Dr Mathelinda Nabugodi, Faculty of English

mn539@cam.ac.uk

 

Biographical Information

Mathelinda Nabugodi is a Research Associate in the Literary and Artistic Archive at the Fitzwilliam Museum, where she is primarily responsible for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century materials, including autograph letters, literary drafts, musical manuscripts and rare books. 

Research Interests

Mathelinda's research interests are in the intersection between British Romanticism and the Black Atlantic, examining how racial slavery impacted literary culture in the period 1780-1840. Her current book project, The Trembling Hand: Reflections of a Black Woman in the Romantic Archive, explores objects that once belonged to the great Romantic poets: Wordsworth’s teacup, Byron’s carnival mask, Shelley’s yellow kidskin glove and the like. These archival relics reveal how the poets’ lives were embedded in a global economy fuelled by slavery and exploitation. A work-in-progress sample won the 2021 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writer’s Award and a 2022 Whiting Creative Non-Fiction Grant and is due to be published in 2024.