Dean of Faculty of Arts and Humanities
AH Management and Support Team University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA
I returned to Stirling in August 2022 as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. I first joined Stirling as a Chair in English Studies in January 2013, having previously worked at the University of Glasgow from 2005 as a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer, and before that at St Peter's College and Keble College, Oxford. From 2016-2022, I was a Chair in English Studies at the University of Strathclyde, and Head of the School of Humanities from 2017-2020.
D.Phil
St Anne's College, University of Oxford
M.Phil in Victorian Literature
St Anne's College, University of Oxford
MA in English Literature
Pembroke College, University of Cambridge
Invited leader of networking session. 'Religion and Secularism' (NAVSA)
University of Wisconsin-Madison
American Studies Graduate Seminar. 'In Safe Hands?: Rereading Longfellow's Evangeline'
University of Cambridge
Benefactor's Day Guest Speaker. 'Robert Browning's Dissenting Forms'
Baylor University
Convenor. 'Stages of Life'
Arts and Humanities Research Council
'Crossing the Bar' Poetry Workshop. 'Transatlanticism and the Forms of Faith'
University of Philadelphia
English Subject Centre Workshop. 'Teaching Victorian Religious Poetry', 'Teaching Victorian Poetry'
English Subject Centre
Faculty Seminar. 'He Sings Alone: Hybrid Forms and the Victorian Working-Class Poet'
Liverpool John Moores University
Faculty Seminar. 'Poetry, poetics and the disordered pulse'
University of Wales
Faculty Seminar. 'The Lesbian and the Gypsy: Figuring Desire Between Women in Sackville-West, Woolf and Trefusis'
University of Sheffield
Graduate and Faculty seminar. 'Form, Faith and Feeling in Nineteenth-Century Poetry and Religion'
University of St Andrews
Graduate Seminar. 'Form and Faith in Victorian Poetry'
University of Cambridge
Graduate Seminar. 'Victorian Poets and Children's Verse'
City University of New York
Graduate/Faculty Seminar. 'Poetry for Play Hours'
Durham University
Guest Speaker. 'Transatlantic Tractarians'
Texas Christian University
Guest speaker. 'Victorian Poetry and Childhood'
University of Washington
Guest Speaker. 'Victorian Poets and the Culture of Children's Verse'
University of Maryland
Invited Speaker. 'The Anglican Liturgy and Victorian Poetry'
Birkbeck University of London
Keynote speaker, 'Rethinking Victorian Sentimentality'. 'Thousands of throbbing hearts': Victorian sentimentality and the language of the heart'
Institute of English Studies
Midlands Interdisciplinary Victorian Studies Seminar. 'Victorian Poetry and the Proof of the Pulses'
Pedagogy Workshop Leader. 'Teaching Victorian Poetry and the Body: Forming Affect', 'Victorian Materialities', NAVSA
University of Victoria
'Romantic Palpitations', 'Romantic Medicine'. 'Romantic Palpitations', 'Romantic Medicine'
Nottingham Trent University
Seminar Leader. 'Teaching Contemporary British Fiction'
Penn State University
Seminar Leader. 'Teaching Contemporary British Fiction'
Penn State University
Tennyson Society Annual Lecture. 'Tennyson Among the Workers
Tennyson Society
'The Victorian Sonnet'. 'Faith, form and the Ecclesiastical Sonnet'
Ghent University
Victorian Graduate Seminar. 'Structured Shade: Victorian Religious Poetry and Ecclesiastical Architecture'
University of Oxford
I am a specialist in Victorian literature and culture, with particular interests in poetry and poetic form, literature and religion, working-class literary cultures, Scottish literature, children's literature, and fan studies and fanfiction. My work increasingly relates to industrial heritage in the long nineteenth century, and its relevance in the present day. My most recent AHRC project, 'Piston, Pen & Press: Literary Cultures in the Industrial Workplace' (2018-22), explored and mapped how industrial workers in Scotland and the North of England engaged with literary cultures (www.pistonpenandpress.org/database).
