Charlie Toogood
Doctoral Student in Literature - Charlie’s thesis is entitled 'Looking Back into the Future: Environmentalism in the Victorian Utopian Imaginary'.
Research Project Title:
Looking Back into the Future: Environmentalism in the Victorian Utopian Imaginary
Supervisors:
Dr Ella Mershon + Dr Lisa Garforth
Contact Details:
Email: c.toogood1@newcastle.ac.uk
Research Interests:
- Utopian Studies
- Science Fiction Studies
- Anthropocene Studies
- Victorian Studies
Brief Outline of Research Project:
My project introduces a cluster of fin de siècle utopias to recent Anthropocene and ecocritical debates. Utilising the temporal complexities of climate breakdown, I explore the speculative potential of looking back to utopianism cultivated in an earlier stage of industrial modernity in the form of four texts: Richard Jefferies’ After London (1885), William Henry Hudson’s A Crystal Age (1887), William Morris’ News from Nowhere (1890) and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s Sultana’s Dream (1905). Through these four texts I examine weird utopian subjects and landscapes, narratives of decivilisation, post-fossil energy production, and the aesthetics of green utopia through the lens of recent Anthropocene theorising. Ultimately I argue that these texts provide a valuable conceptual resource for cutting through a contemporary climate moment drowning in cultural and political dystopianism.
Conferences
- ‘Utopia on the Edge: Unearthing Hybridity in After London; or, Wild England (1885)’, Victorian Popular Fiction Association, Online (July 2025)
- ‘”Gone.”: The Problems and Possibilities of Reading News from Nowhere (1890) Out of Time’, Sapienza Graduate Forum, Rome, Italy (June 2025)
- ‘Regression and Progression: Parallel Timelines in Richard Jefferies’ After London; Or, Wild England (1885)’, Re/Writing Crisis Symposium, Newcastle, UK (October 2024)
- ‘The Fifth Transition: (De)Constructing Civilisation in Victorian Eco-Utopia’, Science Fiction Research Association, Tartu, Estonia (May 2024)
- ‘Weird Eco-Utopianism in Willaim Henry Hudson’s A Crystal Age (1887)’, Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies Postgraduate Conference 2023, Newcastle, UK (April 2023)
- ‘Utopia in the Anthropocene: Re-reading William Morris’ News From Nowhere’, Cardiff University Postgraduate Network, Cardiff, UK (March 2019)
Research Groups and Memberships
Research Groups:
- Newcastle University Cluster for Utopian, Speculative and Prefigurative Research (NU-CUSP) - https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/nu-cusp/
Memberships:
- The William Morris Society
- Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (UK and Ireland)
- The Pre-Raphaelite Society