Dr Jordan Kistler
Lecturer
English
Publications
- Walter Pater and non-Darwinian science
- Kistler Jordan
- Journal of Victorian Culture Vol 28, pp. 163-177 (2023)
- https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac080
- Walter Pater's museological gaze
- Kistler Jordan
- Studies in Walter Pater and Aestheticism (2022)
- 'I cannot tell you all the story' : narrative, historical knowledge, and the museum in H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine
- Kistler Jordan
- Configurations Vol 30, pp. 257-283 (2022)
- https://doi.org/10.1353/con.2022.0017
- Science : entropy, degeneration, and decadent self-destruction
- Kistler Jordan
- The Oxford Handbook of Decadence (2021) (2021)
- https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190066956.013.33
- 'What's your dinosaur?' Or, imaginative reconstruction and absolute truth in the museum space
- Kistler Jordan, Tattersdill Will
- Museum & Society Vol 17, pp. 377-389 (2019)
- https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v17i3.3219
- The science of decadence
- Kistler Jordan
- Decadence and Literature (2019) (2019)
- https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108550826.015
Teaching
My teaching spans the nineteenth century, and focuses on poetry, gender, and the Victorian Gothic.
Research Interests
I have recently published on the intersections between museums and literature in the nineteenth century and nineteenth-century understandings of non-Darwinian evolutionary theory.
the intersections between Victorian science and fin de siècle decadent literature, the representations of women in late-Victorian Gothic fiction, and the depiction of blindness in nineteenth-century poetry.
My first monograph, Arthur O’Shaughnessy: A Pre-Raphaelite Poet in the British Museum (Routledge, 2016), explored O’Shaughnessy’s contributions to the Victorian medieval revival, Pre-Raphaelitism, decadence, and aestheticism. O’Shaughnessy’s work as a taxonomist in the British Museum is foregrounded in this study to suggest new ways of thinking about the relationship between science and literature during this period, through the lens of a technician rather than a theoretician.
My current project is a wide-ranging cultural history of the 19th-century British Museum. As an interdisciplinary, public, and national museum, the British Museum offers a unique lens through which to consider key questions of 19th-century epistemology: How can one ‘know’ from what one sees? How is knowledge organized? Who has access to it? How does this shape public perceptions of class, gender, and nationality? The project explores major changes in the popular conception of history, education, and knowledge itself, across disciplinary boundaries.
I have also published on the intersections between Victorian science and fin de siècle decadent literature, the representations of women in late-Victorian Gothic fiction, and the depiction of blindness in nineteenth-century poetry.
Professional Activities
- European Society for the Study of English (ESSE)
- Participant
- 26/8/2024
- ‘Museum Cryptids: hoaxes, jokes, and marketing ploys’
- Speaker
- 22/5/2024
- International Conference of Three Societies on Literature and Science
- Speaker
- 10/4/2024
- Curious Creatures Creative Writing Workshop
- Host
- 5/4/2024
- Cusp: Late 19th-/Early 20th-Century Cultures (Journal)
- Peer reviewer
- 26/3/2024
- BBC Radio 4 Feedback
- Contributor
- 15/3/2024
Projects
- The People’s Friend? Recovering Scottish Popular Magazine Culture (CDP)(Charlotte Lauder)
- Kistler, Jordan (Principal Investigator) Blair, Kirstie (Co-investigator) Goldie, David (Co-investigator)
- 01-Oct-2018 - 31-Mar-2023