{"id":386,"date":"2009-07-02T09:25:54","date_gmt":"2009-07-02T13:25:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/?page_id=386"},"modified":"2025-08-20T12:46:38","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T16:46:38","slug":"whiting-pat","status":"publish","type":"cu_people","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/people\/whiting-pat\/","title":{"rendered":"Whiting, Pat"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"mb-6 cu-pageheader cu-component-updated md:mb-12\">\n    <h1 class=\"cu-prose-first-last font-semibold !mt-2 mb-4 md:mb-6 text-3xl md:text-4xl lg:text-5xl lg:leading-[3.5rem] relative after:absolute after:h-px after:bottom-0 pb-5 after:w-10 after:bg-cu-red after:left-px\">\n                    \n             \n                \n            <\/h1>\n\n    \n    <\/header>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Research Interests <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>18<sup>th<\/sup>-century literature<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The novel and human rights<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Comic Novel<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Current Research<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My project investigates the intersection of the literary imagination and actual large-scale historical situations of oppression. &nbsp;Specifically, I am looking at novels written by authors who were actively involved in those situations and who wrote from a sense of responsibility to their readers and to the truth of events and history as they experienced them. Such \u201cinsider\u201d novels are inevitably ideologically inflected, but, curiously, the case-study novels on which I\u2019m currently working are united in their persistent refusal of the reductive tendency to situate people and events uncritically on one side or the other of an assumed binary situation. In legal or judicial discourse, human rights are generally considered categorically in terms of victims and perpetrators and of right and wrong. Courts find human rights abusers guilty or not guilty. By contrast, novels by literary writers who have experienced oppression first-hand reveal that such situations are never black and white but overwhelmingly gray, characterized by complication, contradiction and complicity. These novels provide insights into the workings of oppression and suggest a unique and important role for the novel in current discourses of human rights, one not limited to bearing witness, truth-telling, or confessing guilt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Publications<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fifteen entries for the forthcoming <em>Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel<\/em>, <em>1660-1820.<\/em> Ed. April London, projected publication date 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Review of <em>The Orphan in Eighteenth-Century Law and Literature: Estate, Blood, and Body<\/em> by Cheryl Nixon. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2011. <em>Eighteenth-Century Fiction<\/em> 25:3 (Spring 2013).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cLiteral and Literary Representations of Family in <em>The Mysteries of Udolpho.\u201d <\/em>Reprinted in <em>Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism<\/em>, 106 (2002).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Review of <em>An Introduction to Eighteenth-Century Fiction: Raising the Novel<\/em> by John Skinner (Basingstoke, Hampshire, England: Palgrave, 2001). <em>Eighteenth-Century Fiction <\/em>15:1 (2002), 182-84.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9375,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"cu_people_first_name":"Pat","cu_people_last_name":"Whiting","cu_people_initials":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_people_type":[],"cu_people_expertise":[],"class_list":["post-386","cu_people","type-cu_people","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":{"cu_people_job_title":"","cu_people_degree":"Ph.D., English, University of Ottawa    M.A., English, Carleton University    B.A., English, Franconia College, New Hampshire,","cu_building":false,"cu_people_office_num":"","cu_people_pronoun":"none","cu_people_designation":"","cu_people_email":"patricia_whiting@carleton.ca","cu_people_phone":"","cu_people_phone_ext":"6702","cu_people_linkedin":"","cu_people_bluesky":"","cu_people_twitter":"","cu_people_instagram":"","cu_people_facebook":"","cu_people_website":"","cu_people_orcid":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_people"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20515,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/386\/revisions\/20515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_people_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people_type?post=386"},{"taxonomy":"cu_people_expertise","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people_expertise?post=386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}