Principal Investigator
Nicole Mansfield Wright
Literature is often touted as creating a more just听and empathetic world鈥攂ut what happens when it听doesn鈥檛?
That鈥檚 the question explored in Nicole Mansfield听Wright鈥檚 new book, Defending Privilege: Rights,听Status and Legal Peril in the British Novel, published听in 2020. In it, Wright explores literature from 18thand听early 19th-century authors, and how it is used听not to give a voice to the voiceless but rather to听portray the privileged as the true victims in society.
Wright found that these narratives, rather than听disappearing, appear to have infected and听influenced modern-day society like malware in听unseen and unacknowledged ways鈥攆rom deciding听who gets to hand out justice to whose testimony is听believed in court.