Romantic Circles

Elizabeth Fay is Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her interests are British Romanticism, feminist approaches to literature, German Idealism, the status of Egypt in the Romantic imaginary, medievalism, and material culture. She has authored five books, and co-edited two essay volumes and one edition. Her most recent book publications are Fashioning Faces: The Portraitive Mode in British Romanticism (2010) and a co-edited volume, Urban Identity and the Atlantic World (2013). She served six years as editor of Literature Compass Romanticism (Wiley Blackwell) and is currently book series editor of “The New Urban Atlantic” (Palgrave Springer). Her 2010 book on the “portraitive mode” uses visual-verbal studies and material culture studies to analyze the ways in which both the fine arts and consumer goods, as well as the display of these in public and private spaces, reveal a focus on the portraitive that transcends the Romantic Period’s fascination with portraits. Fay is currently working on a book project on various forms of Romantic alterity.