Background

Background

Anne Whitehead is Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature. She has held the post of Senior Lecturer since 2006. She was Earl Grey Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow at Newcastle from 1997-1999 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, 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 is currently module leader for the stage 3 Dissertation module as well as contributing a unit on literature and biopolitics to a team-taught stage 2 undergraduate module on contemporary cultures. She is also module leader for the stage 1 undergraduate module Transformations.

At postgraduate level, Anne contributes to the MA research methods training module and offers a seminar on medical humanities on the Faculty doctoral training programme. She also contributes to a medical humanities workshop co-delivered by Durham and Newcastle Universities as part of the Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership.   

Management Roles

In 2019-20, Anne is 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. 

  

  

 

 

Research

Current Work

Framed through the concept of the life course, discussion of a good life and a good death is usually premised on the assumption of longevity. How might we define a good life and a good death in earliest life mortality, when life ends even as it begins?

Anne is the recipient of a seed award from the Wellcome funded Northern Network for Medical Humanities Research and she will be working with Judith Rankin, Nicholas Embleton, Simon Woods and Marianne Wilde, and in collaboration with the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, to host a workshop that opens up a conversation on these questions.

Anne has also received a Pioneer Award, funded by the Newcastle University Humanities Research Institute, to collaborate with artist Marianne Wilde in the co-creation of an artist's book, in conversation with parents who have experienced neonatal loss in multiple pregnancies.       

External Funding

Northern Network for Medical Humanities Research Seed Award, supported by the Wellcome Trust (PI) - 'Defining a Good Life and a Good Death in Earliest Life Mortality: A Workshop' (2019-20)   

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).

Recent Talks

'The View from Prospect Cottage: Derek Jarman's Queer Ecology', Cultures of Toxicity, University of Warwick, November 2019.

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

'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.

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

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

 

Doctoral Experience

Anne has acted as Postgraduate Director for the School of English (2013-16) and as Acting Director of the Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership (2015-16). She is an experienced supervisor of doctoral projects and welcomes applications in any area of her expertise.

Anne is currently the supervisor of the critical component of Toby Martinez de las Rivas's AHRC funded project, 'Sacred Agonies: Pain, Salvation and the Suffering Body'. The creative component is supervised by Sinead Morrissey and Sean O'Brien.  Toby is the recipient of the 2019-20 Renwick Scholarship, which funds a two-week residency at the British School of Rome.

Anne has supervised fourteen doctoral students to completion, nine of whom have been funded by the AHRC. She has been an external examiner of PhDs at the University of York, Sheffield University, Durham University, University of St Andrews, Stirling University, Royal Holloway, Vaasa University in Finland, and Monarch University in Perth, Australia. 

  

External Assessorships

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

 

Editorial Boards and Professional Memberships  

AHRC Peer Review College (2017-2020)

Editorial board for the Journal of Trauma and Literature.

Steering committee, Northern Network for Medical Humanities Research 

Coordinating Committee, Medical Humanities Network, Newcastle University

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching

SEL3362, English Literature Dissertation (module leader and supervisor)

SEL3364/5, Extended Essay I and II (module leader, supervisor and lecturer)

SEL2206, Contemporary Cultures (lecturer and seminar leader)

SEL1023, Transformations.(module leader and lecturer)

 

Postgraduate Teaching

MA Research Matters: 'Affect Theory' (MA in English Literature)

Thinking Theories and Methods: 'Medical Humanities' (Doctoral Training Programme, Faculty of Arts and Humanities)

Interdisciplinary Critical Medical Humanities Research and its Applications: 'Sensitive Subjects' (Doctoral Training Programme, Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership, Durham University and Newcastle University)  

 

External Examining

Cardiff University (2011-2014), 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.