Billie Gavurin

My research focuses on the intersections of science and culture during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I am particularly interested in the ways in which mythic figures and narratives were repurposed by writers and artists to explore questions of human evolution in the wake of Darwinism. My doctoral thesis was entitled ‘Exquisite Grotesques: Evolutionary Thought and the Mythic Hybrid at the Fin de Siècle’. It examined the depiction of animal-human hybrids in literature between 1894-1911, arguing that the popular genesis of Darwinism led to an increased cultural interest in hybrid forms from classical myth at the turn of the century. My current research project explores counterfactual portrayals of prehistoric hominins in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature and art, seeking to address the question of why so many cultural artefacts from this period elide the scientific and the fantastical when depicting humanity’s evolutionary past.