I am by nature inquisitive, contemplative and sociable. Though I specialise in literature, my intellectual disposition - indeed, my will to know - compels me to venture into other disciplines of knowledge. Combined with my science background, this "will to know" has led me into the terrains of moral philosophy, philosophy of death, art history, anthropology, cultural history, religious studies, history of disease, microbiology, biochemistry, architecture and physics. Responding to various exigencies of our time, my work is governed by two principal trajectories: 1. to reinvigorate the care ethics of arts, humanities and the social sciences through my own research; 2. to reassert the relevance of arts, humanities and the social sciences through a teaching philosophy which focuses on personal responsibility and community awareness.
Research Interests
Eighteenth-century studies; Romantic literature; Victorian art and literature; life writing; portraiture; material culture; women’s writing; death and cemetery studies; genre study; elegy study; epistolary writing; Enlightenment systems; political economy; philosophy of death; ethics of friendship; affect theory; works of mourning; cultural memory, reception theory; antiquarianism; postcolonial literature; children’s literature; dystopian fictions; word and image