Dr Christopher Reid, MA (Cambridge) PhD (London)
Senior Lecturer
Tel: +44 (0)20 7882 2864
email: c.g.p.reid@qmul.ac.uk
Research interests:
- Eighteenth-century studies
- Political oratory and rhetorical theory
- Eighteenth-century popular culture
'Oratory in Action' edited by CGP Reid and MJ Edwards
Chris Reid's research falls into two main areas. He is interested in the ways in which eighteenth-century culture has been mapped, especially in recent debates about interactions between elite and popular culture in the period. His research in this area takes in such topics as the appropriation of popular genres by canonical writers and the literary and polemical uses of ideas of custom to negotiate social change. The second area of his research involves rhetorical theory and practice, primarily in eighteenth-century contexts, and the impact that new audiences for oratory had on existing forms of public speech. He has worked on political writing and oratory in the second half of the century – with a particular focus on Edmund Burke – and is currently writing a study of speaking practices in the House of Commons from 1760 to 1806.
Publications:
(Recent publications)
Oratory in Action, co-edited with Michael Edwards (Manchester University Press, 2004), including Chris Reid, ‘Margaret Thatcher and the Gendering of Political Oratory', pp 164-85
Eighteenth-Century Popular Culture: A Selection, co-edited with John Mullan (Oxford University Press, 2000)
'Speaking Candidly: Rhetoric, Politics, and the Meanings of Candour in the later Eighteenth Century', British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 28 (2005), 67-82
'Eighteenth-Century Popular Culture: A Selection' co-edited by Christopher Reid
'Character Construction in the Eighteenth-Century House of Commons: Evidence from the Cavendish Diary (1768-74)', Rhetorica 22 (2004), 375-99