From April 16th to 19th, Dr. Emily Bell, Lecturer in the School of English at the University of Leeds, UK, visited the School of Foreign Languages upon invitation. She conducted a series of academic events themed “Dickens and 19th-Century British Literature,” organized and chaired by Professor Chen Houliang of the Institute of Foreign Languages and Literature.
On the evening of April 16th, Dr. Bell delivered an academic lecture entitled “Charles Dickens’s Poems and Short Stories.” Drawing on the latest research in Dickens’s works, Emily focused on his lesser-studied poems and short stories, revealing a lesser-known facet of Dickens as a male writer. The first part of the lecture traced Dickens’s poetic writing started in the 1830s. The second part analyzed his short stories, employing the concept of the “shadow” to identify thematic concerns foreshadowing his later novels.
The second lecture, held on the evening of April 17, was themed “Digital Dickens.” Dr. Bell focused on digital technologies in Dickens studies, sharing a series of online tools and websites designed to advance Dickens research and demonstrating their operations. She then introduced common text analysis methods in digital humanities, such as word frequency analysis, sentiment analysis, and topic modeling. Finally, she guided faculty and students present to reflect on the significance and impact of digital humanities on Dickens studies and literary research.
After both lectures, Professor Chen Houliang provided summary comments. Faculty and students posed questions actively, to which Dr. Bell patiently responded and offered detailed explanations.
The academic workshop on the morning of April 18th focused on “Research in 19th-Century British Literature.” Professor Chen Houliang and doctoral students Ning Yiyang and Xu Qianwen, along with master’s student Lu Sijie, presented their latest research findings and engaged in in-depth discussions with Dr. Bell. Professor Chen analyzed the Victorian morality through bee analogies in Dickens’s Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend. Xu Qianwen offered an innovative interpretation of bodily representations in Dickens’s works using digital humanities methods. Ning Yiyang analyzed the implicit Victorian stereotypes of Chinese culinary culture and the underlying racist ideology in Thackeray’s Pendennis. Lu Sijie’s presentation demonstrated how Dickens’s Christmas stories portrayed the conspicuous consumption habits of the middle class. The four presentations, closely aligned with current hotspots in Dickens studies, featured novel perspectives and thorough arguments. They were highly praised by Dr. Bell and proved deeply inspiring for all attendees.
(Correspondent: Cui Yuanyuan)
Guest Profile: Dr. Emily Bell is a digital humanist and scholar of nineteenth-century literature and media history, with research interests in Charles Dickens, periodicals, and scholarly editing. She is co-author of the Curran Index, creator of Dickens Search, Consultant Editor for the Dickens Letters Project and Honorary Editor of The Dickensian. She has published on Dickens and on digitised newspaper collections. She is a Fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute, and has a strong record of impact work in collaboration with schools, museums and media projects, including Horrible Histories and You’re Dead to Me (BBC).
