Dr Nicoletta Asciuto

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Department of English Studies, Durham University

Biography

Nicoletta is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She has recently completed her Ph.D. in English Literature with a thesis on T. S. Eliot’s use of light and dark imagery in his poetry and drama at the University of Durham. She also holds an MPhil in Comparative Literature from Trinity College Dublin and a BA in Modern Languages and Literatures from Università Cattolica, Milan. During her Ph.D., Nicoletta has presented her research at many international conferences and also co-convened three series of seminars for the English Department at Durham University. She is also an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University in the summer of 2014.

Her project at IASH originates from her Ph.D. thesis and will look at the representation of lighting technologies in Scottish poetry 1880-1925. Her research interests mainly revolve around nineteenth-century and twentieth-century poetry, and include Modernism, Comparative Literature, issues of multilingualism/translation in literature, and history of technology.

Project

Farewell, “Gas Stars”: Nostalgia and Excitement in the Transition to Electric Light in Scottish Poetry, 1880-1925

This project will look at the representation of lighting technologies in Scottish poetry over years 1890-1925 and how the transition from gas to electric light changes the perception of Edinburgh city in its citizens, both pining for their lost gas-lit city and facing the reality of a novel, electrified Edinburgh.