Stephanie L. Barczewski
Ph.D., Yale University, 1996
Professor
B28 Hardin Hall
(864) 656-5377
sbarcze@clemson.edu

A specialist in modern British history, Dr. Barczewski has been at Clemson since 1996.  Her most recent book, Antarctic Destinies: Scott, Shackleton and the Changing Face of Heroism, was published by Continuum in December 2007; it examines the ways in which the changing reputations of the British Antarctic explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton have been impacted by broader cultural changes in Britain and the United States over the course of the twentieth century. Dr. Barczewski's previous publications include Titanic: A Night Remembered (Hambledon and London/Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) and Myth and National Identity in Nineteenth-century Britain: The Legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood (Oxford University Press, 2000), as well as numerous articles in academic journals.  Dr. Barczewski has been awarded the Gentry Award, Clemson's highest honor for teaching in the humanities, as well as a Faculty Award of Distinction for student mentoring from the Clemson National Scholars Program.

Dr. Barczewski's current research  will examine the historical dimensions of globalization, through an exploration of the visible remnants of Britain’s global history that are to be found throughout the British Isles and the former empire.  By taking this global perspective, she hopes to overcome some of the parochial and nationalistic tendencies that have traditionally coloured the writing of European – and particularly British – history.  These tendencies have led to the creation of national narratives with which we are all familiar and which retain considerable validity, but it is time to provide parallel narratives acknowledging that human beings have long been citizens of the wider world as well as of individual countries.  Altars dedicated to Persian gods in a Roman shrine along Hadrian’s Wall; plasterwork native Americans on the ceiling of an Elizabethan country house; a stone tub tucked behind a shop in rural Dorset in which flax was soaked to make ropes for ships that sailed to all corners of the globe -- all are indications that the pre-twentieth-century British world was not the insular place that we often imagine it to be.  Instead, it was a world strongly influenced by a variety of global forces, just as it is today.

Selected Publications

Antarctic Destinies: Scott, Shackleton and the Changing Face of Heroism (Continuum, 2007)

Titanic: A Night Remembered (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004

Myth and National Identity in Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood (Oxford, 2000)

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