Background

Background

Anne Whitehead is Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature. She has held the post of Senior Lecturer since 2006. She was initially an Earl Grey Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow at Newcastle and was appointed to a lectureship in 1999. 

Research

Anne has authored books on various aspects of modern and contemporary literature, with particular interests in contemporary fiction, memory and trauma studies, theories of affect, literatures of conflict and the medical humanities. Her most recent monograph is Medicine and Empathy in Contemporary British Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2017). Her previous books include Trauma Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2004) and Memory: New Critical Idiom (Routledge, 2007). Anne has co-edited W. G. Sebald: A Critical Companion (Edinburgh University Press, 2004), Theories of Memory: A Reader (Edinburgh University Press, 2007), The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), and a special issue of Feminist Theory on feminism and affect (2012).

Teaching

Anne currently teaches a specialist stage 3 undergraduate module on representations of medicine in modern and contemporary fiction, as well as contributing a unit on literature and biopolitics to a team-taught stage 2 undergraduate module on contemporary cultures. 

At postgraduate level, she teaches contemporary fiction, medicine, and empathy on the MA module 'Mind, Body, Affect' and she offers a seminar on medical humanities on the Faculty doctoral training programme. 

Management Roles

In 2018-19, Anne will be Deputy Head for the School of English, as well as Director of Impact.  

External Activities

Anne has been the lead investigator on the first Innovate UK/ AHRC funded Knowledge Transfer Partnership to be awarded nationally in English Literature (2015-16), working with partner organisation Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children's Books to develop an adult audience for their exhibitions. This project, which focused on the Michael Morpurgo archive, was the recipient of the Knowledge Transfer/Exchange Initiative of the Year at the Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Awards, 2017. 

Anne has been in conversation with novelist Pat Barker at a number of literary events, most recently the 2018 Durham Book Festival.  

  

 

 

Research

Current Work

Anne's most recent monograph is: Medicine and Empathy in Contemporary British Fiction: An Intervention in Medical Humanities (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017).

You can access reviews of the book here:

https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humanities/2019/01/25/medicine-and-empathy-in-contemporary-british-fiction-book-review/?hootPostID=56d4cd4a70273a1b72f5d4d6e743ac43

http://centreformedicalhumanities.org/medicine-and-empathy-in-contemporary-british-fiction-a-critical-intervention-in-medical-humanities-by-anne-whitehead-reviewed-by-iro-filippaki/ 

https://medicalhealthhumanities.com/2018/06/18/review-anne-whiteheads-medicine-empathy-in-contemporary-british-literature-an-intervention-in-medical-humanities/

Anne has recently co-edited the following book:  

Anne Whitehead, Angela Woods, Sarah Atkinson, Jane Macnaughton and Jennifer Richards (eds) The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016).

You can read the Introduction under the 'Resources' tab at the following link:https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edinburgh-companion-to-the-critical-medical-humanities.html

External Funding

Innovate UK / AHRC Knowledge Transfer Partnership (PI) - Developing Exhibitions for an Adult Audience: The Michael Morpurgo Archive, with Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children's Books (2015-2016).

AHRC Research Leave Award (PI) - Memory: New Critical Idiom (2006-2007)

AHRC Research Leave Award (PI) - Trauma Fiction (2002-2003)

British Academy Small Research Grant (PI)- The Charlotte Salomon Archive (2001).

Invited Talks

Anne has recently been invited to speak at the following events:

Keynote Presentation: 'Imperfect Tense: Reflections on Memoir', Connecting Memories Research Network, Edinburgh University, March 2019.

Plenary Presentation: 'Empathy and Ecology: Louise Gluck's The Wild Iris', '"Altered States": Mind, Embodiment, Aesthetics', Sorbonne University, Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art and Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Paris, June 2018.

Presentation: 'Empathy and/as Practice', Empathy and Affect in Medical and Theatrical Practice, University of Warwick, October 2017.

Special panel: 'Politics and Empathy Today', American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, University of Utrecht, June 2017.

Presentation, with Angela Woods: 'Why the Critical Medical Humanities?', Birkbeck, University of London, November 2016.

Keynote Address: 'The Medical Humanities and the Question of Empathy', 40th Conference of AEDEAN, University of Zaragoza, October 2016.

 

Doctoral Supervision

Current students:

Emily Anderson, 'Humour in British Writing of the First World War' (AHRC).

Toby Martinez de las Rivas, 'Sacred Agonies: Pain, Salvation and the Suffering Body' (AHRC)

 

Completed students:

Anne has supervised thirteen doctoral students to completion, eight of whom have been funded by the AHRC. Recent topics include: 'The Ethics of Writing Fiction on North Korea', 'Childhood, memory and nationhood in Cypriot children's literature since 1974',  'Atrocity, culpability, and failures of witnessing in W. G. Sebald and Kazuo Ishiguro', 'Literary and filmic representations of political torture from Algiers to Guantanamo',  and 'Psychoanalysis, Self Identity and Affect'.

She is also an experienced supervisor of MLitts (MA by Research) and has, most recently, supervised projects on the reading the body in women's testimony of genocide, and on the writing of John Burnside.

 

Doctoral Examining

University of York, Sheffield University, Durham University, University of St Andrews, University of Stirling, Royal Holloway, Vaasa University in Finland, and Monarch University in Perth, Australia. 

