Amy Billings

Amy Billings is a PhD student in Literature with a focus on textual studies and how it combines with popular cultures and forms to provide insights on gender and class, all with an emphasis on the nineteenth century but extending backward in time. She completed her MA at KU where she wrote her thesis on execution broadsides and argued that their form underwent a dramatic transformation in the early half of the 1800s in response to state, public, and economic pressures. Amy is currently researching the cultural role of balladmongers (broadside sellers/creators) using Shakespeare’s Autolycus as representative of the persistent popular stereotype applied to these socially unsanctioned storytellers.