Arvian Hesketh

My name is Arvian Hesketh and I am a PhD candidate in English Literature. I received both my BA and MA in English Literature from the University of Exeter where I have also undertaken teaching at an undergraduate level. My AHRC-funded South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership (SWW DTP) thesis examines how the idea of mixed-race motherhood found fictional form across a range of literary genres from the mid to late-Victorian era. By reading this fiction in conjunction with postcolonial criticism, theories of the body and multiple aspects of feminist theory, my thesis aims to open up the nuanced ways in which characters, who are represented as the children of parents from two or more different racial backgrounds, can be understood with regards to discourses and debates from the period concerning individual subjectivity, social cohesion and national belonging.