Dr Sasha Handley, M.A., Ph.D. (Warwick)
Teaching Fellow in Early Modern European History
Contact Details
Email: Sasha.Handley@manchester.ac.uk
Tel: 0161 275 3084
Address: Humanities Lime Grove, Room S.2.22, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL
Profile
My research encompasses aspects of religious and cultural life in early modern England , focusing particularly on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Specific interests include confessional identities and belief, ideas of the supernatural, print cultures and the social history of death.
After completing my doctorate at the University of Warwick in 2005, I held a Scouloudi Fellowship from the Institute of Historical Research before going on to work as a Research Assistant at the Centre for the History of Medicine (Warwick). In September 2006 I joined the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at Manchester .
Current and Future Research
At present I am completing a monograph exploring the significance of ghost beliefs and ghost stories in late seventeenth and eighteenth-century England . This interdisciplinary research examines the ways in which preternatural beliefs shaped the imaginative and material worlds of English society between 1660 and 1800 and it represents the first in-depth study of such ideas in the age of reason. Visions of an Unseen World: Ghost Beliefs and Ghost Stories in Eighteenth-Century England (Pickering & Chatto) will be published as part of a new series ( Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World ) in 2007.
My next research project comprises a history of sleep in early modern England . This work will survey important changes in both the practice and perception of the sleep-act, bringing together medical, material and psychological narratives.
Publications
The forthcoming book detailed above ( Visions of an Unseen World ) will be published with Pickering & Chatto in 2007. Also forthcoming is 'Ghosts, Gossip & Gender in Eighteenth-Century Canterbury', in Ghosts, Gender and History (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007). Already in print is 'Reclaiming Ghosts in 1690s England ', in J. Gregory and K. Cooper (eds), Signs, Wonders, Miracles: Representations of Divine Power in the Life of the Church (Boydell & Brewer, 2005).
Teaching
I teach a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in early modern European political, social and cultural history, specialising in religious cultures of early modern England.