Dr Jan-Melissa Schramm, Trinity Hall
Biographical Information:
I studied Arts/ Law at the Australian National University and the University of Tasmania before working as a lawyer in private practice. I did my PhD here in Cambridge, on changing conceptions of evidence and testimony in Victorian literature.
Research Interests:
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction, with a particular interest in authors whose work is marked by an intense engagement with law and the rhetoric of empiricism (Fielding, Godwin, Dickens, Eliot); literature and theology (particularly Victorian ideas of atonement, inspiration, reconciliation, and redemption, Chartist readings of the Bible, and the cultural work performed by Victorian fictional theodicies); Victorian legal history and the rise of the professions (particularly in relation to the law of evidence and professional ethics); Victorian ideas of 'goodness' and 'virtue'. In 2012-3, I am on Leverhulme Research leave completing a monograph provisionally entitled 'Democracy, Censorship, and Victorian Sacred Drama', which looks at the nineteenth-century recovery of the medieval mystery plays and the wider struggle between state censorship and the urge to stage religious drama in England post-Reformation. Longer term projects will focus on the representation of trade unions and collective responsibility in nineteenth-century narrative.
Areas of Graduate Supervision:
I contribute to teaching for the post-1830 PhD and for the MPhil on Modern Literature. I regularly supervise graduate work on fiction of the long nineteenth century.
Selected Publications
Books:
Jan-Melissa Schramm, Atonement and Self-Sacrifice in Nineteenth-Century Narrative (Cambridge University Press, 2012), xii + 289pp.
Jan-Melissa Schramm, Testimony and Advocacy in Victorian Law, Literature, and Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2000), xiv + 244 pp.
Edited Volumes:
Jan-Melissa Schramm, Yota Batsaki, and Subha Mukherji (eds.), Fictions of Knowledge: Fact, Evidence, Doubt (Macmillan, 2011).
Articles and Book Chapters:
Jan-Melissa Schramm, 'The Victorian Novel and the Law', in Lisa Rodensky (ed.), The Oxford Handbook to the Victorian Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 507-528.
Jan-Melissa Schramm, 'George Eliot and the Law', in Amanda Anderson and Harry Shaw (eds.), A Companion to George Eliot (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), pp. 309-322.
Jan-Melissa Schramm, 'On Goodness and Genre: Talking about Virtue in Law and Literature', in Fiona Smith and Michael Freeman (eds.), Law and Language (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 151-163.
Jan-Melissa Schramm, 'Dickens and the National Interest: On the Representation of Parties in Bleak House', Law and the Humanities (2012), vol. 6: 2, 219-244.
Jan-Melissa Schramm, "Towards a Poetics of (Wrongful) Accusation: Innocence and Working-Class Voice in mid-Victorian Fiction", in Batsaki, Mukherji, and Schramm (eds.), Fictions of Knowledge, pp. 193-212.
Jan-Melissa Schramm, "The Law" in Charles Dickens in Context, ed. Sally Ledger and Holly Furneaux (Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 310-17.
Jan-Melissa Schramm, "Institutional Processes: Witnessing", The Cambridge Companion to Law and the Humanities, ed. Austin Sarat et al, (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 178-195.
Jan-Melissa Schramm, "Dickens and the Law" in The Companion to Charles Dickens, ed. David Paroissien, (Blackwells, 2008), pp. 277-293.
Jan-Melissa Schramm, "'The Anatomy of a Barrister's Tongue': Rhetoric, Satire, and the Victorian Bar in England", Victorian Literature and Culture, vol.32.2, (2004), 285-303
Jan-Melissa Schramm, "Vicarious Villainy and the Burden of Narrative Guilt", The Devil Himself: Villainy in Detective Fiction and Film, ed. Stacey Gillis and Philippa Gates, (Greenwood Press, 2002), pp. 11-23.
Jan-Melissa Schramm, "Is Literature more Ethical than Law? James Fitzjames Stephen and Literary Responses to the Advent of Full Legal Representation for Felons" in Law and Literature, ed. Michael Freeman and Andrew Lewis, (Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 417-35.