“The Battle Without Killing: Eliza Haywood and the Politics of Attempted Rape” - December 7th, 2:30-3:30, Wimberly 113

A Presentation of the English Department's William J. and Yvonne Hyde Colloquium Series. 

Dr. Kate Parker, English Department faculty member, will continue the English Department’s 2012-2013 William J. and Yvonne Hyde Colloquium Series with a presentation entitled “The Battle Without Killing: Eliza Haywood and the Politics of Attempted Rape.”  This presentation brings eighteenth-century poetry into conversation with the burgeoning domestic novel through a case study of Haywood’s The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751) and its mock-heroic depictions of attempted rape.  Dr. Parker contends that, through Haywood’s parodic and often disturbingly comic representations of sexual violence, she both instantiates and resists a mock-heroic model of rape (elsewhere exemplified by poems like Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock) that trivializes both the female experience of desire and the social dynamics of courtship in eighteenth-century fiction. The presentation runs from 2:30-3:30 p.m. on Friday, December7^th, in 113 Wimberly Hall. The event is free and open to the public. To arrange for disability accommodations, contact english@uwlax.edu or call 785-8295.