Tuesday, January 08, 2008

What is Thomas Dixon reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Thomas Dixon, Lecturer in History at Queen Mary, University of London, and the author of the forthcoming The Invention of Altruism: Making Moral Meanings in Victorian Britain and Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction.

He has pursued three related strands of research: the history of theories of passions and emotions; the history of debates about ‘altruism’, especially in Victorian Britain; and, more generally, the history of relationships between science and religion. Two of his essay-reviews for the Times Literary Supplement are available online: one is on the philosophy of emotion, the other on science and religion.

Visit Thomas Dixon's faculty webpage to learn more about his other publications and research interests.

One paragraph from his entry:
Two brilliant books I received as Christmas gifts are at the top of my current pile of books – Roy Porter’s London: A Social History and Vic Gatrell’s City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London. I love Gillray’s caricatures and political cartoons, and Gatrell’s book is lavishly illustrated with literally hundreds of satirical prints by Gillray, Rowlandson, and others. [read on]
Writers Read: Thomas Dixon.

--Marshal Zeringue