Piston, Pen & Press: Literary Cultures in the Industrial Workplace from the Factory Acts to the First World War
PI: Professor Kirstie Blair
Funded by: Arts and Humanities Research Council
–
Article
Addressing the Machine: Victorian Working-Class Poetry and Industrial Machinery
Blair K (2023) Addressing the Machine: Victorian Working-Class Poetry and Industrial Machinery. Journal of Victorian Culture, 28 (3), pp. 395-409. https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcac064
Article
Excelsior! Inspirational Verse, the Victorian Working-Class Poet, and the Case of Longfellow
Blair K (2021) Excelsior! Inspirational Verse, the Victorian Working-Class Poet, and the Case of Longfellow. Victorian Poetry, 59 (1), pp. 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1353/VP.2021.0000
Book Chapter
Blair K & Stone M (2020) 'Not death, but Love': The unmaking of sonnets in the night and the making of sonnets from the Portuguese. In: Tyler D (ed.) Poetry in the Making: Creativity and Composition in Victorian Poetic Drafts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 99-122. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198784562.003.0005
Book Chapter
Blair K (2019) The Scottish Nursery Muse: Scottish Poetry and the Children’s Verse Tradition in the Victorian Period. In: Dunnigan S & Lai S (eds.) The Land of Story-Books: Scottish Children’s Literature in the Long Nineteenth Century. Occasional Papers series, 23. Glasgow: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, pp. 84-106.
Authored Book
Working Verse in Victorian Scotland: Poetry, Press, Community
Blair K (2019) Working Verse in Victorian Scotland: Poetry, Press, Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/working-verse-in-victorian-scotland-9780198843795?cc=gb&lang=en&
Book Chapter
Blair K (2019) Dialect, Region, Class, Work. In: Hughes LK (ed.) Cambridge Companion to Victorian Women's Poetry. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 129-144. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316856543.010
Article
Blair K (2018) 'Whose cry is liberty, and fatherland': Kossuth, Garibaldi and European nationalism in Scottish political poetry. Scottish Literary Review, 10 (2), pp. 71-94. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/707797
Commentary
Blair K (2018) Britain. Victorian Literature and Culture, 46 (3-4), pp. 590-594. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1060150318000323
Website Content
The People's William and the People's Poets: William Gladstone and the Midlothian Campaign
Blair K (2018) The People's William and the People's Poets: William Gladstone and the Midlothian Campaign. The People's Voice [Online Essay] 15.02.2018. https://thepeoplesvoice.glasgow.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Blair.pdf
Article
Advertising Poetry, the Working-Class Poet and the Victorian Newspaper Press
Blair K (2018) Advertising Poetry, the Working-Class Poet and the Victorian Newspaper Press. Journal of Victorian Culture, 23 (1), pp. 103-118. https://doi.org/10.1093/jvc/vcx003
Book Chapter
'We may not know, we cannot tell': Religion and Reserve in Victorian Children’s Poetics
Blair K (2017) 'We may not know, we cannot tell': Religion and Reserve in Victorian Children’s Poetics. In: Wakely-Mulroney K & Joy L (eds.) The Aesthetics of Children's Poetry: A Study of Children's Verse in English. Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present. London: Routledge, pp. 127-144. https://www.routledge.com/The-Aesthetics-of-Childrens-Poetry-A-Study-of-Childrens-Verse-in-English/Wakely-Mulroney-Joy/p/book/9781472438317
Book Chapter
The Influence of the Oxford Movement on Poetry and Fiction
Blair K (2017) The Influence of the Oxford Movement on Poetry and Fiction. In: Brown SJ, Nockles P & Pereiro J (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of the Oxford Movement. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 410-416. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-the-oxford-movement-9780199580187?cc=gb&lang=en&#
Book Chapter
The Newspaper Press and the Victorian Working Class Poet
Blair K (2017) The Newspaper Press and the Victorian Working Class Poet. In: Goodridge J & Keegan B (eds.) A History of British Working-Class Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 264-280. http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/literature/english-literature-general-interest/history-british-working-class-literature?format=HB
Edited Book
The Poets of the People's Journal: Newspaper Poetry in Victorian Scotland
Blair K (ed.) (2016) The Poets of the People's Journal: Newspaper Poetry in Victorian Scotland. Glasgow: Association for Scottish Literary Studies. https://booksfromscotland.com/book/poets-of-the-peoples-journal-newspaper-poetry-in-victorian-scotland/
Article
'The drunkard's raggit wean': Broadside culture and the politics of temperance verse
Blair K (2016) 'The drunkard's raggit wean': Broadside culture and the politics of temperance verse [« The Drunkard’s Raggit Wean » : la culture des imprimés placardés et la politique de la poésie de la tempérance]. Cahiers Victoriens and Edouardiens, 2016 (84). https://doi.org/10.4000/cve.2918
