Franziska Kohlt
University of Leeds, School of Philosophy, Religion and the History of Science, Leverhulme Research Fellow
I am a researcher, curator, public speaker and trained communication & media scientist. I am currently Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, researching the history of public languages of science, and their associated forms of publishing in the early 19th century, on the example of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
I have previously been a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology at the University of York where I worked on science-religion narratives, especially conflict based ones, during Covid-19 and in climate discourse, historical and contemporary, together with Tom McLeish, Amanda Rees, and the ECLAS project.
I completed my DPhil at the University of Oxford, under the supervision of Sally Shuttleworth and Sophie Radcliffe. My doctoral thesis explored the emergence of Victorian psychology and fantastic literature as sister phenomena through the work of the author-scientists George MacDonald, Lewis Carroll, Charles Kingsley and H.G. Wells and their literary portrayal of visions experienced in dream, illness and near death. Considering these works in the wider framework of the Victorian history of science, I establish fantastic literature as a primary medium for ‘making visible’ epistemological debates of the nature of consciousness, and the nature of the soul, early ideas of the subconscious and dream theory to evolutionary psychology, thus challenging the perception of Fantasy as an escapist genre.
Besides my academic work, I am active as broadcaster, curator and translator; having recently appeared on BBC Radio 4's "In Our Time" programme, international television and print media. I have co-curated the Royal Entomological Society-funded exhibition "Insects through the Looking Glass" at Oxford's Story Museum, and was consultant for Compton Verney's "Magical Mechanical Museum" exhibition.
I teach, give public talks, and provide educational consultancy in Victorian, Fantastic and Children’s Literature, and have in the past worked as journalist and translator, most recently for MARVEL Comics.
I am the editor of The Lewis Carroll Review and reviews editor of the British Society for Literature and Science.
Supervisors: Jon Topham and Jim Secord
Address: Department of Sociology
University of York
Wentworth College
292 Wentworth Way
Heslington
York
YO10 5NG
I have previously been a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology at the University of York where I worked on science-religion narratives, especially conflict based ones, during Covid-19 and in climate discourse, historical and contemporary, together with Tom McLeish, Amanda Rees, and the ECLAS project.
I completed my DPhil at the University of Oxford, under the supervision of Sally Shuttleworth and Sophie Radcliffe. My doctoral thesis explored the emergence of Victorian psychology and fantastic literature as sister phenomena through the work of the author-scientists George MacDonald, Lewis Carroll, Charles Kingsley and H.G. Wells and their literary portrayal of visions experienced in dream, illness and near death. Considering these works in the wider framework of the Victorian history of science, I establish fantastic literature as a primary medium for ‘making visible’ epistemological debates of the nature of consciousness, and the nature of the soul, early ideas of the subconscious and dream theory to evolutionary psychology, thus challenging the perception of Fantasy as an escapist genre.
Besides my academic work, I am active as broadcaster, curator and translator; having recently appeared on BBC Radio 4's "In Our Time" programme, international television and print media. I have co-curated the Royal Entomological Society-funded exhibition "Insects through the Looking Glass" at Oxford's Story Museum, and was consultant for Compton Verney's "Magical Mechanical Museum" exhibition.
I teach, give public talks, and provide educational consultancy in Victorian, Fantastic and Children’s Literature, and have in the past worked as journalist and translator, most recently for MARVEL Comics.
I am the editor of The Lewis Carroll Review and reviews editor of the British Society for Literature and Science.
Supervisors: Jon Topham and Jim Secord
Address: Department of Sociology
University of York
Wentworth College
292 Wentworth Way
Heslington
York
YO10 5NG
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children’s novels, but by an academic, a mathematician, a man of science, a deacon of the Church of
England, a writer of academic satire. Consequently reflecting developments in Victorian science –
from evolutionary biology to psychiatric medicine – Alice was, likewise, not illustrated by a dedicated
‘children’s book illustrator’, but by one of the most eminent political caricaturists of his age, Sir John
Tenniel - whom Carroll knew and chose for his work at the Punch Magazine.
