Vic One Plenary | Alex Eric Hernandez
Vic One Plenary | Universities and Ways of Life: Time, Body and Presence in the Academy
Date: Wednesday, Sept. 25 from 4–6 p.m.
Location: Isabel Bader Theatre
Speaker: Alex Eric Hernandez
Alex Eric Hernandez is principal of Victoria College and and associate professor in the Department of English, where he specializes in 18th-century literature and culture. His scholarship aims at an interdisciplinary approach to the period, balancing an attention to historical detail alongside theoretical frames that privilege reparation, description and anthropological curiosity.
His first book, The Making of British Bourgeois Tragedy: Modernity and the Art of Ordinary Suffering, offers an innovative reading of how 18th-century tragedy developed in relation to the emotions of ordinary people. In it, he argues that a number of innovative tragic works concerned with the misfortunes of the middle class imagined a particularly modern form of suffering across page and stage. New research continues to explore interests in religion, affect, critique and Enlightenment and forms the basis for two current projects. One, tentatively titled, The Fabrics of Religion, concerns the productive ways in which readerly and religious practice are taken up in the materials of the long 18th century; another, Empire’s Prayerbook, considers how the Book of Common Prayer imagines a binding metaphysics across contested borders and amorphous spaces. Both projects have been supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
His work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Representations, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, and Modern Philology. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2022.
A former fellow with the Social Sciences Research Council, the Lewis Walpole Library and the Clark Library, he led an interdisciplinary working group on the theme of Postsecular or Postcritique?: New Approaches to Reading Religion for several years, which began as a working group funded through the Jackman Humanities Institute.
In 2021, he was awarded the Faculty of Arts & Science Outstanding Teaching Award.
Contact vic.one@utoronto.ca for more information or if you have questions.
About Vic One Plenary
The Vic One Plenary session is a weekly guest lecture series, exposing students to different areas of investigation. The plenaries are meant to encourage open-minded discussion and ignite intellectual curiosity. Rather than an academic commitment, these sessions present another opportunity for students to gather and reflect.