English
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Research in English and American Literatures
English received a grading of 5 in the 2001 RAE, and in 2008 50% of English’s outputs were assessed as being internationally excellent or world leading in quality. English at Keele has major research strengths in the following areas, where we welcome postgraduates who are seeking expert supervision:
- The Early Modern period (Dr Munro, Dr Pooley, Professor Bruce, and Dr Seager) is the focus for long-standing interdisciplinary collaborations with Early Modern Research in History. There are strengths in textual editing and the history of the book, and Dr Munro collaborates with the Globe Theatre, London.
- Keele remains associated with the leading edge of eighteenth-century research through Emeritus Professor McLaverty’s leadership of the AHRC-funded Swift Electronic Archive project, and his involvement in the Cambridge University Press the Swift edition; Dr Seager’s research on Defoe and print culture augments this area and is an important bridge between the early modern period and eighteenth-century interests.
- The Victorians and Long Nineteenth-Century has been for many years a major focus at Keele (Professor Amigoni and Dr Shears); in 2008, the Masters Programme in Victorian Studies celebrated its 40th anniversary with an international colloquium on Life Writing. Again, print history is a major thematic research focus. The study of life writing (Professor Amigoni) and the relationship between science, medicine and literature (Professor Amigoni) are important areas of activity.
- English and American Literature at Keele constitutes a major international centre for research into Trans-Atlantic culture (including Franco-phone Canada) from Modernism to the present. Professors McCracken, Bell, and Harris, work with Drs Bentley, Lustig, Morgan, and Peacock in an area where twentieth-century research questions around print, editing and cultural space are shared concerns.
- There is also a vibrant group researching later twentieth and twenty-first literature and culture (Dr. Bentley on contemporary British fiction, British literature and culture of the 1950s, postcolonialism, and youth cultures, Dr Carrigan on globalisation, travel writing and eco-criticism); Dr Johnson’s research on film, theory and sexuality. The focus on film and visuality also finds expression in Dr Munro’s work on Shakespeare and film, and Professor Bruce’s work on the history of photography.
Research in Creative Writing is currently moving in new and exciting directions. James Sheard, a poet, and Joe Stretch, a novelist, are energetic leaders of the Creative Writing team and have established an MA in Creative Writing which started in September 2009. Creative Writing is thus developing into an area of research in its own right. An important goal is to establish a Centre for Contemporary Writing, based on interests shared between creative writers and critics.
Funded Collaborations
David Amigoni and Lucy Munro are co-investigators on a major interdisciplinary project entitled ‘Ages and stages: the place of theatre in representations and recollections of ageing’, and led by Professor Miriam Bernard of Keele’s Centre for Social Gerontology. We are working in partnership with the New Victoria Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme – originally Peter Cheeseman’s famous Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent (on which the project’s archival research is to be based). The project is funded under the New Dynamics of Ageing cross-council research programme.
The Ages and Stages research team has been awarded a 12 month Follow-on Funding grant by the Arts & Humanities Research Council to the value of £114,579.
The additional financial support will enable the team to develop the research-led learning from the initial project and continue the collaborative work between the University and the New Vic Theatre.
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Professor Scott McCracken has received a British Academy Small Research Grant to fund a Research Assistant to work with him on the Collected Letters of the influential modernist writer Dorothy Richardson. Keele has launched a new website realted to this: Dorothy Richardson Homepage
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Professor Scott McCracken is on the editorial board for new formations - an international interdisciplinary journal with an established international reputatio. Since 2001, issues have included: Mobilities ; Cultures and Economies ; After Fanon ; Intellectual Work ; Jean Laplanche and the Theory of Seduction ; After Iraq: reframing postcolonial studies.
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The Northern Modernism Seminar is organised jointly by the English departments of Keele, De Montfort and Manchester Universities.
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The David Bruce Centre, founded with an endowment of £400,000, supports interdisciplinary work in American Studies.
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Dr Beth Johnson, lecturer in Film and Television Studies, has been awarded an 18 month Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship for her project entitled 'Shameless: Aesthetics, Style & Putting 'cool' into the TV Classics Canon'.
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Dr Anthony Carrigan, and Dr Alicia Schrikker, Leiden University have a recent grant success with Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. The project is entitled The cultural politics of catastrophe: (post) colonial representations of Southeast Asian and Caribbean disasters, 1800-2012 was featured in the THE edition 28 April - 2 May 2012
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Dr James Peacock, Senior Lecturer in English and American Literatures, has been awarded a prestigious AHRC Fellowship for his research project, “Brooklyn Fictions: the Contemporary Urban Community in a Global Age.”
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Professor David Amigoni is PI of the AHRC-funded research network, 'Late-Life Creativity and the New Old Age: arts & humanities and gerontology in critical dialogue', a collaboration with Professor Gordon McMullan (King’s College, London)
