Tamsin Spargo - Author
Tamsin Spargo was born and raised in Cornwall. She worked as a reporter, then as an actor, before embarking on her current career as a cultural historian. She is Reader in Cultural History and Director of the School of Media, Critical and Creative Arts at Liverpool John Moores University. Her academic works include The Writing of John Bunyan and Reading the Past: Literature and History.
Photograph © Geoff Shields
The life story of American outlaw, Oliver Curtis Perry, an East Coast “Billy the Kid†who enjoyed similar headline status in his time but not the same romantic reputation through to today. This is the story of his colourful life both in crime and in jail.
The life story of American outlaw, Oliver Curtis Perry, an East Coast “Billy the Kid†who enjoyed similar headline status in his time but not the same romantic reputation through to today. This is the story of his colourful life both in crime and in jail.
John Bunyan (1628-88) lived and wrote through some of the most turbulent years of political, social, and religious change in British history from civil war, through Commonwealth and Protectorate to the Restoration. Imprisoned for unlicensed preaching as a Nonconformist, Bunyan turned to writing to sustain his pastoral mission and composed some of the best-known, and most critically acclaimed, seventeenth-century texts, from his intensely moving spiritual autobiography, Grace bounding to the Chief of Sinners, to the world famous allegory The Pilgrim's Progress. Bunyan's style fused vivid depiction of the everyday world of ordinary men and women with powerful narratives to dramatise his religious convictions. This accessible study of his life, times, and writing introduces all his key works within the contexts of their original moment and later international impact and argues that Bunyan is a writer whose work continues to reward readers of all ages, beliefs, and nationalities.
Questions about how and why we read the past continue to demand the attention of cultural critics. Reading the Past introduces key debates about history, historiography, and historicism which have transformed approaches to the past in departments of History and Literature. It includes influential and provocative theoretical essays as well as lively case studies and readings by literary critics and historians. The emphasis is on providing teachers and students with accessible yet challenging material to stimulate debate.
Questions about how and why we read the past continue to demand the attention of cultural critics. Reading the Past introduces key debates about history, historiography, and historicism which have transformed approaches to the past in departments of History and Literature. It includes influential and provocative theoretical essays as well as lively case studies and readings by literary critics and historians. The emphasis is on providing teachers and students with accessible yet challenging material to stimulate debate.
Foucault's theories on power, crime and sexuality have enourmously influenced the postmodern debates within postfeminism, cultural studies, sociology, and history.