A Misbegotten Race': Monstrous Reproduction in the Long Nineteenth-Century Gothic

My research focuses on emerging representations of reproduction as a monstrous process in the long 19th-century British Gothic. Analysing selected texts from 1768 to 1897, I will examine how depictions of reproductively dangerous liaisons, horrific pregnancies, and supernatural procreation articulates increasing

anxieties surrounding the future of the British Empire through its prospective children. Using a combination of cultural analysis, theoretical frameworks, and close reading, I will also track how the discourse of reproductive monstrosity evolves in this period, creating an enduring narrative hierarchy of proper and improper bodies.