Dr Jim Watt is a Senior Lecturer at the University of York, and the Director of York’s Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies. His current research focuses on British representations of ‘the East’ over a period ranging from the mid-eighteenth century to Macaulay’s ‘Minute on Indian Education’. He is particularly interested in the ways in which British imperial expansion influenced conceptions of British identity, and in the ways in which ‘good’ Orientalism might offer models for positive contemporary encounters with cultural difference.
Jim’s present project is called British Orientalisms, 1759-1835. He also has enduring interests in the Gothic, and published a monograph entitled Contesting the Gothic: Fiction, Genre and Cultural Conflict 1764-1832 (Cambridge University Press: 1999)
Imagining Jerusalem 