Dr Julia Banister, Senior Lecturer

Dr Julia Banister

Senior Lecturer

Julia Banister is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature. She specialises in the literature and culture of the eighteenth century and Romantic period. Her research focuses on gender and the body, and war and military service.

Julia studied at the University of Southampton and has taught at the University of Southampton, the University of Sussex, the University of Portsmouth, and the University of Chichester. She currently teaches modules on literary theory, eighteenth-century fiction, Romantic poetry, and masculinity in the long eighteenth century. 

Research Interests

Julia Banister’s main research interests are gender and the body, and war and military service. She is an interdisciplinary literary scholar and she has particular interest in bringing literary texts together with other forms of writing, and in exploring the relationship between texts and historical contexts.

Julia is the author of Masculinity, Militarism and Eighteenth-Century Culture: 1689–1815 (Cambridge University Press, 2018). She has also written on William Falconer (Eighteenth-Century Life (forthcoming)), Laurence Sterne (Bucknell University Press), Jane Austen (Persuasions, Edinburgh University Press (forthcoming)), and disability and the military body in the early nineteenth century (Manchester University Press).

Julia's current research focuses on the relationship between gothic literature and the military. This work examines the use of gothic figures, tropes and modes in writing about military subjects from the long eighteenth century and Romantic period. She is also currently contributing to a project on women’s experiences of war, past and present, which has funding from the National Heritage Lottery Fund, and is hosted by the charity Waterloo Uncovered.

Julia Banister welcomes inquiries about postgraduate supervision for projects on eighteenth-century and Romantic-period literature and culture. 

Dr Julia Banister, Senior Lecturer

Selected Outputs

  • Banister J (In press) Jane Austen and the Figure of the Body. In: Bray J; Moss H ed. The Edinburgh Companion to Jane Austen and the Arts. Edinburgh University Press,

  • Banister J (2021) Yorick's War: Patriot Politics, Military Men and Willing Women in A Sentimental Journey. In: Gerard WB; Newbould M-C ed. Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey: A Legacy to the World. Lewisburg, Penn: Bucknell University Press,

  • Banister J (2019) Burying Lord Uxbridge's Leg: The Body of the Hero in the Early Nineteenth Century. In: Brown M; Barry AM; Begiato J ed. Martial Masculinities: Experiencing and Imagining the Military in the Long Nineteenth Century. Manchester University Press,

  • Banister J (2009) The Court Martial of Admiral John Byng: Politeness and the Military Man in the Mid-Century. In: Ellis H; Meyer J ed. Masculinity and the other: Historical Perspectives. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing,

  • Banister J (In press) Masculinity and Militarism in Jane Austen’s The Brothers. Persuasions : the Jane Austen Journal On-Line, 38 (2),

    http://www.jasna.org/publications/persuasions-online/volume-38-no-2/banister/

  • Banister J (In press) The Manifestations of “Admiral Hosier’s Ghost”: Richard Glover’s Military Gothic in the Literary Marketplace. Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

  • Banister J (2023) William Falconer's “Sons of Neptune”: The Merchant Service, the Royal Navy, and The Shipwreck. Eighteenth-Century Life, 47 (2), pp. 87-105.

    https://doi.org/10.1215/00982601-10394896

  • Banister J (2018) Masculinity, Militarism and Eighteenth-Century Culture, 1689-1815. Cambridge University Press.

  • eds. Badin D; Banister J; Hagglund B (2010) Women's Travel Writings in Italy: Harriet Morton, Protestant Vigils, or Evening Records of a Journey in Italy. London: Pickering & Chatto Ltd.

  • Banister J (2023) Review: Jacqueline Murray (ed.), The Male Body and Social Masculinity in Premodern Europe, Toronto (Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies) 2022.

  • Banister J (2022) Five Questions: Julia Banister on Masculinity, Militarism and Eighteenth-Century Culture.

  • Banister J (2021) Review: The Shandean ed. by Peter de Voogd, Vol. 30. The Laurence Sterne Trust, 2019.