  

External Assessorships

AHRC, Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme Trust, Royal Society, Newton Fellowships, Humanities and Social Sciences Research Council of Canada, Flemish Research Council (FWO) Vlaanderen, Research Council of KU Leuven.

 

Editorial Boards and Professional Memberships  

Member of the AHRC Peer Review College (2017-2020)

Member of the editorial board for the Journal of Trauma and Literature.

Member of steering committee for the Northern Network for Medical Humanities

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching

SEL3356, Madness, Medicine and Modern Literature.

SEL2206, Contemporary Cultures

SEL1023, Transformations.

 

Postgraduate Teaching

SEL8539, Mind, Body, Affect

MA Research Matters: 'Affect Theory'

Thinking Theories and Methods: 'Medical Humanities'.

 

External Examining

From 2011-2014, Anne was appointed as external examiner for the undergraduate degree programmes in English Literature at Cardiff University.

She is currently acting as external examiner for undergraduate degree programmes in English Literature at Bristol University (2016-20).

Publications

• Whitehead A. Medicine and Empathy in Contemporary British Fiction: An Intervention in Medical Humanities. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017.
• Whitehead A, Woods A, Atkinson S, Macnaughton J, Richards J, ed. Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2016.
• Whitehead A, Woods A. Introduction. In: Anne Whitehead, Angela Woods, Sarah Atkinson, Jane Macnaughton and Jennifer Richards, ed. The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2016, pp.1-31.
• Whitehead A. War and Beauty: The Act of Unmasking in Pat Barker's Toby's Room and Louisa Young's My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You. In: Saunders C; Macnaughton J; Fuller D, ed. The Recovery of Beauty: Arts, Culture, Medicine. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp.217-234.
• Whitehead A. The Medical Humanities: A Literary Perspective. In: Victoria Bates, Alan Bleakley, and Samuel Goodman, ed. Medicine, Health and the Arts: Approaches to the Medical Humanities. London and New York: Routledge, 2014, pp.107-127.
• Whitehead A. Reading with empathy: Sindiwe Magona's Mother to Mother. Feminist Theory 2012, 13(2), 181-195.
• Pedwell C, Whitehead A, ed. Affecting Feminism: Questions of Feeling in Feminist Theory (Special issue of Feminist Theory). London: Sage, 2012.
• Pedwell C, Whitehead A. Introduction: Affecting feminism: Questions of feeling in feminist theory. Feminist Theory 2012, 13(2), 115-129.
• Whitehead A. Writing with care: Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Contemporary Literature 2011, 52(1), 54-83.
• Whitehead A. Representing the Child Soldier: Trauma, Postcolonialism and Ethics in Delia Jarrett-Macauley's Moses, Citizen and Me. In: Ganteau, JM; Onega, S, ed. Ethics and Trauma in Contemporary British Fiction. Amsterdam: Rodopi BV, 2011, pp.205-234.
• Whitehead A. Trauma and Resistance in Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers. In: Crownshaw, R; Kilby, J; Rowland, A, ed. The Future of Memory. Oxford: Berghahn, 2010, pp.241-251.
• Whitehead A. Journeying through hell: Wole Soyinka, trauma, and postcolonial Nigeria. Studies in the Novel 2008, 40(1-2), 13-30.
• Whitehead A. Memory. London and New York: Routledge, 2008.
• Whitehead A. The Role of Theories of Memory in Teaching the Holocaust. In: Eaglestone R; Langford B, ed. Teaching Holocaust Literature and Film. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pp.37-47.
• Rossington M, Whitehead A, Contributing eds.: Anderson L, Chedgzoy K, Mukherjee P, Richards J, ed. Theories of Memory: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007.
• Whitehead A. Tony Harrison, the Gulf War and the poetry of protest. Textual Practice 2005, 19(2), 349-+.
• Whitehead A. Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy. In: Shaffer, B.W, ed. A Companion to the British and Irish Novel 1945-2000. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005, pp.550-561.
• Whitehead A. Trauma fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004.
• Long JJ, Whitehead A. W. G. Sebald - A Critical Companion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004.
• Whitehead A. The past as revenant: Trauma and haunting in Pat Barker's Another World. Critique - Studies in Contemporary Fiction 2004, 45(2), 129-146.
• Whitehead A. 'Telling Tales: Trauma and Testimony in Binjamin Wilkomirski's Fragments'. Discourse 2003, 25(1 & 2), 119-137.
• Whitehead A. Geoffrey Hartman and the Ethics of Place: Landscape, Memory, Trauma. European Journal of English Studies 2003, 7(3), 275-292.
• Whitehead A. A Still, Small Voice: Letter-writing, Testimony and the Project of Address in Etty Hillesum's Letters from Westerbork. Cultural Values 2001, 5(1), 79-96.
• Rossington M, Whitehead A, ed. Between the Psyche and the Polis: Refiguring History in Literature and Theory. Aldershot and Burlington, Vt: Ashgate, 2000.
• Whitehead Anne. Refiguring Orpheus: the possession of the past in Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters. Textual Practice, 13 227-241 1999.
• Anne Whitehead. Open to Suggestion: Hypnosis and History in Pat Barker's Regeneration. Modern Fiction Studies, 44 674-694 1998.