In the 20th and 21st century Alice remained political, and, like in Tenniel’s days, it is illustrators are
first in line to offer an interpretation of the text to the reader and lift Alice into the current cultural
and temporary context. Thus Alice has transformed into a post-war fashion icon and donned a sari
when exploring the wildlife of post-imperial India, or, most recently challenged class struggles,
poverty and child-abuse in American McGee’s video Game Alice: Madness Returns. However, in
these modern Alice’s it is rarely the author that challenges existing hierarchies, but the illustrator
who is one step ahead in identifying and visualising these tensions.
In this anniversary year, this paper will offer an exploration of social and political issues in 150 years
of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its textual and visual interpretations. On the example of
Alice: Madness Returns fathom how the tensions underlying Carroll’s and especially Tenniel’s Alice
lend themselves to modern interactive approaches to children’s literature. Thus it will engage with
the task modern illustrators face, of both challenging young readers, but also accommodating them
within the text as well as their ever-changing social environment, and thus break new grounds in the
field of children’s literature.
children's classics - but is it really a children's book? Or perhaps much more than that? In an exploration of how the
genre of 'children's literature' emerged in the 19th century, and what Victorians considered appropriate literature
for the young, this talk will seek answers to this question in the kaleidoscopic landscape of Victorian Children's
Literature.
Alice Through the Ages, 15-17 September 2015
Homerton College, Cambridge
These advancements left a profound impression not only on British, but also on Russian authors, such as Ivan Turgenev. During his frequent visits to England, he met and corresponded with the great figures of the literary-scientific milieu – from the versatile authors George Elliot and Charles Dickens, to publicists and scientists, including George Lewes and the mesmerist Elliotson. Closer analysis reveals, that, consequently, his and the works of his literary compatriots, unmistakably reflect contemporary scientific and pseudo-scientific theories, as well as tropes and motifs of the English Gothic, which crystallises in nineteenth century Russian realist, but most clearly in its fantastic fiction.
This paper aims to shed light on the interaction of literature and science, England and Russia. In particular, it will explore under consideration of relevant contemporary psychological and neurological theories, how the speculative potential of alternative states of consciousness is exploited as a narrative device, facilitating an outward and inward gaze at what is hidden from plain sight, allowing the authors to extend or undermine the principles of realist fiction. Through close textual analysis of such visions, ranging from Turgenev's prophetic “Dream”, the mesmeric English vampire in “Phantoms”, or the philosophic spectral self-reflections of Ivan Karamazov to further examples from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment as well as Turgenev's Fantastic Tales, whose protagonists all wander on the brink of human consciousness, this interdisciplinary paper aims to reveal the 'English Connection' of the works of two of Russia's most famous authors."""
How then does the real, manifest space, produced by the Victorian age and its ideas, correspond with those imaginary, parallel universes of its fantastic children's literature, often journeyed in liminal states of consciousness, such as dream or even near-death, presented through the eyes of a child-protagonist? In an age of rapid change, anxiety and search of identity for the human race in creation, the dynamic relationship of reality and the individual produces these imaginary
wonderlands: the journey becomes a quest for meaning, a re-enactment of the conflicts of the age, a literary stress reaction.
This paper offers an exploration of such wonderland-travels in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Kingsley's The Water-Babies and MacDonald's “The Golden Key”. It will focus on the psychological creation of space, the role of the traveller and explore structural and symbolic levels of meaning of the journey. It finally aims to show, how these timeless, and yet distinctly Victorian tales affected and influenced children's literature in the long term."
literary responses in Fin de Siécle Britain, an anxious society, left overwhelmed by an age of scientific quantum leaps.
Especially entangled in speculations over possible other dimensions became the young biology student Herbert George Wells, who should later be called “The Father of Science
Fiction”. In the 20 years following Hinton's article Wells produced not only The Time Machine, which dominates our literary understanding of the temporal fourth dimension to
the day, but also a number of short stories, that frequently escape the modern reader's attention.
