Rachel Swinkin

I recently received my doctorate in English Literature from the University of California, Davis, with a Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory and a specialization in British literature of the long eighteenth century. My dissertation, "The Limits of Sympathy: Animals and Sentimentality in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture, 1759–1810," explores the development of moral concern for animals in sentimental literature and the surrounding culture of sensibility in late eighteenth-century Britain. It examines literature by Laurence Sterne, William Blake, Anna Barbauld, Robert Burns, Mary Wollstonecraft, and many others. Before entering graduate school at U.C. Davis, I received a B.A. from Columbia University with a double major in English and Music and spent a few years as a teacher and performer of classical flute. My current research interests include eighteenth-century and Romantic literature, sentimentalism, animal studies, and critical theory.