Staff Profile
Professor Anne Whitehead
Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature
- Email: anne.whitehead@ncl.ac.uk
- Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 3531
- Fax: +44 (0) 191 208 8708
- Address: School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK.
Background
Background
Anne has worked at Newcastle University since she was appointed as a lecturer in 1999. Before this, she held a two-year Earl Grey Memorial post-doctoral research fellowship at Newcastle.
Internal Roles
Anne is on research leave in semester 2 of 2020-21.
Anne sits on the steering committee of the Newcastle University Medical Humanities Network and she acts as a mentor in the Newcastle University Mentor Scheme.
External Roles
Anne is a regular national and international reviewer and she is a member of the AHRC Peer Review College (2017-22).
Anne sits on the steering committee of the Wellcome funded Northern Network for Medical Humanities Research.
Anne is currently an external examiner on the MA in Medical Humanities: Bodies, Cultures and Ideas at Birkbeck, University of London (2020-24). She has previously been appointed as external examiner of the undergraduate English Literature degrees at Cardiff University (2011-2014) and Bristol University (2016-20). At doctoral level, Anne has been an external examiner for candidates at institutions in the UK, Australia, Singapore, and Finland.
Research
Research Interests
Most recently, Anne has written the monograph Medicine and Empathy in Contemporary British Fiction: An Intervention in Medical Humanities (Edinburgh University Press, 2017). Here she argues that empathy is not something that we have but something that we do. Through a series of textual readings, Anne examines how the contemporary novel can illuminate the operations of empathy, with an emphasis on fiction's ability to hold open different voices and possibilities. Reviewing the book in Contemporary Literature, Jane F. Thrailkill observed: 'Whitehead's new book models the ways that interdisciplinary scholarship, written under the aegis of the medical humanities, can address profound questions about human connectedness in an increasingly technophile, neoliberal and globalized world'.
Anne has co-edited with Angela Woods, Sarah Atkinson, Jane Macnaughton and Jennifer Richards The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities (Edinburgh University Press, 2016). This volume asks how interdisciplinary thinking across the humanities and social sciences might contribute to, and become productively entangled with, the medical understanding of the human both individually and collectively.
Anne's other books include Memory: New Critical Idiom (Routledge, 2008) and Theories of Memory: A Reader, co-edited with Michael Rossington (Edinburgh University Press, 2007). Anne is also the author of Trauma Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2004), and she co-edited W. G. Sebald: A Critical Companion with J. J. Long (Edinburgh University Press, 2004). Her articles have been published in Modern Fiction Studies, Contemporary Literature and Textual Practice. She co-edited a special issue of Feminist Theory on feminism and affect with Carolyn Pedwell (2012).
Doctoral Supervision
Anne is an experienced supervisor of doctoral projects and welcomes applications in any area of her expertise. She was Director of Postgraduate Studies for the School of English (2013-16) and she acted as Interim Director of the Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Consortium (2015-16).
Engagement and Impact
Anne was PI on an Innovate UK/AHRC funded Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children's Books, working with Lucy Pearson. The project was the recipient of the Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Award for Knowledge Exchange Project of the Year, 2017.
Teaching
Undergraduate Teaching
SEL2206, Contemporary Cultures (lecturer)
SEL1023, Transformations (lecturer)
SEL3362 English Literature Dissertation (supervisor)
Postgraduate Teaching
Research Methods: 'Representing Pain' (MA in English Literature)
Thinking Theories and Methods: 'Medical Humanities' (Faculty of Arts and Humanities Doctoral Training)
Publications
- Whitehead A. Kazuo Ishiguro's Nocturnes: Between Archive and Repertoire. Modern Fiction Studies 2021, 67(1), 20-39.
- 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.