Dr Graham Williams
School of English
Senior Lecturer in the History of English
+44 114 222 8460
Full contact details
School of English
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
91Ö±²¥
S3 7RA
- Profile
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Originally from the climes of Upstate New York, 91Ö±²¥ has been home since joining the School of English as Lecturer in the History of English in 2012. Prior to coming to England, I completed my PhD under Professor Jeremy J. Smith and Dr. Alison Wiggins at University of Glasgow.
- Research interests
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Broadly speaking, I work on medieval and early modern Englishes, but I am also interested in Anglo-Norman, Scots, Old Norse and Latin, and how these languages have impacted on the history of English language and literature. More particularly, my perspective tends to be of a pragmatic or stylistic bent, and most recently I have been exploring how these areas interact with the history of emotions. I maintain an especial interest in historical letters, but my research deals with texts of all types, from Old English homilies to late medieval verse.
I also have strong research interests in manuscript studies, paleography, digital editing and corpora - in particular, the implications these perspectives have for the historical study of English.
- Publications
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Books
- . Palgrave Macmillan UK.
- . John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Edited books
- Cultures of Compunction in the Medieval World. Bloomsbury.
Journal articles
- . Multilingua, 39(1), 1-9.
- . Multilingua, 39(1), 11-31.
- . Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 18(2), 175-194.
- . Huntington Library Quarterly, 79(3), 387-409.
- Written like a 'Gwd' Scotswoman: Margaret Tudor's Use of Scots'. Scottish Language, 35.
- . Language, 90(4), 961-963.
- . The Review of English Studies, 65(271), 596-618.
- . English Studies, 93(7), 809-832.
- 'Searching for verbal irony in historical corpora (?): a pilot study of mock and scorn in the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse'. Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English, Proceedings of the Helsinki Corpus Festival Pre-conference Event.
- , 169-193.
Chapters
- Language In Brown P (Ed.), A New Companion to Chaucer Wiley-Blackwell
- "yr Scribe Can proove no nessecarye Consiquence for you"?: The Social and Linguistic Implications of Joan Thynne's Using a Scribe in Letters to Her Son, 1607-1610" In Hardman P & Lawrence-Mathers A (Ed.), Women and Writing, C.1340-c.1650: The Domestication of Prin Culture (pp. 131-145). Boydell and Brewer
- Lo! Exclamative Punctuation in Middle English Manuscripts In Kopacyzk J (Ed.), Philology Reimagined: English in Transmission
- Pragmatics of Punctuation in the Paston Letters In Faulkner M & Lennard J (Ed.), A History of Punctuation in English Literature
Website content
- Bess of Hardwick's Letters: The Complete Correspondence.
- . Palgrave Macmillan UK.
- Research group
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I would be happy to supervise students with an interest in any area of my research expertise.
- Teaching activities
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I convene and/or contribute teaching to the following modules:
- ELL114 - History of English (convener)
- ELL118 - Early Englishes
- LIT108 - Studying Poetry
- ELL236 - Introduction to Middle English (convener)
- ELL360 - Historical Pragmatics (convener)
- ELL364 - Constructed Languages
I also teach historical linguistics options on the MA in English Language and Linguistics
- Professional activities and memberships
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I am strongly committed to sharing experience and expertise with the wider public and have featured as a speaker on BBC Radio Scotland, and worked with National Trust volunteers at Hardwick Hall as part of my role in the AHRC Letters of Bess of Hardwick Project. I have also spoken about areas of my research at public events such as 91Ö±²¥'s annual Festival of the Mind.