Literature

Areas of Postgraduate Research Supervision in Literature

Medieval Studies

  • Old Norse-Icelandic literature, especially skaldic poetry and sagas of poets, historical writings including sagas of kings, and sagas of bishops (Professor Diana Whaley)

Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

  • Feminist, queer and post-colonial approaches to Renaissance literature and culture; children's Literature, and the child's relationship with Shakespeare (Professor Kate Chedgzoy)
  • Sixteenth-century English literature, with an emphasis on mid-Tudor and Elizabethan drama and poetry (Professor Mike Pincombe)
  • Renaissance writing, especially Shakespeare and Milton; early modern women's writing, cultures of reading, rhetoric and conversation, theories of memory, networks and friendship, republicanism (Dr Jennifer Richards)

For more information see the Renaissance and Early Modern research page.

Eighteenth-century and Romantic Studies

  • Children's Literature and culture in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; the Romantic-era novel in Britain; William Godwin (Dr Matthew Grenby)
  • British and Scottish Romanticism; the work of James Hogg (1770-1835); the Gothic; the early nineteenth-century short story; Scottish literature from Smollett to Stevenson; illegitimacy in the novel from Fielding to Eliot (Dr Meiko O'Halloran)
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, including manuscripts and early printed editions of his works; the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley; scholarly editing; literature in English, French and Italian of the long Romantic period (c.1750-c.1840), especially poetry 1800-1825, life-writing and republican discourses; Romanticism as a European phenomenon, particularly Rousseau’s legacy; comparatist approaches to writings in English, French and Italian of the Romantic era, especially the work of Alfieri, Byron, Foscolo, the Shelleys and Staël (Dr Michael Rossington)

For more information see the Eighteenth-century and Romantic Studies research page.

Nineteenth-century Studies

  • Victorian literature, with particular reference to the Pre-Raphaelites, Ruskin, Tennyson, Dickens, Victorian poetry as a genre and the relationship between Victorian literature and the visual arts (Professor John Batchelor)
  • American literature and culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries literature, especially Melville, Thoreau, Twain, the 'Great Surveys' (Dr John Beck)

  • Aestheticism and Decadence; late Victorian publishing; transatlantic literature and print culture; Victorian popular print culture; periodicals, magazines, newspapers; authorship in the Victorian period; history of reading and reading practices (Dr Kirsten MacLeod)

For more information see the Nineteenth-century literature research page.

Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Studies 

  • Autobiography; modern American women's poetry and Elizabeth Bishop in particular; feminist, psychoanalytic and queer theory; trauma and contemporary fiction (Professor Linda Anderson)
  • American literature, contemporary literature and culture, globalization, consumer society and lifestyle (Dr James Annesley)
  • The twenieth-century novel, especially Conrad, Wells, Woolf (Professor John Batchelor)
  • American literature, cultural and intellectual history, modernism and postmodernism in literature and the visual arts, landscape and literature in America with particular regard to the Southwest (Dr John Beck)
  • Lesbian/gay/queer culture, theory, and writing (Professor Kate Chedgzoy)
  • Avant-garde writing, Virginia Woolf, the Bloomsbury set, the Cambridge Apostles, representations of the body and of sense experience in literature and/or film, expeditionary writing and film, mountaineering literature of any kind, including technical accounts, guides, memoirs, mountain-inspired fiction (Dr Abbie Garrington)
  • Crime fictions, particularly detective and sensation novels; cybertheory and cyberpunk; First World War studies; feminist history and theory, particularly third wave feminism and (post)feminism (Dr Stacy Gillis)

  • Modernism; magazines (avant-garde and popular); publishing history; popular print culture; middlebrow culture; relationship between literature and film in the early twentieth century; early twentieth century transatlantic literature and culture; history of reading and reading practices (Dr Kirsten MacLeod)

  • Twentieth-century literature and cultural history; modernism and modernity; women writers; Englishness; biography and lifewriting (Dr Alison Light)
  • English Literature after Empire, 1978-1990; black British writing and cinema; the Caribbean short story, 1920-1960; the writings of Stuart Hall; the relationship between postcolonialism and everyday life (Dr James Procter)
  • The literary landscape 1880-1930; Edwardian literature; H.G. Wells; modernist prose; neurology and literature; developments in literary form (Dr Andrew Shail).
  • Indian/South Asian literature in English, theories and narratives of violence, anti-colonial and postcolonial cinema, Italian colonialism, postcolonial literature, and postcolonial theory (Dr Neelam Srivastava)

  • The intersections between medicine and modern/contemporary literature; trauma and literature; representations of the Holocaust; psychoanalytic theory and theories of affect (especially empathy); theories and literatures of memory; and memory, trauma or empathy in relation to literatures of transitional justice (Dr Anne Whitehead)

For more information see the Modern and Contemporary Studies research page.

American literature and culture

  • American literature, contemporary literature and culture, globalization, consumer society and lifestyle (Dr James Annesley)
  • American literature, cultural and intellectual history, modernism and postmodernism in literature and the visual arts, landscape and literature in America with particular regard to the Southwest (Dr John Beck)

  • Modernism; magazines (avant-garde and popular); publishing history; popular print culture; middlebrow culture; relationship between literature and film in the early twentieth century; early twentieth century transatlantic literature and culture; history of reading and reading practices (Dr Kirsten MacLeod)

For more information see the American Literature and Culture research page.

Children's Literature

  • Children's literature, especially in the early modern period; the child's relationship with Shakespeare (Professor Kate Chedgzoy)
  • Children's literature and culture in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Dr Matthew Grenby)
  • Twentieth-century and contemporary children's literature; children's publishing; transformative works and fan cultures (Dr Lucy Pearson)
  • Most aspects of children's literature studies with particular emphasis on modernism and children's literature, genres, late-Victorian and Edwardian writers and illustrators, picturebooks, fairy tales and movements between formats (Professor Kim Reynolds)

For more information see the Children's literature research page.

Postcolonial Studies 

  • Lesbian/gay/queer culture, theory, and writing (Professor Kate Chedgzoy)
  • English Literature after Empire, 1978-1990; black British writing and cinema; the Caribbean short story, 1920-1960; the writings of Stuart Hall; the relationship between postcolonialism and everyday life (Dr James Procter)
  • Indian/South Asian literature in English, theories and narratives of violence, anti-colonial and postcolonial cinema, Italian colonialism, postcolonial literature, and postcolonial theory (Dr Neelam Srivastava)

For more information see the Postcolonial Studies research page.

Theatre Studies

  • Shakespeare, performance and pedagogy; contemportary British theatre; drama, theatre and prisons; documenting live performance and rehearsal (Professor Peter Reynolds)