In a unique way, Wells sends his protagonists on pilgrimages through scientific borderland: through magic crystals, death, dream and trance they access otherworlds, for which no
religious or scientific explanation seems to be adequate. They transcend the boundaries of the graspable world, life and reality. They are confronted with the past and the future, Heaven and Hell, they become stuck between the worlds, and often return to our reality changed: injured, broken, unable to cope with what they have seen.
Wells's narrative imitates actual alternative mental states, such as near death experience, coma, hypgnagogic phenomena or dream, and therefore locates the fourth dimension within and outside the self at the same time, and thus explores in a ultitude of ways possible answers to Hinton's question. By choosing the narrative form of the Short Story, he places the reader in the position to make a final statement, can this be science or is it merely fiction?"
children’s novels, but by an academic, a mathematician, a man of science, a deacon of the Church of
England, a writer of academic satire. Consequently reflecting developments in Victorian science –
from evolutionary biology to psychiatric medicine – Alice was, likewise, not illustrated by a dedicated
‘children’s book illustrator’, but by one of the most eminent political caricaturists of his age, Sir John
Tenniel - whom Carroll knew and chose for his work at the Punch Magazine.
In the 20th and 21st century Alice remained political, and, like in Tenniel’s days, it is illustrators are
first in line to offer an interpretation of the text to the reader and lift Alice into the current cultural
and temporary context. Thus Alice has transformed into a post-war fashion icon and donned a sari
when exploring the wildlife of post-imperial India, or, most recently challenged class struggles,
poverty and child-abuse in American McGee’s video Game Alice: Madness Returns. However, in
these modern Alice’s it is rarely the author that challenges existing hierarchies, but the illustrator
who is one step ahead in identifying and visualising these tensions.
In this anniversary year, this paper will offer an exploration of social and political issues in 150 years
of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its textual and visual interpretations. On the example of
Alice: Madness Returns fathom how the tensions underlying Carroll’s and especially Tenniel’s Alice
lend themselves to modern interactive approaches to children’s literature. Thus it will engage with
the task modern illustrators face, of both challenging young readers, but also accommodating them
within the text as well as their ever-changing social environment, and thus break new grounds in the
field of children’s literature.
children's classics - but is it really a children's book? Or perhaps much more than that? In an exploration of how the
genre of 'children's literature' emerged in the 19th century, and what Victorians considered appropriate literature
for the young, this talk will seek answers to this question in the kaleidoscopic landscape of Victorian Children's
Literature.
Alice Through the Ages, 15-17 September 2015
Homerton College, Cambridge
These advancements left a profound impression not only on British, but also on Russian authors, such as Ivan Turgenev. During his frequent visits to England, he met and corresponded with the great figures of the literary-scientific milieu – from the versatile authors George Elliot and Charles Dickens, to publicists and scientists, including George Lewes and the mesmerist Elliotson. Closer analysis reveals, that, consequently, his and the works of his literary compatriots, unmistakably reflect contemporary scientific and pseudo-scientific theories, as well as tropes and motifs of the English Gothic, which crystallises in nineteenth century Russian realist, but most clearly in its fantastic fiction.
This paper aims to shed light on the interaction of literature and science, England and Russia. In particular, it will explore under consideration of relevant contemporary psychological and neurological theories, how the speculative potential of alternative states of consciousness is exploited as a narrative device, facilitating an outward and inward gaze at what is hidden from plain sight, allowing the authors to extend or undermine the principles of realist fiction. Through close textual analysis of such visions, ranging from Turgenev's prophetic “Dream”, the mesmeric English vampire in “Phantoms”, or the philosophic spectral self-reflections of Ivan Karamazov to further examples from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment as well as Turgenev's Fantastic Tales, whose protagonists all wander on the brink of human consciousness, this interdisciplinary paper aims to reveal the 'English Connection' of the works of two of Russia's most famous authors."""