Article
Children's literature and theology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
Blair K (2016) Children's literature and theology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Literature and Theology, 30 (2), pp. 125-130. https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frw019
Article
Blair K & Thompson WV (2016) The Mood of the Golden Age: Paganism, Ecotheology and the Wild Woods in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne and Emily Series. Literature and Theology, 30 (2), pp. 131-147. https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frw017
Article
Blair K (2014) "Let the nightingales alone": correspondence columns, the Scottish press, and the making of the working-class poet. Victorian Periodicals Review, 47 (2), pp. 188-207. https://doi.org/10.1353/vpr.2014.0019
Article
Inhuman Rhythms: Working-Class Railway Poets and the Measure of Industry
Blair K (2014) Inhuman Rhythms: Working-Class Railway Poets and the Measure of Industry. Victorian Review, 40 (1), pp. 35-39. https://doi.org/10.1353/vcr.2014.0016
Article
"A Very Poetical Town": Newspaper Poetry and the Working-Class Poet in Victorian Dundee
Blair K (2014) "A Very Poetical Town": Newspaper Poetry and the Working-Class Poet in Victorian Dundee. Victorian Poetry, 52 (1), pp. 89-109. http://wvupressonline.com/journals/victorian_poetry; https://doi.org/10.1353/vp.2014.0009
Edited Book
Class and the Canon: Constructing Labouring-Class Poetry and Poetics, 1750-1900
Blair K & Gorji M (eds.) (2013) Class and the Canon: Constructing Labouring-Class Poetry and Poetics, 1750-1900. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=594821
Book Chapter
Blair K (2013) Introduction. In: Blair K & Gorji M (eds.) Class and the Canon: Constructing Labouring-Class Poetry and Poetics, 1780-1900. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-15. http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=594821
Article
McGonagall, 'Poute' and the Bad Poets of Victorian Dundee
Blair K (2013) McGonagall, 'Poute' and the Bad Poets of Victorian Dundee. The Bottle Imp, (14). http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/ScotLit/ASLS/SWE/TBI/TBIIssue14/Blair.pdf
Book Chapter
Blair K (2013) Church Going. In: Bevis M (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry. Oxford Handbooks of Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 762-782. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199576463.do
Article
Transatlantic tractarians: Victorian poetry and the Church of England in America
Blair K (2013) Transatlantic tractarians: Victorian poetry and the Church of England in America. Victorian Studies, 55 (2), pp. 286-299. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/victorianstudies.55.2.286
Book Chapter
Blair K (2012) The Poet-Preachers. In: Francis K, Gibson W, Ellison R, Morgan-Guy J & Tennant B (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of the British Sermon, 1689-1901. Oxford Handbooks in Religion and Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 565-578. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199583591.do
Authored Book
Form and Faith in Victorian Poetry and Religion
Blair K (2012) Form and Faith in Victorian Poetry and Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199644506.do
Article
Accents Disconsolate: Longfellow’s Evangeline and Antebellum Politics
Blair K (2011) Accents Disconsolate: Longfellow’s Evangeline and Antebellum Politics. Literature in the Early American Republic, 3. http://www.amspressinc.com/lear_vols.html
Book Chapter
Blair K (2011) Poetry and Sensation. In: Gilbert P (ed.) A Companion to Sensation Fiction. Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 107-120. http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405195584.html
Article
'The Steam Arm': Proto-Steampunk Themes in a Victorian Popular Song
Blair K (2010) 'The Steam Arm': Proto-Steampunk Themes in a Victorian Popular Song. Neo-Victorian Studies, 3 (1), pp. 196-207. http://www.neovictorianstudies.com/
Book Chapter
'Men my brothers, men the workers': Tennyson and the Victorian Working-Class Poet
Blair K (2009) 'Men my brothers, men the workers': Tennyson and the Victorian Working-Class Poet. In: Douglas-Fairhurst R & Perry S (eds.) Tennyson Among the Poets: Bicentenary Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 276-95. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199557134.do
Article
"He sings alone": Hybrid forms and the Victorian working-class poet
Blair K (2009) "He sings alone": Hybrid forms and the Victorian working-class poet. Victorian Literature and Culture, 37 (2), pp. 523-541. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1060150309090329
Book Chapter
Blair K (2009) Alfred Tennyson. In: Lemon R, Mason E, Roberts J & Rowland C (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 496-511. http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405131608.html
Article
Teaching Victorian Poetry and the Body: Forming Affect
