Fabia Buescher, Selwyn

Degree: PhD
Course: English
Supervisor: Prof Jan Schramm
Dissertation Title: The Ideology of Sacrifice in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Care Community

Biographical Information

I completed a BA in English literature and linguistics at the University of Zurich and an MPhil in English literature at Cambridge. In my PhD thesis I work at the intersection of the feminist philosophy of care ethics, critical disability studies, literary bioethics and sacrifice studies to examine the fraught and ambiguous concept of (self-)sacrifice in mid-Victorian care communities. I am particularly interested in how Victorian texts negotiate the tension between (self-)sacrifice and self-interest and the kind of challenge this came to pose to the nineteenth-century imagination of care and ethics. Authors I work on include Charlotte Yonge, Elizabeth Gaskell, Harriet Martineau, Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole.

Email: fb586@cam.ac.uk

 

Research Interests

My research interests more broadly include: medical humanities, care ethics, feminism, disability studies, affect studies, ecocriticism.

 

Selected Publications

 

Conference presentations:

  • “‘Wanted, a companion for a lady’: Caregiving and Emotional Work in Wilkie Collins’ Poor Miss Finch”, Labour in the Long Nineteenth Century Conference, University of Southampton, January 2024.
  • “Disability Friendship in Dinah Mulock Craik’s John Halifax, Gentleman”, Victorian Recollections, Revolutions and Realities Conference, Carroll University, May 2023