Carolyn Day

Carolyn Day

Associate Professor, History

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Carolyn A. Day received a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology from Louisiana State University, an M. Phil in the History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine from Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. from Tulane University in British History. She is the author of Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion and Disease (Bloomsbury, 2017), which focuses on material culture and the social space occupied by tuberculosis in the late 18th and first half of the 19th century. The book investigates the relationship between fashionable women’s clothing, beauty, and illness in Britain. Dr. Day is a co-Editor of the Peculiar Bodies: Stories and Histories series, published by the University of Virginia Press, and teaches courses in British & European History as well as the History of Medicine. Her current research focuses on the individual experience of illness in 18th and 19th century Britain.

Honors

  • Furman University Research & Professional Growth Grant, Spring 2019
  • The John Block Fund Research Award, 2019
  • King’s College Royal Archives Summer Fellowship (Georgian Papers Program), 2017
  • David E. Shi Center for Sustainability Grant, 2017
  • Alester G. Furman Jr. & Janie Earle Furman Award for Meritorious Advising, 2016
  • Furman Standard Faculty Research Grant, 2016
  • The John Block Fund Research Award, 2016
  • Furman University Research & Professional Growth Grant, Spring 2016
  • Furman University Sabbatical Awarded, Spring 2016
  • Furman University Research & Professional Growth Grant, 2015
  • David E. Shi Center for Sustainability & Duke Endowment Food Systems and Farming Grant, 2014
  • Furman University Research & Professional Growth Grant, 2014
  • Furman University Research & Professional Growth Grant, 2013
  • Furman University’s Inaugural Rinker May Ex Travel Fellow, 2013
  • Furman University Humanities Development Fund Course Design Grant, 2013

Education

  • Ph.D., Tulane University
  • M.Phil., Cambridge University
  • B.A., Louisiana State University
  • B.S., Louisiana State University

Publications 

  • A Tale of Uncommon Parental Barbarity? The Life and Death of Anne Wainhouse. Book under contract with the University of Toronto Press. (In Progress)
  • “Consumptive Chic” History Today Vol. 68, Issue 7 (July 2018).   https://www.historytoday.com/carolyn-day/consumptive-chic-when-tuberculosis-was-height-fashion 
  • Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion and Disease (Bloomsbury, 2017)
  • “Dying to be Beautiful: Fragile Fashionistas and Consumptive Dress in England” for the Fashion and Illness issue of the Journal of Eighteenth Century Studies, edited by Clark Lawlor and Anita O’Connell.  (October 2017)
  • Carolyn A. Day & Amelia Rauser, “Thomas Lawrence’s Consumptive Chic: Reinterpreting Lady Manners’ Hectic Flush in 1794,Eighteenth-Century Studies 49.4 (Summer 2016)

