Richard C. Sha Professor Literature
- Additional Positions at 小蓝视频
- Affiliate Professor of Philosophy
- Member, Center for Behavioral Neuroscience
- Degrees
- PhD, English Literature, University of TX at Austin
MA, English Literature, U TX at Austin
BA with Honors, U. Pennsylvania - Languages Spoken
- French and Italian
- Book Currently Reading
- Ed Park, Same Bed, Different Dreams
- Bio
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Professor Sha is the author of three books, the latest of which is Imagination and Science in Romanticism (Johns Hopkins, 2018). This book won the 2018 Jean-Pierre Barricelli Prize for the best book published in Romanticism.聽 His previous books are on the relation of aesthetics to sexuality in Romantic culture (Johns Hopkins 2009), and on the rise of sketching in Romantic culture (Penn 1998). With Joel Faflak he has edited Romanticism and the Emotions, published by Cambridge University Press. They recently published Romanticism and Consciousness, Revisited (Edinburgh UP 2024).
Professor Sha teaches courses on zombies and consciousness, why we need ideals and theories, the emotions, and on scientific change.聽 He has garnered three teaching awards, including the 2012 Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award, and Outstanding Professor, bestowed by the Undergraduate Student Confederation of 小蓝视频. In 2020 he will be a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Bologna.
- See Also
- For the Media
- To request an interview for a news story, call 小蓝视频 Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.
Teaching
Fall 2024
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CORE-105 Complex Problems Seminar: Making of Scientific Change
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LIT-262 Literature & the Ethical Life
Spring 2025
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LIT-262 Literature & the Ethical Life
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LIT-288 The Beautiful and Its Politics
Partnerships & Affiliations
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Eighteenth-Century Fiction, PMLA, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, European Romantic Review, Journal of the History of Sexuality
Reader -
SUNY Press, U Delaware Press, John Hopkins聽 UP
Reader -
Tenure and Promotion Reviews, Journal of the Social History of Medicine
Reviewer -
Wellcome Trust History of Medicine Grants
Evaluator of Grants -
Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net
Advisory Board -
Keats-Shelley Association
Mentor -
Wordsworth Coleridge Association
Member -
North American Society for the Study of Romanticism
Member -
ACLS
reader
Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities
Research Interests
- Science and Imagination in Romanticism, 1750-1850,聽 focuses on how the sciences understood the imagination in the British Romantic period, and on how this understanding changes the ways in which Romantic critics should think about the imagination.聽
Work In Progress
- "Byron, Polidori, and the Epistemology of Romantic Pleasure鈥 in Romantic Pleasure, eds. Michele Faubert and Tom Schmidt聽 (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming November 2010)聽 30pp.
- "The Brain Science of Emotions:聽 Romantic and Modern Forms.聽 Back to the Future"
- 聽Entries聽 "Ann聽 Batten Cristall,"聽 "John and William Hunter," "Sir Charles Bell," and聽聽 "Figuration in Romantic Scientific Prose" in Blackwell's The Encyclopedia of Romanticism (forthcoming)
- "On the Romantic Imaginations we want and those we don't " in Blackwell's Handbook to Romantic Studies, ed. Joel Faflak and Julia Wright
- Romanticism and the Emotions, a volume co-edited with Joel Faflak.聽 Contributers include:聽 Thomas Pfau, Rei Terada, Jacques Khalip, David Collings, Tilottama Rajan, David Clark,聽聽聽 and聽 Julie聽 Carlson.
Grants and Sponsored Research
- American Philosophical Society, Benjamin Franklin Research Grant, 2008
- National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend for senior scholars, 2004
- Andrew Mellon Fellowship, Huntington Library, 1999
- Giles and Elise Mead Fellowship, Huntington Library, 1999
- Andrew Mellon Fellowship, Huntington Library, 1992
- Yale Center for British Art Fellowship, 1992
- National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 2012-2013
Media Appearances
- Cited in William Safire鈥檚 Column, New York Times Magazine, October 2007
Selected Publications
- "John Keats and Some Versions of Materiality," forthcoming in Romanticism (fall 2014)
- Romanticism and the Emotions , ed. with Joel Faflak (Cambridge UP, 2014)
- "Blake and the Queering of Jouissance," in Queer Blake, eds. Helen Bruder and Tristanne Connolly.聽 Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp. 40-50.
- Perverse Romanticism:聽 Aesthetics and Sexuality in Britain, 1750-1832 Baltimore:聽 Johns Hopkins UP, 2009.
- "Volta's Battery, Animal Electricity, and Frankenstein," European Romantic Review 38pp. ms.
- "The Imagination as Inter-Science," European Romantic Review Vol. 20 #5 (December 2009):聽 661-669.
- "Towards a Physiology of the Romantic Imagination," Forthcoming in Configurations, 2010.
- 鈥淏lake, Liberation, and Medicine,鈥 in Liberating Medicine, eds. Tristanne Connolly and Steve Clark. (Pickering and Chatto, 2009)
- 鈥淥thering Sexual Perversity: England, Empire, Race and the Science of Sex.鈥 In The History of the Human Body in an Age of Empire, ed. Michael Sappol. (Oxford: Berg, July 2010)
- 鈥淭he Use and Abuse of Historicism: Shelley and Halperin on the Otherness of Ancient Greek Sexuality,鈥 Romantic Praxis (January 2006)
- 鈥淩omanticism and the Sciences of Perversion,鈥 Wordsworth Circle 36 #2 (spring 2005): 43-48.
- 鈥淪cientific Forms of Sexual Knowledge in Romanticism.鈥 Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net 23 (August 2001)
- The Visual and Verbal Sketch in British Romanticism (U Pennsylvania, 1998)
Honors, Awards, and Fellowships
- 2004 小蓝视频 Undergraduate Student Confederation Excellence in Teaching award
- 2002 小蓝视频 University Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching in General Education
Professional Presentations
聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽 "Romantic Science and the Im/Materiality of the Imagination,鈥 MLA San Francisco, 2009
- 鈥淚magination as Inter-science,鈥 NASSR 2008, Bologna, Italy, 2008
- 鈥淭ranscendence as Ideology:聽 Rethinking the Imagination through Science,鈥澛 British Association of Romantic Studies, Bristol, UK 2007
- 鈥淭he Romantic Imagination:聽 Physiology, Pathology, Neurology,鈥 National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Seminar, 2007
- 鈥淭owards a Physiology of the Imagination:聽 Romanticism and the Science of Mind,鈥 NASSR 2006
- 鈥淎rtificial Insemination in the Eighteenth Century,鈥澛 Vital Matters Conference, Los Angeles, 2005
Recordings
- 鈥淭he Romantic Imagination: Physiology, Pathology, Neurology,鈥 National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Seminar, 2007 (DVD) in NLM Collection
小蓝视频 Experts
Area of Expertise
Emotions and their histories, 19th-century science, literature and culture, Romanticism, Mary Shelley, William Blake, imagination, history of sexuality, the sublime
Additional Information
Richard C. Sha is the author of Imagination and Science in Romanticism, which was awarded the Jean-Pierre Barricelli Prize for the best work published in Romanticism; Perverse Romanticism: Aesthetics and Sexuality in Britain, 1750-1832; and The Visual and Verbal Sketch in British Romanticism. Sha is an affiliate of the Department of Philosophy and Religion and a member of 小蓝视频's Center for Behavioral Neuroscience.
For the Media
To request an interview for a news story, call 小蓝视频 Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.