Department of English, College of LAS, University of Illinois

Ted Underwood

Associate Professor of English

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Contact Information

Office Hours

  • W 3:00-4:30

Education

Ph.D, Cornell University, 1997

Research Interests

18c. British Literature, 19c. British Literature, French Literature 1760-1840, History of 18c. and 19c. Science, Political Economy, Sociology of Cultural Distinction, Sociology of Religion

Selected Publications

Books

  • The Work of the Sun: Literature, Science, and Political Economy, 1760-1860. New York: Palgrave, 2005.
  • Why Literary Periods Mattered: Historical Contrast and the Prestige of English Literature. Advance contract, 2012.

Book Contributions

  • "Discontinuity and Culture (in the 1840s and in Foucault)." Philosophy and Culture. Ed. Rei Terada. Romantic Circles, 2008.
  • "How Did the Conservation of Energy Become 'The Highest Law in All Science'?." Repositioning Victorian Sciences: Shifting Centers in Nineteenth-Century Scientific Thinking. Ed. David Clifford, Elisabeth Wadge, Alex Warwick, and Martin Willis. London: Anthem Press, 2006. 119-130.

Journal Articles

  • "Romantic Historicism and the Afterlife." PMLA 117 (2002): 237-51.
  • "Stories of Parallel Lives and the Status Anxieties of Contemporary Historicism." Representations 85 (2004): 1-20.
  • "Historical Difference as Immortality in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Novel." Modern Language Quarterly 63 (2002): 443-469.
  • "Skepticism and Surmise in Humphry Davy." The Wordsworth Circle 34 (2003): 95-103.
  • "The Science in Shelley's Theory of Poetry." Modern Language Quarterly 58 (1997):
  • "Productivism and the Vogue for 'Energy' in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain." Studies in Romanticism 34 (1995): 105-123.
  • "If Romantic Historicism Shaped Modern Fundamentalism, Would that Count as Secularization?." European Romantic Review 21.3 (2010): 327-43.
  • Underwood, Ted, and Jordan Sellers. "The Emergence of Literary Diction." Journal of Digital Humanities 1.2 (2012): online.. 21 Aug. 2012. <http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-2/the-emergence-of-literary-diction-by-ted-underwood-and-jordan-sellers/>.

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