Select Research Presentations 

  • January 2020: “‘Remember Ann Beach,’ Inheritance, Incarceration & the Genealogy of an Illness Narrative,” British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, Oxford, UK.
  • September 2019: “Be damn’d or go to the Devil,” Marriage, Incarceration and the Illness of Ann[e] Wainhouse,” European Conference on Rural History, Paris, France.
  • October 2018: “Uncovering the Invalid in the Archives: Romance, Royalty & 
  • Conflict in the Illness of Princess Amelia,” North American Conference on British Studies, Providence, RI. 
  • October 2018: “Looking and Lighting: Color, Domestic Display and Lighting Technologies in Early Victorian England,” North American Victorian Studies Association, St. Petersburg, FL.
  • March 2018: “Treating Royalty: Conflict, Agency, and the Illness of Princess Amelia,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Orlando, FL.
  • October 2017: “‘A flattering malady’: Fashioning the consumptive chic in early Victorian England and recovering it in the museum,” Victorian’s Institute, Greenville, SC.
  • June 2017: “Consuming Fashions & Emulating Illness: The Tubercular Chic in Early Victorian England,” VariAbilit(ies) III: Peculiar Bodies Conference, London, UK.
  • May 2017: “Beauty, Artifice, and Lighting in Early Victorian England,” North American Victorian Studies Association/ Australasian Victorian Studies Association Supernumerary Conference, Florence, Italy.
  • March 2017: “She suffer’d on the account of Love”: Causation and Culpability in the Tubercular Experience of Anne Wainhouse, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Minneapolis, MN 
  • November 2016: “Consuming Fashions & Emulating Illness: The Tubercular Chic in Early Victorian England,” North American Conference on British Studies, Washington D.C. 
  • April 2016: “A Tale of Domestic and Uncommon Parental Barbarity: Narrative and the Tubercular Experience of Anne Wainhouse,” Broken Narratives and the Lived Body Conference, Prato, Italy.
  • October 2015: “Prescriptive and Prescription: Pregnancy and the Consumptive Female,” Northeast Conference on British Studies, Ottawa, Canada
  • July 2015: “Drop Dead Gorgeous: The Tubercular Chic in Early Victorian England.” Fashion, 84th Anglo-American Conference of Historians, London, UK.  
  • July 2014: “Dying to be Beautiful: Fragile Fashionistas and Consumptive Dress in England, 1780-1820.” International Interdisciplinary Conference on Fashionable Diseases: Medicine, Literature & Culture, ca. 1660-1832, Newcastle & Northumbria Universities, UK. 
  • March 2014: “‘Nature supplied touches that Art cou’d never reach’: Representing the Female Consumptive.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Williamsburg.
  • October 2013: “Pregnancy as Prophylactic: Discourses on Consumption and the Female Body.” Evidence Conference, North American Victorian Studies Association, Pasadena. 
  • June 2013: “Fashioning the Consumptive Other in Early Victorian England.” North American Victorian Studies Association/ British Association for Victorian Studies/ Australasian Victorian Studies Association Supernumerary Conference: The Global and the Local, Venice, Italy.
  • April 2013: “The Flowering of Consumptive Chic: The Fashion for Tuberculosis in England, 1780-1820.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Cleveland.
  • November 2011: “Beauty and the Female Experience of Consumption.” North American Conference on British Studies, Denver. 
  • November 2011: “The Art of Beauty: Artifice, Performance, and the Fashioning of the Consumptive Body in Early Victorian England.” Performance and Play Conference, North American Victorian Studies Association, Nashville. 
  • April 2011: “The Emulation of Consumption: The Fashioning of the Respectable Female Body in Early Victorian England.” Victorian Epidemics Conference, Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada, Banff.
  • March 2011:Altogether a Strange Production, Alexander Walker’s Intermarriage.British Scholar Conference, Austin.
  • July 2010: “Consumptive Representations: The Beauty of Maria Siddons.” Society for the Social History of Medicine, Durham, UK.

Select Invited Talks and Interviews 

  • February 2020: Presenter for a Master Class at Yale’s Lewis Walpole Library in conjunction with the exhibition Artful Nature
  • May 2019: Interview with Marcus Smith of Constant Wonder, BYUradio on Sirius radio
  • April 2019: Speaker, The Anatomy Museum, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
  • March 2019: Speaker, Lunchtime Lecture, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK 
  • November 2018: Speaker, The Slover Library, Norfolk, VA
  • June 2018: “The Social, Medical and Personal Responses to the Illness of Princess Amelia (1783-1810),” GPP Fellows Coffee Morning, King’s College London, UK. 
  • June 2018: Speaker, Thursday Lates Series, Fashion & Textile Museum, London, UK. 
  • June 2018: Keynote Speaker, VariAbilit(ies) IV: Peculiar Bodies Conference, London, UK.
  • May 2018: Invited talk at the Oxford Biomedical Research Centre, Oxford, UK.  
  • April 2018: Keynote Speaker, “Beauty, Fashion & Disease: Creating the Consumptive Chic in Early Victorian England, Jane Stedman Plenary Lecture, Midwest Victorian Studies Association, St. Louis, MO. 
  • April 2018: Interview New Books Podcast/ British History 
  • Shahidha Bari, “Book of the Week,” Times Higher Education (September 2017) https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/review-consumptive-chic-carolyn-day-bloomsbury
  • September 2017: Interview with Dan Snow’s History Hit
  • June 2016: Interview on the nationally syndicated Dr. Katherine Albrecht radio show
  • June 2016: Interview on Doctor Radio Sirius XM with Dr. Ira Breite
  • May 2016: Interview with BBC Radio 5- Live Up All Night with Rhod Sharp
  • Emily Mullin, “How Tuberculosis Shaped Victorian Fashion,” Smithsonian Magazine.com http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-tuberculosis-shaped-victorian-fashion-180959029/?no-ist (May 2016)

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