ABOUT

Examining Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) in his former home. | London, England.

Dr. Virlana Shchuka is a SSHRC-funded postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill's Health and Humanities (HHIVE) Lab. Building from her STEM and humanities research backgrounds, she applies interdisciplinary perspectives toward her study of health narratives, particularly those pertaining to childbirth complications. Her primary monograph-length project explores how writers have historically understood and creatively represented childbirth challenges across various genres of writing, both in the long eighteenth century and closer to our own time.

Three core tenets underpin her research philosophy:

i) undertaking an intellectually honest critical assessment of a subject under study;

ii) applying interdisciplinary perspectives to analyze that subject; and

iii) close-reading that subject's finer details, ones that, though often seemingly trivial at first glance, almost always, upon further investigation, unearth its complexities in new and exciting ways.

Throughout her academic journey, Dr. Shchuka has consistently sought to creatively bridge the science and humanities fields in her research (H.BSc., Cell/Molecular Biology and English Literature, UToronto; M.A., Medical History and Humanities, UYork (UK); and Ph.D., Science, UToronto). Her research findings have been published in such peer-reviewed venues as Eighteenth-Century Fiction, The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Romantic-Era Women's Writing, Genes & Development, Molecular Human Reproduction, Medical History, PLoS Biology, and Genome Research. Most recently, Dr. Shchuka held a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Libraries, where she examined discourses of domestic violence-induced labour in legal court cases and understudied women's fiction.

Dr. Shchuka is exceptionally proud to have had her research supported by all three Canadian research funding agencies: the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC, Ph.D.); the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR, Ph.D., project grant co-supervisor) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC, PDF).

CURRENT AND UPCOMING

Delighted that Eighteenth-Century Fiction has accepted my work on the Romantic-period role of fathers in breastfeeding ... out now in the journal's 2022 summer issue!

Thrilled to have had the opportunity to give my talk on the "Gothic Motherhood" panel for Gothic Women! Check out the talks on previous panels here!

Check out our recently accepted paper, which uses rodent models to uncover previously unknown molecular players driving labour contractions! So proud of this collaboration between the Mitchell Lab and Shynlova Research Group!

Chawton House Library has recently uploaded their Maria, Or the Wrongs of Woman audiobook! No novel in the eighteenth century shed light on domestic violence issues like this one. Honoured to be among the team's contributing readers!

Excited to get on board as contributor to Coram's Voices Through Time: The Story of Care project. Volunteers get to transcribe eighteenth-century historical records from and learn more about the Foundling Hospital's earliest days!