Staff Profile

Role in the School

I am a Reader in Modernist Print Culture and am currently serving as Head of Subject for Literature. I teach across all three years of the Literature UG and MA degree programmes on topics including Victorian literature, Visual Culture, Modernism, Periodical Studies, and Book History.

Qualifications

PhD English, University of Alberta

MLIS, University of Alberta

MA English, McGill University

BA (Drama and Theatre), McGill University

Memberships

I serve on the Advisory Board for the Research Society of American Periodicals.

I am an active member of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, the British Association for Decadence Studies, and the Modernist Studies Association.

I was elected to membership of the Grolier Club, the oldest bibliophile society in North America, in 2013.

Research Interests

My research covers American and British print culture of the long fin-de-siècle (1870-1930). Particular interests include: late nineteenth and early twentieth century periodical studies; book history; Aestheticism, Decadence, and Modernism; collectors and collecting culture. My publications have centred on American magazines; Decadence, fin-de-siècle and modernist print culture; and the histories of literary archives. 

Current Work

I am working on a monograph on Van Vechten, critic of music, dance, theatre, and literature; novelist; portrait photographer; unofficial literary agent; and patron of the arts. The monograph explores Van Vechten's long overlooked but important role in shaping Modernism in America in the first half of the twentieth century. 

Forthcoming publications include chapters on the Decadent book as material object for the Oxford Handbook of Decadence; The Beautiful and Damned and Literary Decadence for the Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald; and the flaneur aesthetic of M'lle New York for a volume of essays, Modernity and the Periodical Press.

Recent publications include chapters on the Decadent book as material object for the Oxford Handbook of Decadence; The Beautiful and Damned and Literary Decadence for the Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald; and the flaneur aesthetic of M'lle New York for a volume of essays, Modernity and the Periodical Press.

Postgraduate Supervision

I welcome applications from research students interested in Aestheticism and Decadence; periodical studies; late-Victorian and Modernist print culture; 19th and early 20th-century transatlantic literary networks; and publishing history.

I am currently co-supervisor of PhD projects on fin-de siècle socialist feminism; Viz magazine; and women fans of British sci-fi; and cultural revivalism, alternative spiritualities, and proto-environmentalism in fin-de-siècle print culture

Esteem Indicators

Winner of the Research Society for American Periodicals Book Prize, 2017-2018 for American Little Magazines of the fin de siècle: Art, Protest and Cultural Transformation

Member of Advisory Board, Research Society for American Periodicals (2019- )

Funding

• Aid to Scholarly Publishing Grant, Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences (2016)
• Eccles Eccles Centre Visiting Fellowship in American Studies, British Library (2012)
• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Standard Research Grant (2008-2012) 
• Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center Fellowship (2004-2005)
• SSHRC Post-doctoral Fellowship (2002-2004)

Undergraduate Teaching (2024-2025)

SEL1033 Doing Criticism

SEL2218 English Literature and History Independent Research Project

Postgraduate Teaching (2024-2025)

SEL8674 Research Methods

• Articles

  • MacLeod K. Material Turns of the Screw: The Collier’s Weekly Serialization of The Turn of the Screw . Cahiers Victoriens et édouardiens 2016, 84, 21 ms. pp.
  • MacLeod K. American Little Magazines of the 1890s and the Rise of the Professional-Managerial Class. English Studies in Canada 2015, 41(1), 41-68.
  • Macleod K. Making It New, Old School: Carl Van Vechten and Decadent Modernism. Symbiosis 2012, 16(2), 209-224.
  • MacLeod K. The "Librarian's Dream-Prince": Carl Van Vechten and America's Modernist Cultural Archives Industry. Libraries & the Cultural Record 2011, 46(4), 360-387.
  • MacLeod K. The First Appearance of Jack London's Bald-Face (1900). Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 2010, 104(3), 347-352.
  • MacLeod K. M. P. Shiel and the Love of Pubescent Girls: The Other Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name. English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 2008, 51(4), 355-380.
  • MacLeod K. ‘Art for America’s Sake’: Decadence and the Making of American Literary Culture in the Little Magazines of the 1890s. Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies 2006, 31, 309-339.
  • MacLeod K. “Romps with Ransom’s King: Fans, Collectors, Academics, and the M. P. Shiel Archives.”. English Studies in Canada 2004, 30, 117-36.
  • Leighton ME, MacLeod K. “The Trials of Naturalism: Zola in the British Literary and Cultural Imagination of the fin de siècle.”. Excavatio: International Review for Multidisciplinary Approaches and Comparative Studies Related to Emile Zola and His Time 2001, 15.
  • MacLeod K. “Marie Corelli and Fin-de-Siècle Francophobia: The Absinthe Trail of French Art.”. English Literature in Transition 2000, 43, 66-82.

