Professor Kirstie Blair

Deputy Principal (Academic)

Administration University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA

Professor Kirstie Blair

Contact details

About me

I returned to Stirling in August 2022 as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. I first joined Stirling as a Chair in English Studies in January 2013, having previously worked at the University of Glasgow from 2005 as a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer, and before that at  St Peter's College and Keble College, Oxford.  From 2016-2022, I was a Chair in English Studies at the University of Strathclyde, and Head of the School of Humanities from 2017-2020.

I am a specialist in Victorian literature and culture, with particular interests in poetry and poetic form, literature and religion, working-class literary cultures, Scottish literature, children's literature, and fan studies and fanfiction. My work increasingly relates to industrial heritage in the long nineteenth century, and its relevance in the present day. My most recent AHRC project, 'Piston, Pen & Press: Literary Cultures in the Industrial Workplace' (2018-22), explored and mapped how industrial workers in Scotland and the North of England engaged with literary cultures (www.pistonpenandpress.org/database).

Education

D.Phil
St Anne's College, University of Oxford

M.Phil in Victorian Literature
St Anne's College, University of Oxford

MA in English Literature
Pembroke College, University of Cambridge

Event / Presentation

Invited leader of networking session. 'Religion and Secularism' (NAVSA)
University of Wisconsin-Madison

American Studies Graduate Seminar. 'In Safe Hands?: Rereading Longfellow's Evangeline'
University of Cambridge

Benefactor's Day Guest Speaker. 'Robert Browning's Dissenting Forms'
Baylor University

Convenor. 'Stages of Life'
Arts and Humanities Research Council

'Crossing the Bar' Poetry Workshop. 'Transatlanticism and the Forms of Faith'
University of Philadelphia

English Subject Centre Workshop. 'Teaching Victorian Religious Poetry', 'Teaching Victorian Poetry'
English Subject Centre

Faculty Seminar. 'He Sings Alone: Hybrid Forms and the Victorian Working-Class Poet'
Liverpool John Moores University

Faculty Seminar. 'Poetry, poetics and the disordered pulse'
University of Wales

Faculty Seminar. 'The Lesbian and the Gypsy: Figuring Desire Between Women in Sackville-West, Woolf and Trefusis'
University of Sheffield

Graduate and Faculty seminar. 'Form, Faith and Feeling in Nineteenth-Century Poetry and Religion'
University of St Andrews

Graduate Seminar. 'Form and Faith in Victorian Poetry'
University of Cambridge

Graduate Seminar. 'Victorian Poets and Children's Verse'
City University of New York

Graduate/Faculty Seminar. 'Poetry for Play Hours'
University of Durham

Guest Speaker. 'Transatlantic Tractarians'
Texas Christian University

Guest speaker. 'Victorian Poetry and Childhood'
University of Washington

Guest Speaker. 'Victorian Poets and the Culture of Children's Verse'
University of Maryland

Invited Speaker. 'The Anglican Liturgy and Victorian Poetry'
Birkbeck University of London

Keynote speaker, 'Rethinking Victorian Sentimentality'. 'Thousands of throbbing hearts': Victorian sentimentality and the language of the heart'
Institute of English Studies

Midlands Interdisciplinary Victorian Studies Seminar. 'Victorian Poetry and the Proof of the Pulses'

Pedagogy Workshop Leader. 'Teaching Victorian Poetry and the Body: Forming Affect', 'Victorian Materialities', NAVSA
University of Victoria

'Romantic Palpitations', 'Romantic Medicine'. 'Romantic Palpitations', 'Romantic Medicine'
Nottingham Trent University

Seminar Leader. 'Teaching Contemporary British Fiction'
Penn State University

Seminar Leader. 'Teaching Contemporary British Fiction'
Penn State University

Tennyson Society Annual Lecture. 'Tennyson Among the Workers
Tennyson Society

'The Victorian Sonnet'. 'Faith, form and the Ecclesiastical Sonnet'
Ghent University

Victorian Graduate Seminar. 'Structured Shade: Victorian Religious Poetry and Ecclesiastical Architecture'
University of Oxford

Research projects (1)

Piston, Pen & Press: Literary Cultures in the Industrial Workplace from the Factory Acts to the First World War
PI: Professor Kirstie Blair
Funded by: Arts and Humanities Research Council
–

Outputs (52)

Book Chapter

Dialect, Region, Class, Work

Blair K (2019) Dialect, Region, Class, Work. In: Hughes LK (ed.) Cambridge Companion to Victorian Women's Poetry. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 129-144. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316856543.010

