Death, in various shapes”: forms of destruction in Anne Finch’s “Upon the Hurricane”’ (1704), Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Orlando, Florida, March 2018).
  • ‘Anne Finch’s “On the Hurricane” (1703) and John Dennis’s poetic enthusiasm: a comparative reading’, Annual Meeting of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (St. Hughes’ College, Oxford, January 2018).
  • ‘“Eruptions, Earthquakes, the Sea wrought into a horrible Tempest”: towards a rehabilitation of the natural sublime via eighteenth-century poetry’, Mediating Climate Change, conference (University of Leeds, July 2017).
  • ‘Elegy and refusal: the pious legacies of Anne Steele (1717-1778)’, Reputations, Legacies, Futures: Jane Austen, Germaine de Staël and their contemporaries, 1817-2017, conference held at Chawton House Library (Hampshire, July 2017). "