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Dr Peter Yeandle

Formerly at Lancaster University

Peter Yeandle

Profile

Teaching

I have convened and/or co-taught on a number of undergraduate and postgraduate History modules at Nottingham, Lancaster, MMU and UCLAN. These include:

On Modern British History

  • 'Victorian Values: Race, Religion, Sex and Deviance in Nineteenth-Century Britain' (Lancaster)
  • 'The Making and Unmaking of Modern Britain, c.1750-2000' (Lancaster)
  • 'Culture, Conflict and Consumption in 18th-century England' (Lancaster)
  • 'Crime, Violence and Immorality in England, 1750-1970' (UCLAN)
  • 'Exploring Englishness' (MA Pathway module, Nottingham)

On European and World/Comparative History

  • 'Conflict and Contagion: The Cold War, 1945-91' (MMU)
  • 'The Contemporary World: Aspects of International History since 1945' (Nottingham)
  • 'Roads to Modernity: European and World History since 1879' (Nottingham)
  • 'The Restless Nation: German History from 1870-1990' (Lancaster)
  • 'First World War' (Lancaster)
  • 'The Enlightenment: Understanding the Modern World' (Lancaster)
  • 'The Creation and Destruction of Modern Europe' (Lancaster)
  • 'Us and Them: Constructing National Identities' (Lancaster)

I have also supervised a large number of undergraduate and masters-level dissertations and independent research projects.

Research Interests

I am currently employed as the AHRC Research Associate on Professors Kate Newey and Jeffrey Richards's project which investigates the cultural politics of Victorian pantomime. The project undertakes a wide-ranging study of Victorian pantomime in England, looking at pantomime as a rich vein of cultural history and topical commentary about British society and politics in the Victorian period.

Personal research falls into two camps, both of which are concerned with questions of morality and citizenship in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

Christian Socialism and the Performing Arts

I also work on the contested notions of the performance of occupational identity in theatrical and religious space. More specifically, I am embarking on a project which examines the inter-relationships between Christian Socialists, Anglo-Catholics and Ritualism in late Victorian Britain and their uses of the Stage, and theatrical metaphor, in their unorthodox preaching and missionary work.

The project will include further research into the little-known but highly influential 'Church and Stage Guild', the radical Christian Socialist Revd Stewart Duckworth Headlam, and the politics of poverty-relief and working-class leisure. This involves analysis of networks of cultural association in pre-Bloomsbury London, most notably, the social interface of poets, painters, musicians, journalists, novelists, sculptors, playwrights, dancers, actors and churchmen.

Enlightened Patriotism: Nation, Empire and Citizenship in the Teaching of History

My thesis focused upon the teaching of history and citizenship in English schools, 1880-1914. In particular, it identified, collated and analysed two relatively understudied genres of educational text: the historical story-book, statutorily employed in literacy lessons; and teacher-training manuals, published with increased frequency in the 1890s and 1900s. It included innovative research into the processes by which contemporary cutting-edge educational theory, much of which was continental in origin, became manifest in English schooling. The thesis included study of representations of civic and national identities, incorporating analysis of gender, ethnicity, class and empire. It provides both a revisionist analysis of assumptions about imperial indoctrination but also, importantly, emphasises the centrality of the history of pedagogy to the history of education. A book-length study is forthcoming.

Additional Information

Forthcoming or under contract:

  • 'Christian Socialism and the Stage? Henry Arthur Jones's Wealth (1889) and the Dramatisation of Ruskinian Political Economy', in B. Maidment and K. Hanley (ed.s), Persistent Ruskin: Aesthetics, Education and Social Theory, 1870-1914 (forthcoming, Ashgate)
  • 'Art, Ethics, Pleasure: The Influence of John Ruskin on the Reverend Stewart Duckworth Headlam', Nineteenth-Century Prose (Fall, 2011).
  • Teaching "Our Island Story": Citizenship, Nation and Empire in the teachinf of history, c.1850-1925. (Under contract with Manchester University Press).

