Stephanie L. Barczewski
Chair; Professor; Carol K. Brown Scholar in the Humanities
Contact
Department of History
Office: Hardin Hall 106
Phone: 864/656-3153
Email: sbarcze@clemson.edu
Education
Ph.D., Yale University (1996)
Courses
Modern Britain
Research Interests
European History; Britain; Cultural; Empire
A specialist in modern British history, Dr. Barczewski has been at Clemson since 1996. Her latest book is How the Country House Became English (Reaktion/University of Chicago, 2023). Dr. Barczewski's previous publications include Heroic Failure and the British (Yale University Press, 2016); Country Houses and the British Empire, 1700-1940 (Manchester University Press, 2014); Antarctic Destinies: Scott, Shackleton and the Changing Face of Heroism (Bloomsbury, 2007); Titanic: A Night Remembered (Palgrave Macmillan/Hambledon and London, 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 and book chapters. She is also the co-author and editor of the textbook Britain since 1688: A Nation in the World (Routledge, 2014; 2nd edition, Routledge 2022). 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 is currently researching the peculiarities of the British “natural” environment. Few places on earth have been as affected by human intervention for as long as and as intensely as Britain and Ireland. The oldest stone tools found in the British Isles date from between 900,000 and 750,000 years ago. (For comparison, the first human beings arrived in North America no more than 26,000 years ago.) This lengthy human presence has had a corresponding impact on the British and Irish environments. Their “natural” landscapes are in fact the product of millennia of interaction between nature and human agricultural, social, economic and (more recently) recreational activities. Dartmoor, often described today as the “wildest place in England,” would in its natural state be a forest, not a moor. In its present state, it was first created by tree clearance that began in the Bronze Age and has been maintained ever since by the grazing of domestic and semi-feral ponies, cattle and sheep. The heathlands and woodlands of the New Forest were shaped by the presence of not only deer and other wild animals, but also by domesticated ponies, cattle, sheep and pigs. This long history of interaction between human beings and the natural environment in the British Isles has produced a landscape that today has no alpha predators – the largest land carnivore is the badger – and a number of nonindigenous animals that have been deliberately introduced at various points with varying degrees of environmental impact. This curious situation has in recent years engendered a spirited debate about “rewilding,” with conflicting opinions about whether this is desirable or what it would actually mean.
Selected Professional Works
Books (Published)
How the Country House Became English, (Reaktion/University of Chicago, 2023).
Heroic Failure and the British (Yale University Press, 2016)
Country Houses and the British Empire, 1700-1930 (Manchester University Press, Studies in Imperialism Series, 2014)
Britain since 1688: A Nation in the World (Routledge, 2014)
Antarctic Destinies: Scott, Shackleton and the Changing Face of Heroism. Continuum, 2009.
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.
