Newcastle University > English Literature, Language and Linguistics > Our Research > Literature > Literature Postgraduate Students > Current PGR students > Caroline Rae

A brief outline of my research project

My research examines representations of water and the ocean in contemporary fictions of an area I have identified as the Northern Atlantic Littoral – rural and coastal spaces in Eastern Canada and the U.K. Responding to a call by scholars of critical ocean studies to ‘put the ocean’s agitation back onto our mental maps and into the study of literature’ (Yaeger, 2010), I theorise ‘uncanny water’ as a figuration within contemporary literature. I posit that as writers evoke or inhibit the uncanny in relation to water, they reconfigure representations of the ocean beyond hitherto simplified narratives of it as vast, inexhaustible and sublime. Instead by utilising uncanny tropes such as ghosts and sea monsters, these fictions draw attention to the interconnection that humans and water have across time and space and seek to cultivate greater responsibility toward the planet’s oceans in the Anthropocene.

Research activities

My academic background

• MA English Literature, University of Amsterdam
• MA (Hons) German and English Literature, University of Edinburgh