Jonathan Williams from the Department of English Language and Literature has published a monograph with Bloomsbury Academic. The book, Melancholic Life: Literary Expression and the Experience of History from Burton to Keats, traces the long historical transformation of melancholia from a medical condition into a distinctly political mode of feeling. Dr. Williams interprets literary melancholy in the eighteenth century as a mode of social criticism: a solitary protest against the exploitative features of social life such as global commerce and print capitalism. He argues that the political significance of eighteenth-century melancholy lies precisely in its minimal efficacy: a form of critical theorization that persists even when meaningful political action seems impossible. Read the book here.