Elizabeth K. Helsinger (NHC Fellow, 1997–98; 2007–08)
Project Title, 1997–98
The Pre-Raphaelite Arts of Poetry, Painting, Collection, and Design (1850-80)
The University of Chicago
Project Title, 2007–08
A Peculiar Music: Poetry, Art, and Song in Nineteenth-Century Britain
The University of Chicago
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Fellowship Work Summary, 1997–98
Elizabeth K. Helsinger wrote “Pre‑Raphaelite Arts; Aesthetic and Social Experiment in the 1860s,” forthcoming in the Center’s journal, Ideas; “Rossetti and the Art of the Book,” for a collection on Victorian text and image, edited by Catherine Golden; and worked on “Artistic Friendships: Ruskin and Rossetti” for a collection of recent work on Ruskin, edited by Robert Hewison. All the above, in some form, will become part of her book, Pre‑Raphaelite Arts. She gave the Hannah M. Adler Lecture at Skidmore College, entitled “Rossetti and the Art of the Book”; delivered a paper, entitled “Artistic Friendships: Ruskin and Rossetti,” at the Ruskin Seminar of Lancaster University (England). She spoke on “Pre‑Raphaelite Arts: Aesthetic and Social Experiment in the 1860s,” for the English Department at North Carolina State University, and for a public lecture at the National Humanities Center.
Fellowship Work Summary, 2007–08
Elizabeth K. Helsinger wrote part of the introduction and three chapters of 'A Peculiar Music': Poetry, Painting, and Song in Nineteenth-Century Britain. She read proofs and prepared the index for Poetry and the Pre-Raphaelite Arts: Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris (Yale University Press, 2008). She wrote an article on “The ‘Writing’ of Modern Life” for The 'Writing' of Modern Life: The Etching Revival in France, Britain, and the U.S., 1850-1940 (University of Chicago Press, 2008), a volume she edited to accompany the exhibition by the same name, which she also organized; it will open in mid-November 2008 at the Smart Museum of Art of the University of Chicago. Her article “Grieving Images: Elegy and the Visual Arts” will appear in The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy.