After holding a position at the University of Iowa, Deborah Laycock, a specialist in Restoration and eighteenth-century literature, came to Kenyon College in 1991. She has since developed Canadian literature as a field for research and teaching.
Laycock is currently completing a book manuscript entitled An Eighteenth-Century Sense of Place: The Urban Pastoral and has begun work on a project examining gender and metamorphosis in early modern culture, an early version of which has appeared in an essay in Textual Bodies: Changing Boundaries of Literary Representation (SUNY Press, 1997). She has served as the Chair of the Committee on Academic Standards and has twice served as resident director of the Kenyon-Exeter Program at the University of Exeter.
Education
1987 — Doctor of Philosophy from Stanford University
1979 — Master of Arts from Univ British Columbia
1977 — Bachelor of Arts from University of Alberta
Courses Recently Taught
Each section of these first-year seminars approaches the study of literature through the exploration of a single theme in texts drawn from a variety of literary genres (such as tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, epic, novel, short story, film and autobiography) and historical periods. Classes are small, offering intensive discussion and close attention to each student's writing. Students in each section are asked to work intensively on composition as part of a rigorous introduction to reading, thinking, speaking and writing about literary texts. During the semester, instructors will assign frequent essays and may also require oral presentations, quizzes, examinations and research projects. This course is not open to juniors and seniors without permission of the department chair. Offered every year.
Each section of these first-year seminars approaches the study of literature through the exploration of a single theme in texts drawn from a variety of literary genres (such as tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, epic, novel, short story, film and autobiography) and historical periods. Classes are small, offering intensive discussion and close attention to each student's writing. Students in each section are asked to work intensively on composition as part of a rigorous introduction to reading, thinking, speaking and writing about literary texts. During the semester, instructors will assign frequent essays and may also require oral presentations, quizzes, examinations and research projects. This course is not open to juniors and seniors without permission of department chair. Offered every year.
We will begin this course by spending several weeks on Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" (examining in passing another work of the 18th century inspired by "Gulliver's Travels", "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen"). Satire is one of the predominant forms of the 18th century and finds its grotesque complement in the graphic arts. We will study various examples of visual satire -- notably the "progress" narratives of William Hogarth. We will examine the emergence of the novel in this period, focusing on its multi-generic character. We will explore the overlapping of categories -- history and fiction, travel and novel, news and novels, philosophy and fiction -- in works such as Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels", Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's epistolary account of her travels to Turkey, Eliza Haywood's spy/masquerade novel "Fantomina", and Susanna Centlivre's play about metamorphosis, "A Bold Stroke for a Wife". Periodical literature first appears in the long 18th century. We will explore the phenomenon of spectatorship in this period in relation to the institution of the masquerade, the science and philosophy of empiricism, and the rise of the penitentiary and systems of surveillance. This counts toward the 1700-1900 requirement for the major. Open only to first-year and sophomore students. Prerequisite: ENGL 103 or 104. Offered every year.