Blair K (2008) Teaching Victorian Poetry and the Body: Forming Affect. Victorian Review, 34 (2), pp. 9-18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27793664
Book Chapter
Church Architecture, Tractarian Poetry and the Forms of Faith
Blair K (2008) Church Architecture, Tractarian Poetry and the Forms of Faith. In: Morgan V & Williams C (eds.) Shaping Belief: Culture, Politics and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Writing. Liverpool English Texts and Studies, 52. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, pp. 129-148. http://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/search/hfclient.isa?A=BOOKSONIX_LUP_BOOKSHOP&F=form&AS=FIND%7CIB%7C&AS2=%7CAND%7CU1%7CA/F&view=wrapper&AS1=9781846311369
Article
In Memoriam XIII and The Corsair
Blair K (2008) In Memoriam XIII and The Corsair. Notes and Queries, 55 (1), pp. 34-7. https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjm241
Article
Blair K (2007) 'Thousands of throbbing hearts' - Sentimentality and Community in popular Victorian Poetry: Longfellow’s Evangeline and Tennyson’s Enoch Arden. 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, (4). http://www.nineteen.bbk.ac.uk/index.php/19/article/view/455
Book Chapter
Blair K (2007) Keble and The Christian Year. In: Hass A, Jasper D & Jay E (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology. Oxford Handbooks in Religion and Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 607-623. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199271979.do
Article
Swinburne's Spasms: Poems and Ballads and the 'Spasmodic School'
Blair K (2006) Swinburne's Spasms: Poems and Ballads and the 'Spasmodic School'. Yearbook of English Studies, 36 (2), pp. 180-196. https://doi.org/10.2307/20479251
Authored Book
Victorian Poetry and the Culture of the Heart
Blair K (2006) Victorian Poetry and the Culture of the Heart. Oxford English Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon Press. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199273942.do
Article
Breaking Loose: Frederick Faber and the Failure of Reserve
Blair K (2006) Breaking Loose: Frederick Faber and the Failure of Reserve. Victorian Poetry, 44 (1), pp. 25-41. https://doi.org/10.1353/vp.2006.0010
Book Chapter
Contagious Sympathies: George Eliot and Rudolf Virchow
Blair K (2005) Contagious Sympathies: George Eliot and Rudolf Virchow. In: Zwierlein A (ed.) Unmapped Countries: Biological Visions in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture. London: Anthem Press, pp. 145-154. http://www.anthempress.com/unmapped-countries-hb
Edited Book
Blair K (ed.) (2004) John Keble in Context. London: Anthem Press. http://www.anthempress.com/john-keble-in-context-pb
Article
Blair K (2004) The Heart in Victorian Poetry. Literature Compass, 1 (1). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2004.00009.x
Article
Spasmodic affections: Poetry, pathology, and the spasmodic hero
Blair K (2004) Spasmodic affections: Poetry, pathology, and the spasmodic hero. Victorian Poetry, 42 (4), pp. 473-490. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40002747
Article
Gypsies and lesbian desire: Vita Sackville-West, Violet Trefusis, and Virginia Woolf
Blair K (2004) Gypsies and lesbian desire: Vita Sackville-West, Violet Trefusis, and Virginia Woolf. Twentieth Century Literature, 50 (2), pp. 141-166. https://doi.org/10.2307/4149276
Book Chapter
'Proved on the pulses': Heart disease in Victorian culture, 1830-1860
Blair K (2003) 'Proved on the pulses': Heart disease in Victorian culture, 1830-1860. In: Rousseau G, Gill M, Haycock D & Herwig M (eds.) Framing and Imagining Disease in Cultural History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 285-302. http://us.macmillan.com/framingandimaginingdiseaseinculturalhistory/GeorgeRousseau
Article
John Keble and the rhythm of faith
Blair K (2003) John Keble and the rhythm of faith. Essays in Criticism, 53 (2), pp. 129-150. http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?partnerID=yv4JPVwI&eid=2-s2.0-60950613200&md5=887c65954148c0633dda76158e52cfe9; https://doi.org/10.1093/eic/53.2.129
Article
Two unremarked Shakespearian allusions in Mary Barton
Blair K (2002) Two unremarked Shakespearian allusions in Mary Barton. Notes and Queries, 49 (1), pp. 59-61. https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/49.1.59
Article
A Change in the Units: Middlemarch, GH Lewes and Rudolf Virchow
Blair K (2001) A Change in the Units: Middlemarch, GH Lewes and Rudolf Virchow. George Eliot – George Henry Lewes Studies, (40-41), pp. 9-25.
Article
Priest and Nun?: George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, and popular anti-Catholicism
Blair K (2001) Priest and Nun?: George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, and popular anti-Catholicism. George Eliot Review, (32), pp. 45-50.
Article
Touching Hearts: Queen Victoria and the curative powers of 'In Memoriam’
Blair K (2001) Touching Hearts: Queen Victoria and the curative powers of 'In Memoriam’. Tennyson Research Bulletin, 7 (5), pp. 246-255. http://search.proquest.com/pao/docview/1297957632/B939D94FE4E34694PQ/6?accountid=14755