Positions

My Leverhulme Visiting Professorship at Newcastle University extends from January - July 2022, with a return trip in October 2022 for a Leverhulme literary symposium. Matthew Grenby, Dean of Research and Innovation and my sponsoring and supervising Professor for this award, recognized in my research on rural modernity, rural literature, 18th-20th century children's book illustration, and Thomas Bewick a basis upon which to advance rural humanities at Newcastle.

I serve in the permanent academic positions of Professor of English and Wayne D. McMurray and Helen Bennett Endowed Chair in the Humanities at Monmouth University, New Jersey, USA.

Qualifications

PhD Rutgers University, 1994

MA Rutgers University, 1991

BA Wesleyan University, 1986

Personal Interests

My interests in rural studies stem from my childhood in the small town of Holden, Massachusetts, quietly proximate to rural lands, economies, and leisure. Holden had a handsome, turreted public library where I spent many more hours reading in happy isolation than I ever did skiing, hiking, or climbing in the New England woods. My heroines were Louisa May Alcott, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Abby Kelley Foster. In some ways, they still are.

Areas of Interest

My research is thoroughly interdisciplinary, bridging fields of twentieth-century literary studies, children's literature, middlebrow studies, modernist studies, book history, and print culture. My revised dissertation, Experimenting on the Borders of Modernism: Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage (1997) was one of the earlier monographs on Richardson's 13-volume novel. I then moved "up" the century to study 1930s and 1940s literature in George Orwell and the Radical Eccentrics: Intermodernism in Literary London (2004), which led to a collaborative theorization of intermodernism in the edited Intermodernism: Literary Culture in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain (2009; 2011). Ideas about intermodernism and middlebrow launched my studies of British children's literature, book illustration, and especially wood engraved illustrations of the interwar and war years. Encounters with modern(ist) bias against rural representation and engagements with theories of rural modernity sparked my first interdisciplinary, collaborative project in the rural humanities, Rural Modernity in Britain: A Critical Intervention (2018), co-edited with Michael McCluskey. I am currently at work on a monograph titled "Enchanted Wood: Women Artists, Rural Britain, and the Twentieth-Century Wood Engraving Revival," to be published by the University of Minnesota Press. 

I welcome inquiries about possible talks or collaborative projects that might extend this work, with particular interest in working with students and academics similarly committed to advancing rural humanities at Newcastle.

External Reader, Ph.D. Committees

Abigail Moreshead, "Women, Magazines, and the Work of Wood Engraving." English Department, University of Central Florida. Defending May 2023.

Jennifer Larson, “Oxford Intermodernists: Vera Brittain, Winifred Holtby, H. S. Reid and Sylvia Thompson Writing between the Wars.” Arts and Letters, Drew University. Defending December 2022.

Grace Lillard, “Deceptively Ingratiating Shapes: The Feminist Politics of Popular Genre in 20th-Century British Fiction.” English Department, Washington University of Saint Louis. Defending February 2021.

Reid Echols, "Conservatism and Conservation: Ecology and Rural Nostalgia in Interwar Britain." English Department, University of Texas, Austin. Defended June 2019.

Alison Hurlburt, “Materiality and the Masculine Middlebrow: Wells, Bennett, Galsworthy.” English Department, University of Alberta. Defended 9 December 2013.

Esteem Indicators

American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), Fellowship Program Peer Reviewer, 2019-2022.

Modernist Studies Association (MSA), First Book Prize Committee Member and Chair, 2020

Children’s Literature Association (ChLA), Conference Committee, 2019-2021.

Children’s Literature Association (ChLA), Conference Paper Selection Committee, 2019-2021.

Editorial Board, Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945. Published annually by the Space Between Society. http://www.spacebetweenjournal.org/ 2015-

Editorial Board, George Orwell Studies. Published annually by Abramis of Bury St Edmunds. http://www.orwellsociety.com/call-for-papers/ 2015-

Editorial Board, Literary Texts and the Popular Marketplace. Book series with Routledge, founded by Pickering and Chatto Publishers. Directed by Ann Rea, initiated May 2010. https://www.routledge.com/series/LTPM

Core member, Middlebrow Transatlantic Interdisciplinary Research Network (AHRC-supported project) 2008-2011. Principle Investigator: Faye Hammill, University of Strathclyde.

Co-President, Founding Member, Trustee, The Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945

Trustee and Incorporating Agent (2012-present), Co-president (1997-2006), and founding member (1997) of an interdisciplinary academic society devoted to cultural study of the period bracketed by the First and Second World Wars. In addition to the above mentioned journal, The Space Between, the Society sponsors an annual conference, prize, and web page.

Peer Manuscript Reviewer

Book Publishers: Routledge, Bloomsbury Academic, Edinburgh University Press, Oxford University Press, Liverpool University Press, MLA Publications, Northwestern University Press, Cambridge University Press, University of Virginia Press, Columbia University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Wayne State University Press, ELT Press.

Journals: Modernism/Modernity, Literary Geographies, Women: A Cultural Review, Twentieth-Century Literature, Modern Fiction Studies, Feminist Modernist Studies, LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, Review of English Studies, M/C Journal: A Journal of Media and Culture, PMLA, National Women’s Studies Journal.

• Bluemel K. Enchanted Wood: Women Artists, Rural Britain, and the Twentieth-Century Wood Engraving Revival. University of Minnesota Press, 2024. In Preparation.
• Bluemel K, Holden I, ed. Blitz Writing: Night Shift and It Was Different at the Time. Bath: Handheld Press, 2019.
• Bluemel K, McCluskey M, ed. Rural Modernity in Britain: A Critical Intervention. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018.
• Bluemel K, ed. Intermodernism: Literary Culture in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain. Edinburgh University Press, 2009.
• Bluemel K. George Orwell and the Radical Eccentrics: Intermodernism in Literary London. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
• Bluemel K. Experimenting on the Borders of Modernism: Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage. University of Georgia Press, 1997.