Recovering Historical Perspectives

Sometimes, to better understand something - whether a text, an event, an attitude or a behavior - requires that we understand the circumstances that produced it.

Bernadette Gillis (MALS '14) and Bing (Amanda) Zhu (MALS '15) share from Master's projects that each involve acts of historical recovery.

In A Caribbean Coupling Beyond Black and White: The Interracial Marriage of Catherine and Edward Marcus Despard and its Implications for British Views on Race, Class, and Gender during the Age of Reform, Bernadette Gillis explores the late 18th century marriage of British Army colonel, Edward Marcus Despard, and Catherine Despard, a Caribbean woman most likely of African descent. Addressing issues such as race, gender and human rights, this project explores the social and political environment that made their unlikely union possible, and how that marriage represents the more fluid and tolerant character of racial attitudes in the Age of Reform.

In An Education of Feelings: Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and the Art of Fiction, Bing (Amanda) Zhu analyzes Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles in light of three Hardy essays on the art of fiction.