Congratulations to Dr Declan Kavanagh, Ph.D graduate of the Department, on the publication of his book, Effeminate Years: Literature, Politics and Aesthetics in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain, from Bucknell University Press.
Review
Effeminate Years is a wonderful book. Beautifully written and engaging throughout, at times its wittiness is absolutely dazzling; but still the argument is rigorous and really compelling throughout. This is a book for anyone interested in gender and sexuality in the eighteenth century or in queer studies more generally. In an age of ever-richer political satire, moreover, this book offers a special treat for readers. (George Haggerty)
Effeminate Years explores how ideal versions of masculinity become imbricated in idealised versions of nationality and ethnicity. Specifically, this book reveals how discourses of effeminacy and idealised masculinity structure the formation of English, Irish and Scots ethnic identities in the years when the project of the British Empire was emerging from infancy. The mid’ years of the Eighteenth Century saw the final defeat of Gaelic Jacobite hopes and the consolidation of an ascendant English Protestant nationalism which segued into British colonialism. Effeminate Years provides a remarkably comprehensive, deft and very entertaining account of the culture wars of these important years to demonstrate how the cultural productions of the era manifest anxiety, opportunism and counter-strategy about what kind of man should and would lead the development of Britain and expansion of empire. (Katherine O'Donnell, University College Dublin)
About the Author
Dr Declan Kavanagh, a PhD graduate of the Department of English Maynooth University, is lecturer in eighteenth-century studies and director of the Centre for Gender, Sexuality, and Writing at the University of Kent.
https://www.amazon.com/Effeminate-Years-Literature-Aesthetics-Mid-Eighteenth-Century/dp/1611488249