Dr Billie Gavurin (University of Birmingham) will be giving a talk entitled 'Palaeoanthropology and the Fantastical in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Literature'.
The talk will give a broad outline of Billie's current research into counterfactual and fantastical representations of prehistoric humanity in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century literature, before offering a closer analysis of two of her central texts. In both Grant Allen's 'Pallinghurst Barrow' (1892) and H. G. Wells's The Croquet Player (1936), fears regarding the lingering presence of humanity's bestial evolutionary past are expressed via the narrative mechanism of the ghost story: Allen's and Wells's characters are literally haunted by the spirits of our proto-human antecedents. In analysing these two stories of Gothic prehistory, the talk will examine the question of what they can tell us about the cultural receptions of palaeoanthropology in the first century after Darwin.
Billie's talk will be followed by a discussion with a drinks reception afterwards.