Commentary

Britain

Blair K (2018) Britain. Victorian Literature and Culture, 46 (3-4), pp. 590-594. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1060150318000323

Book Chapter

'We may not know, we cannot tell': Religion and Reserve in Victorian Children’s Poetics

Blair K (2017) 'We may not know, we cannot tell': Religion and Reserve in Victorian Children’s Poetics. In: Wakely-Mulroney K & Joy L (eds.) The Aesthetics of Children's Poetry: A Study of Children's Verse in English. Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present. London: Routledge, pp. 127-144. https://www.routledge.com/The-Aesthetics-of-Childrens-Poetry-A-Study-of-Childrens-Verse-in-English/Wakely-Mulroney-Joy/p/book/9781472438317

Book Chapter

The Influence of the Oxford Movement on Poetry and Fiction

Blair K (2017) The Influence of the Oxford Movement on Poetry and Fiction. In: Brown SJ, Nockles P & Pereiro J (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of the Oxford Movement. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 410-416. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-the-oxford-movement-9780199580187?cc=gb&lang=en&#

Book Chapter

The Newspaper Press and the Victorian Working Class Poet

Blair K (2017) The Newspaper Press and the Victorian Working Class Poet. In: Goodridge J & Keegan B (eds.) A History of British Working-Class Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 264-280. http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/literature/english-literature-general-interest/history-british-working-class-literature?format=HB

Book Chapter

Introduction

Blair K (2013) Introduction. In: Blair K & Gorji M (eds.) Class and the Canon: Constructing Labouring-Class Poetry and Poetics, 1780-1900. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-15. http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=594821

Book Chapter

Church Going

Blair K (2013) Church Going. In: Bevis M (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry. Oxford Handbooks of Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 762-782. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199576463.do

Book Chapter

The Poet-Preachers

Blair K (2012) The Poet-Preachers. In: Francis K, Gibson W, Ellison R, Morgan-Guy J & Tennant B (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of the British Sermon, 1689-1901. Oxford Handbooks in Religion and Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 565-578. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199583591.do

Book Chapter

Poetry and Sensation

Blair K (2011) Poetry and Sensation. In: Gilbert P (ed.) A Companion to Sensation Fiction. Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 107-120. http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405195584.html

Book Chapter

Alfred Tennyson

Blair K (2009) Alfred Tennyson. In: Lemon R, Mason E, Roberts J & Rowland C (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 496-511. http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405131608.html

Book Chapter

Church Architecture, Tractarian Poetry and the Forms of Faith

Blair K (2008) Church Architecture, Tractarian Poetry and the Forms of Faith. In: Morgan V & Williams C (eds.) Shaping Belief: Culture, Politics and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Writing. Liverpool English Texts and Studies, 52. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, pp. 129-148. http://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/search/hfclient.isa?A=BOOKSONIX_LUP_BOOKSHOP&F=form&AS=FIND%7CIB%7C&AS2=%7CAND%7CU1%7CA/F&view=wrapper&AS1=9781846311369

Book Chapter

Keble and The Christian Year

Blair K (2007) Keble and The Christian Year. In: Hass A, Jasper D & Jay E (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology. Oxford Handbooks in Religion and Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 607-623. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199271979.do

Authored Book

Victorian Poetry and the Culture of the Heart

Blair K (2006) Victorian Poetry and the Culture of the Heart. Oxford English Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon Press. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199273942.do

Book Chapter

Contagious Sympathies: George Eliot and Rudolf Virchow

Blair K (2005) Contagious Sympathies: George Eliot and Rudolf Virchow. In: Zwierlein A (ed.) Unmapped Countries: Biological Visions in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture. London: Anthem Press, pp. 145-154. http://www.anthempress.com/unmapped-countries-hb

Edited Book

John Keble in Context

Blair K (ed.) (2004) John Keble in Context. London: Anthem Press. http://www.anthempress.com/john-keble-in-context-pb

Book Chapter

'Proved on the pulses': Heart disease in Victorian culture, 1830-1860

Blair K (2003) 'Proved on the pulses': Heart disease in Victorian culture, 1830-1860. In: Rousseau G, Gill M, Haycock D & Herwig M (eds.) Framing and Imagining Disease in Cultural History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 285-302. http://us.macmillan.com/framingandimaginingdiseaseinculturalhistory/GeorgeRousseau

Article

John Keble and the rhythm of faith

Blair K (2003) John Keble and the rhythm of faith. Essays in Criticism, 53 (2), pp. 129-150. http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?partnerID=yv4JPVwI&eid=2-s2.0-60950613200&md5=887c65954148c0633dda76158e52cfe9; https://doi.org/10.1093/eic/53.2.129