The Daily Bulletin Archive

By Tony Astran

Mark Fulk, associate professor of English, took a spring 2008 sabbatical to focus on Charlotte Turner Smith and Romantic poetry. And his wife didn’t mind.

Fulk, a scholar of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British literature, spent the better part of his first-ever sabbatical reading works by Smith, a British poet and novelist. Her works have been recently rediscovered, Fulk said, and contain powerful subject matter that is representative of the Romantic period.

Fulk first learned about Smith from his wife during graduate school. He had enjoyed studying the Romantic period since his teenage years and later developed a particular interest in women’s, minority, and gender studies. Smith—whose works often focus on themes of struggle and inequality—filled the bill for all of Fulk’s interests.

“In the midst of the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, Smith questioned how to raise children to be socially and politically progressive and radical during dark times,” Fulk said. “The sabbatical provided me an opportunity to read and process her works. It has also helped me reflect on Romanticism as a way of thinking, rather than just an era.” These reflections led to published articles in Women’s Writing and in a new bookabout the Romantic period.

Fulk is finalizing a book about Romantic education and politics, and made significant progress during the sabbatical. Smith’s materials will play a major role in the book, which will be his second. They will also play a role in a new course he is teaching this semester, called Romantic Retreats (ENG 615).

Just as Smith was passionately critical of the “idealized world” in her works, Fulk said, he gained more energy for classroom teaching. “My lectures feel richer because of the intellectual reflection I gained during the sabbatical,” he said, “but the experience also reminded me how important scholarship is as part of teaching.”

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Andrew Nicholls
Wendy Paterson
M. Stephen Pendleton
Stephen Phelps
John Song
Carol Townsend
Jonathan Thornton
Mark Warford
Michael Zborowski