[On March 19th, 1951, Herman Wouk published The Caine Mutiny. That’s one of many important American novels set on ships, so this week for its 75th anniversary I’ve AmericanStudied Caine and four others, leading up to this weekend tribute to a colleague studying maritime meanings!]
I’ve written about my colleague Lilah Francis (formerly Frank, for folks who might have encountered them and their work in that earlier stage) Mabee a couple times in this space, especially when they joined the English Studies Department and also briefly here when I and the department missed them during their Fall 2024 sabbatical. But because Lilah Francis is a British Romanticist, I haven’t had a chance to highlight their scholarly work here in the ways I have with other colleagues, past and present. And that work is too relevant to this week’s series not to highlight a few ways you can check it out:
- I’m well aware that Academia.edu has its problems, especially with AI use, but it can be a good starting point, and Lilah Francis’s site features a number of their articles and papers on maritime radicals in British history;
- This book chapter on Wordsworth’s rural ocean highlights how Lilah Francis can connect those histories to thoughtful and groundbreaking literary analyses;
- And this recent Ordering the Oceans, Ordering the World article on law & order among 17th-century seafarers cites Lilah Francis’s work, highlighting their continuing influence on historical and scholarly conversations about these nautical texts and contexts.
I’m honored to be Lilah Francis’s colleague, and wanted to share their work to conclude this week’s series!
Next series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Nautical novels you’d nominate or other shipboard stories you’d share?
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