No island is an island: Covid and the deadliness of willed isolation

Blog

Our Principal Investigator, Barbara Taylor discusses what it means to be 'involved in mankind as a whole' in pandemic times.

A Creature for Whom It Matters That You're There

Conversations

Thomas Dixon and Tom Laqueur speak to Barbara Taylor about our relationships with animals and how they figure in our understanding of loneliness and solitude. This conversation was filmed during the second COVID-19 lockdown in England, with topics stretching from the meanings of empathy, to animal evolution, canine grief, and the difference between cats and dogs.

On Wanting to be Andrew Scott's Mother

Blog

In our new blog series on 'Lockdown Fantasies', our Principal Investigator Barbara Taylor shows how pandemical solitude can play on the imagination.

Women, Sex and Solitude in Marian Engel's 'Bear'

Blog

Our Principal Investigator Barbara Taylor explores the mysteries and joys of erotic companionship between a lone woman and a bear, in this reading of Marian Engel's award-winning novel 'Bear'.

A Torment Not Threatened in Hell Itself

Blog

Barbara Taylor, our Principal Investigator, contributes the next post to our series on 'Solitude in the Time of COVID-19', musing on the dangers of solitude throughout history.

Philosophical Solitude: Hume VS Rousseau

Blog

Our Principal Investigator Barbara Taylor approaches solitude via a study of opposites in the intellectual life of eighteenth-century Europe.

Enforced Solitude and Solitary Confinement

Conversations

In June 2019, our project co-organised a symposium on ‘Solitude and Modernity’ with the Diseases of Modern Life project at Oxford. The final panel discussion at this event was a conversation between Gwen Adshead and Shokoufeh Sakhi on ‘Enforced Solitude’. This post offers a chance to listen to these research associates from our project network discuss the experience of imprisonment and solitary confinement from different perspectives.

The Art of Solitude

Blog

In this blog Barbara Taylor, our project’s Principal Investigator, discusses the meanings of ‘solitude’ in some early modern texts.