Published research:

  • 'Englishness in Retrospect: Rewriting the National Past for Children of the English Working Classes, c.1880-1920', Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 6 (2006), 9-26.
  • 'Education for Citizenship: The Wider Historical Context'. Invited seminar presentation and on-line discussion paper delivered to and for St Martin's College's Centre for History, Education and Cultural Heritage series, April-July 2005.
  • 'Lessons in Englishness and Empire: Further thoughts on the English/British conundrum', in H. Brocklehurst and R. Phillips (eds), History, Nationhood and the Question of Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004).
  • 'Empire, Englishness and Elementary School History Education, c.1880-1914', International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research, 3 (2003).
  • 'Victorian and Edwardian Blackpool'. Key Stage 3 Local History resource for CLEO [Cumbria and Lancashire Education Online], May 2001.

Shorter pieces:

  • 'The Sister Arts and the Popular Theatre, c.1820-1910' and 'Politics, Performance and Popular Culture in nineteenth-century England', Popular Culture Research Network, November 2010.

Selection of of invited seminar and conference papers:

  • 'The Bishop, the Ballet Dancer, and "most bohemian Priest in all of London"'. Paper presented to the "History and the Sacred" research symposium, Lancaster, June 2010.
  • '"Too much Science makes men worship machines, making them indifferent to the Arts and Ethics": Ruskin's influence on the late-Victorian Christian Socialist movement', Ruskin and Cultural Value conference, University of Liverpool, June 2010.
  • 'Medieval heroes as bookmarks in British Empire Stories', invited paper presented to the '[In]famous Exploits of Empire: Revisiting Colonial Heroes in Britain and France, c. 1860-1970' symposium, University of Manchester,May 2010.
  • 'On Wealth, Illth and Love: using the stage to preach Ruskin's social gospel', invited seminar paper presented to the Ruskin Research Seminar Series, Lancaster University, December 2009.
  • with Gill Sutherland. 'Formal Programmes'. Part of the Special Session on 'Learning' at the British Association of Victorian Studies/North American Victorian Studies Association joint Conference, Past versus Present, Cambridge, July 2009.
  • 'Representations of the Chinese in British Popular Culture, 1850-1930'. Invited public lecture at the University of Nottingham, China campus, April 2009.
  • "Christian Socialism and the Stage: Henry Arthur Jones's Wealth (1889) and the dramatisation of Ruskinian political economy', Persistent Ruskin Conference, Lancaster, June 2008.
  • '"The people are perishing for the lack of beauty, joy and pleasure": Ruskinian voices in the debate over Popular Amusements in late-Victorian London', invited seminar paper presented to the Ruskin Polygon Collquium, Lancaster University, January 2008.
  • '"The pearl of great price": historians and educational psychologists in search of a moral curriculum, c.1892-1923', Science and Religion: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives Conference, Lancaster University, July 2007.
  • '"Between the Pagan and the Puritan": debating Ruskinian notions of stage morality', New Issues in Theatre Historiography conference, University of Birmingham, July 2007.
  • 'Ruskin, Mass Education and the Search for a Moral Education', invited seminar paper presented to the Ruskin Polygon Colloquium, Lancaster University, March 2007.
  • 'Englishness in Retrospect: Rewriting the National Past for Children of the English Working Classes, c.1880-1919', paper presented to the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism conference 'Nations and their Pasts: Representing the Past, Building the Future', March 2006.
  • 'Mediating the future of 'Englishness': an analysis of recent newsprint interventions on the purpose of teaching the national past'. Presented at the 'Media History and the History in the Media' Conference, University of Wales Study Centre, Gregynog, March/April 2005.
  • 'The Persistence and Function of Origin Myths: the Construction of English National Identity and the Creation of National Time in School History'. Presented at 'Beginnings, Innovation, Novelty' conference, Institute of Historical Research, London, July 2004.
  • 'Teaching Turn-of-the-twentieth Century Children to Tell the National Time'. Invited seminar presentation to the History of Ideas Seminar Series, Stirling, May 2003.
  • 'Rethinking History in the Classroom, 1880-1920: Race, Imperial Rhetoric and the "Need for Nationhood" in English Elementary School Education'. Presented at the 'British Island Stories' Conference, King's Manor, York, April 2002.

Other Interests and Hobbies

Cricket, Camping, Hiking, Darts, Isle of Man.