• Authored Books

  • MacLeod K. American Little Magazines of the Fin de Siecle: Art, Protest, and Cultural Transformation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018.
  • MacLeod K. American Little Magazines of the 1890s: A Revolution in Print. Sunderland, UK: Bibelot Press, 2013. In Press.
  • MacLeod K. Fictions of British Decadence: High Art, Popular Literature and the fin de siècle. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

• Bibliographies

  • MacLeod K. "Ernest Dowson". Oxford Bibliographies Online: Victorian Literature 2013.
  • MacLeod K. "Marie Corelli". Oxford Bibliographies Online: Victorian Literature 2012.

• Book Chapters

  • MacLeod K. Strolling the Page: The Flâneur Aesthetic of M’lle New York . In: Mayer R; Brinker F, ed. Modernity and the Periodical Press: Trans-Atlantic Mass Culture and the Avantgardes, 1880-1920. Leiden: Brill, 2023, pp.33–54.
  • MacLeod K. The Beautiful and Damned and Literary Decadence. In: Nowlin M, ed. The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023, pp.38-53.
  • MacLeod K. Book Arts: The Decadent Gesamtkunstwerk. In: Desmarais J; Weir D, ed. Oxford Handbook of Decadence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, pp.391-416.
  • MacLeod K. Decadent America, 1890-1930. In: Murray, Alex, ed. Decadence: A Literary History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, pp.287-304.
  • MacLeod K. "American Avant-Gardism: Little Magazines.". In: Lomazow,S, ed. Magazines and the American Experience: Highlights from the Collection of Steven Lomazow, M. D. New York: Grolier Club, 2020, pp.325.
  • MacLeod K. The Queerness of Being 1890 in 1922: Carl Van Vechten and the New Decadence. In: Hext, K; Murray, A, ed. Decadence in the Age of Modernism. Baltimore, USA: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019.
  • MacLeod K. Decadence and Institutions of Modernism in the American Literary Field of the 1910s. In: Guy JM, ed. The Edinburgh Companion to Fin-de-Siècle Literature, Culture, and the Arts. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2017.
  • MacLeod K. 'The Power of Her Pen’: Marie Corelli, Authorial Identity and Literary Value. In: Gelder, K, ed. New Directions in Popular Fiction: Genre, Distribution, Reproduction. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp.309-326.
  • MacLeod K. What People Really Read in 1922: If Winter Comes, the Bestseller in the Annus Airabilis of Modernism. In: MacDonald, K; Singer, C, ed. Transitions in Middlebrow Writing, 1880-1930. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp.14-34.
  • MacLeod K. The Fine Art of Cheap Print: Turn-of-the-Century American Little Magazines. In: Ann Ardis and Patrick Collier, ed. Transatlantic Print Culture 1880-1940: Emerging Media, Emerging Modernisms. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008, pp.182-198.

• Exhibitions

  • MacLeod K. American Little Magazines of the 1890s: A Revolution in Print. 2013. 47 East 60th Street, New York City: Grolier Club, 170.
  • MacLeod K, Badley J. Women, Writing, and Reading. 2007. University of Alberta: Bruce Peel Special Collections Library, 75.

• Online Publication

  • MacLeod K. "Decadent Archives." Special issue of Volupté: A Journal of Decadence Studies. London: Goldsmiths, University of London, 2020. Available at: http://journals.gold.ac.uk/index.php/volupte/article/view/1413/1527.

• Scholarly Editions

  • MacLeod K. The Blind Bow-Boy by Carl Van Vechten. MHRA Critical Texts 2018. London: MHRA, 62, 182.
  • MacLeod K. Wormwood, by Marie Corelli. 2004. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press.