Aparna Prakashbabu Uma
- Email: ggqj0201@leeds.ac.uk
- Thesis title: Reading Closely and Distantly: Humour in British Fiction (1875-1900)
- Supervisors: Dr Emily Middleton (formerly Bell), Professor James Mussell
Profile
I am a PhD researcher in the School of English working at the intersection of Victorian literary studies and digital humanities. My thesis examines how humour functions across three genres (detective, realist, and comic fiction) of British fiction in the late Victorian period (1875–1900). Working with texts by Arthur Conan Doyle, Israel Zangwill, Jerome K. Jerome, George and Weedon Grossmith, George Gissing, and Margaret Oliphant, I combine close reading with computational methods, particularly sentiment analysis and parts of speech tagging, to ask whether humour supports or subverts the conventions of each genre, and what cross-genre comparison reveals that single-genre studies have not yet addressed. My approach integrates humour theory, genre theory, and digital humanities.
Research interests
- Victorian Literature
- Digital Humanities
- Computational literary analysis
- Humour theory
- Detective, humourous and realistic fiction
Qualifications
- MSc Intermediality: Literature, Film and the Arts in Dialogue, University of Edinburgh (2022-23)
- MA English, Central University of Gujarat, India (2019-21)
- BA English, Holy Cross College, Tiruchirappalli, India (2015-18)