How then does the real, manifest space, produced by the Victorian age and its ideas, correspond with those imaginary, parallel universes of its fantastic children's literature, often journeyed in liminal states of consciousness, such as dream or even near-death, presented through the eyes of a child-protagonist? In an age of rapid change, anxiety and search of identity for the human race in creation, the dynamic relationship of reality and the individual produces these imaginary
wonderlands: the journey becomes a quest for meaning, a re-enactment of the conflicts of the age, a literary stress reaction.
This paper offers an exploration of such wonderland-travels in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Kingsley's The Water-Babies and MacDonald's “The Golden Key”. It will focus on the psychological creation of space, the role of the traveller and explore structural and symbolic levels of meaning of the journey. It finally aims to show, how these timeless, and yet distinctly Victorian tales affected and influenced children's literature in the long term."
literary responses in Fin de Siécle Britain, an anxious society, left overwhelmed by an age of scientific quantum leaps.
Especially entangled in speculations over possible other dimensions became the young biology student Herbert George Wells, who should later be called “The Father of Science
Fiction”. In the 20 years following Hinton's article Wells produced not only The Time Machine, which dominates our literary understanding of the temporal fourth dimension to
the day, but also a number of short stories, that frequently escape the modern reader's attention.
In a unique way, Wells sends his protagonists on pilgrimages through scientific borderland: through magic crystals, death, dream and trance they access otherworlds, for which no
religious or scientific explanation seems to be adequate. They transcend the boundaries of the graspable world, life and reality. They are confronted with the past and the future, Heaven and Hell, they become stuck between the worlds, and often return to our reality changed: injured, broken, unable to cope with what they have seen.
Wells's narrative imitates actual alternative mental states, such as near death experience, coma, hypgnagogic phenomena or dream, and therefore locates the fourth dimension within and outside the self at the same time, and thus explores in a ultitude of ways possible answers to Hinton's question. By choosing the narrative form of the Short Story, he places the reader in the position to make a final statement, can this be science or is it merely fiction?"
This essay will therefore investigate the aspect of science and humour in Carroll’s writings focusing, in particular, on his poetry and late fiction. It will explore how Carroll responds, with the humour that has made Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland a classic. From kaleidoscopic representations of natural and medical sciences, mathematics and what the author considered ‘pseudo-Sciences’, it will trace the evolution of his literary nonsense from the much-neglected perspective of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson the scientist.
psychiatric origins of the ‘Mad Tea-Party’ and characters such as the Hatter in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in the organisation and methods of mid-Victorian Pauper Lunatic
Asylums and their treatment of impoverished workers. Likewise, the illustrations of Carroll’s works stood in dialogue with popular imagery of insanity as well as ideas of physiognomy and their diagnostic application in asylum photography by Hugh Welch Diamond. This piece
will argue that the framework of Victorian psychiatry provided Carroll with imagery he utilises to satirise aspects of Victorian moral values. It thus aims to highlight the benefits of
re-framing the works of Lewis Carroll beyond the genre children’s literature, and considering them as part of the wider Victorian discourse of the sciences of the mind.
- Editor's Welcome (Franziska Kohlt) Alice and Satire
Reviews
- "Alice's Adventures in Punch", Andy Malcolm & George Walker (Dayna Nuhn)
- "Alice in Brexitland", Lucien Young (Kiera Vaclavik)
- "Theresa Maybe in Brexitland", Madeleina Kay (Franziska Kohlt)
"Five Questions"
- Five Questions for Lucien Young
- Five Questions for Madeleina Kay
Other Reviews:
- "Victorian Giants: The Art of Photography" (Exhibition Catalogue), Phillip Prodger & HRH the Duchess of Cambridge (James Lythgoe)
- "Mad about the Hatter", Dakota Chase (Geoffrey Budworth)
- "It's Always Tea Time" (Exhibition Catalogue), Vappu Thurlow (Lindsay Fulcher)
- "The Curious Case of Mary Ann", Jenn Thorson (Robert Stek)
- "A History of Children's Books in 100 Books", Roderick Cave and Sara Ayad (Selwyn Goodacre)