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Editor’ s Note
Welcome to Volume 9, Issue 2 of Under Construction. This is a special edition, which explores the use of first-person narratives within the Humanities. The authors discuss how first-person stories and accounts can be used as a methodology to interrogate history and literature. As Guest Editor-in-Chief it has been a pleasure to see the development of these articles and the detailed way in which each author has addressed their topic and research. This journal contains three stimulating and eclectic articles from postgraduates at Keele University and displays the innovative and high-quality research within the postgraduate community here.
This journal opens with Karen Willis’ s exploration of cross religious marriages in the eighteenth century using the letters of Joseph Strutt to Isabella Douglas. Willis’ s article addresses the tensions these marriages caused, the issues surrounding inter-cultural courtship, and the coercion involved in lengthy courtship.
Next, is Hannah Snell’ s study on the way in which enslavers, between 1830-60, used the plantation household to exploit enslaved female bodies for profit. Snell adopts a spatial analysis to interrogate the narratives produced by enslaved people, as well as the diaries and memoirs of enslavers. Snell demonstrates the fragmented customs, rules, and procedures that were imposed upon enslaved females on the plantation.
Athena Harvey closes this journal through considering how Markus Zusak’ s 2005 novel The Book Thief is a literary reconstruction of a covert community narrative. Applying James C. Scott’ s concept of‘ hidden transcripts’, Harvey displays how ordinary German citizens engaged in quiet resistance to the hegemonic ideology of the Nazi Party behind public performances of conformity. This article explores staged political allegiance to conceal acts of disobedience, storytelling as forms of resistance, and reimagines hidden histories.
Hannah Smith Guest Editor-in-Chief