Mar-Aug 2010 Postdoctoral Fellow, The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh
2009-2010 Senior Fellow, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) (declined)
2002-2009 PhD in English, UCSB
MA Exam Fields: Renaissance Literature; Restoration & Eighteenth-Century Literature; British Romantic & Victorian Literature
2001-2002 MSc by Research in English Literature (with Distinction), University of Edinburgh
Thesis: “Change and the City: Social, Cultural, and Economic Spaces, and the Building of Edinburgh’s First New Town, 1752-1802,” with Susan Manning (chair) and Robert Irvine
1997-2001 MA (Hons) in English Literature (with First Class Honors), University of Edinburgh
Junior year (1999–2000) spent at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Honors Thesis: “‘Carved in Fine Flowers and Birds All over Her Body’: Colonial/Consumer Culture and the Portraiture of Female Figures, 1660-1760,” with Colin Nicholson
Email: soren_hammerschmidt@umail.ucsb.edu
Areas of Interest
- Eighteenth-century British literature
- Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scottish literature
- Life writing
- Epistolarity and epistolary writing
- History of Reading and History of the Book
- Eighteenth-century poetry and poetics
Current Projects and Publications
Dissertation title: “Reading Character: Familiar Correspondence, Social Identity, and Print, c.1735-1820”
Dissertation committee: Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook and William B. Warner (co-chairs), Julie Carlson.
Publications
"Barbauld's Richardson; or The Canonization of Private Character" (under submission)
“Character, Cultural Agency, and Abolition: Ignatius Sancho’s Published Letters.” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 31.2 (June 2008): 259-73.
“Ramsay, Fergusson, Thomson, Davidson, and Urban Poetry.” The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature, Vol. Two: Enlightenment, Britain and Empire (1707-1918). Period ed. Susan Manning. Gen. ed. Ian Brown. Co-ed. Thomas Owen Clancy and Murray Pittock. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2006. 80-89.
Works in Progress
“Receiving Lady Mary: Letters, Lives, Literature” (article)
“Social Authorship, Print, and Privacy in the Letters of Anne MacVicar Grant” (article)
Selected Awards and Honors
Donald Pearce Dissertation Fellowship, English Department, UCSB, 2009
TA Instructional Improvement Grant, Academic Senate, UCSB, 2009
Travel Grant, Consortium for Literature, Theory and Culture, UCSB, 2008
Graduate Student Travel Grant, Academic Senate, UCSB, 2007
Graduate Research Mentorship Program Fellowship, UCSB, 2006-7
Humanities/Social Sciences Research Grant, UCSB, 2007
ASECS-Clark Fellowship, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles, CA, 2005
English Department Fellowship, UCSB, 2002-3
Yvonne Gartrell Memorial Scholarship, English Department, UCSB, 2002
Selected Presentations
2009 “Social Networks and Group Biography in Published Correspondence of the Long Eighteenth Century,” 125th Annual Meeting of the Modern Language Association (scheduled for Dec 27-30; Philadelphia, PA)
2009 “The Character(s) of a Novelist; or, Barbauld’s Richardson,” 38th Annual Meeting of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Jan 6-8; Oxford)
2008 “Mothers and Reformers: Revising Female Character in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written during a Short Residence,” UCLA Eighteenth-Century/Romantic Working Group (June 6; Los Angeles, CA)
2008 “Editing Letters, Editing Character: Anna Barbauld’s Correspondence of Samuel Richardson,” 39th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Mar 27-30; Portland, OR)
2007 “A Life in Transit: Travel, Maternity, and the Progress of Civilization in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written during a Short Residence,” International Conference on Romanticism 2007: Romantic Objects (October 18-21; Baltimore, MD)
2007 “Characters, Cultural Agency, and Abolition: Ignatius Sancho’s Published Letters,” 36th Annual Meeting of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Jan 3-5; Oxford)
2005 “‘An act of necessity’: Pope, Curll, and the Publication of Private Letters,” 36th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Mar 31-Apr 3; Las Vegas, NV)
2003 “How Clothing ‘Makes mony kail-worms butter-flies’: Social Identity and Consumer Culture in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh,” 11th Annual Conference of the Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies (Oct 23-26; Newport Beach, CA)
2003 “Streetwalkers, Homemakers, and the Female Poet: Isabella Whitney’s Negotiations of Urban, Literary and Domestic Spaces in A Sweet Nosegay,” Renaissance Conference of Southern California (May 16-17; Huntington Library, San Marino, CA)
Academic Service
2009 Conceived and chaired panel, “Writing Lives and Judging Character: The Ethics of a Genre,” 38th Annual Meeting of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Jan 6-8; Oxford)
2009 Chaired panel, “Richardson #2,” 38th Annual Meeting of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Jan 6-8; Oxford)
2007-8 Initiated and convened UCSB Early Modern Studies Work-in-Progress Series (continues in 2008-9 as part of the Early Modern Center Colloquium)
2008 Convened Early Modern Center’s 7th Annual Undergraduate Conference, “Science & Technology, 1500-1800” (May 30; UCSB)
2008 Conceived and chaired panel, “The ‘Character’ of the Long Eighteenth Century,” 39th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Mar 27-30; Portland, OR)
2007-8 Conference committee chair, 8th Annual Winter Conference of the Early Modern Center, “Science and Technology, 1500-1800” (Mar 14; UCSB)
2007-8 Convened UCSB Eighteenth Century Reading Group
2007 Convened Early Modern Center’s Fall Colloquium, “Slavery and Abolition” (invited speakers: Maureen Quilligan and Lynn Festa) (Nov 2; UCSB)
2004-5 Conference committee member, 5th Annual Winter Conference of the Early Modern Center, “Memory: 1500-1800” (Feb 25; UCSB)
2004 Respondent, Early Modern Center’s Fall Colloquium, “Memory: 1500-1800” (invited speakers: Peter Stallybrass and Jayne Lewis) (Nov 5; UCSB)
Professional Affiliations
Modern Language Association
American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies
Eighteenth Century Scottish Studies Society
Languages
German (native speaker)
English
Dutch
French
Teaching Experience
- Instructor (with full course responsibilities), UC Santa Barbara:
- Writing 2: Introduction to Academic Writing (Winter 2006)
- Writing 2: Introduction to Academic Writing (Fall 2005)
- English 103B: British Literature from 1789 to 1900 (Summer 2005)
- English 10: Introduction to Literary Studies – Text and the City: British Urban Literature, 1500-1900 (Spring 2005)
- English 10: Introduction to Literary Studies – Memory: 1500-1800 (Winter 2005)
- English 101: English Literature from the Medieval Period to 1650 (Summer 2004)
- Teaching Assistant, UC Santa Barbara:
- English 102: Early Modern British and American Literature, 1650-1789 (Fall 2004)
- English 150: Anglo-Irish Literature (Spring 2004)
- English 102: Early Modern British and American Literature, 1650-1789 (Winter 2004)
- English 101: English Literature from the Medieval Period to 1650 (Fall 2003)