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CURRICULUM VITAE
Fiona McCulloch Nationality: Scottish
EDUCATION 1998 PhD English Literature, University of Liverpool. Thesis title: ‘“Child’s Play”: Performing Childhood in Victorian and Early Twentieth Century Children’s Literature’ 1994 MA (Single Hons) English Literature, University of Dundee
EMPLOYMENT Jan. 2015 – May 2015 Lynn Wood Neag Distinguished Visiting Professor Department of English University of Connecticut A Full Professor visiting appointment, where I will be teaching a graduate course: ‘Contemporary Scottish Women’s Fiction and Cosmopolitanism’ and an undergraduate course: ‘Contemporary British Children’s Fiction’, and delivering a public inaugural lecture.
Jan. 2010 – Jan. 2014 Director of English School of Social and International Studies (SSIS), University of Bradford Design and development of Children’s Fiction; Imagined Identities in British Literature; Sexuality and Identity in Literature; Colonial to Cosmopolitan Fiction; Victorian Literature; Study Skills for English Literature; Dissertation Workshop (See Teaching Dossier). Internal examiner for a PhD thesis on Gender Performance in Shakespeare. I was part of a supervisory team for a PhD student in Machine Anthropomorphism in Children’s Fiction. Administrative and pastoral duties relating to my taught modules. Administrative duties relating to Programme Director role in English. Admissions tutor for English, including attendance at Open Days, Visit Days and Clearing. I discussed English Literature at a Teachers and Trainers Conference at the University of Bradford in June 2012. I significantly improved the National Student Survey 2013 (NSS) statistics for English, so that, for instance, it scored second top for Personal Development (95.8%) in University of Bradford’s Departmental Rank. I also helped to vastly improve student performance, so that 2
English had the best pass and proceed rate in the Division of Peace Studies.
April 2003 – Jan 2010 Senior Lecturer in English Literature Department of Interdisciplinary Studies Manchester Metropolitan University Duties Due to the retirement of the Head of English, I was Co- Acting Head of English for a short period. This involved carrying out extra duties, such as giving Open Day presentations, taking part in a departmental review process and writing subject material for the first year undergraduate welcome pack. Design and development of Children’s Literature, Nineteenth & Twentieth-Century Literature modules. Undergraduate & postgraduate teaching. Course director for ‘Imagined Identities: Gender & Twentieth-Century British Literature’, ‘Literature & Society: Foundation English’, ‘Third Year Extended Essay’ and ‘Creating Childhood: Children’s Literature Since the Victorians’. (See Teaching Dossier). Teaching on the above courses, as well as ‘Contemporary Literature in English’, ‘Modernism & Postmodernism’ and ‘Nineteenth Century Fiction’. I was co-supervisor of a PhD student based at MIRIAD (thesis: animal imagery in children’s picture books, 1960s-1970s). Personal tutor for undergraduate students and, previously, year tutor across the faculty. Administrative and pastoral duties relating to my taught units.
2001-2002 Lecturer in English Literature (fixed-term), University of Manchester Taught post-1945 British literature and culture courses at undergraduate and MA level (See Teaching Dossier). Member of research panels for 2 PhD theses (James Joyce & Bakhtin; Elizabeth Gaskell)
1999-2001 Temporary Lecturer in English Literature Liverpool John Moores University (See Teaching Dossier)
1999 Temporary Lecturer in English Literature Liverpool Hope University College
1997-1998 Temporary Lecturer in English Literature Edge Hill University College
1996 Temporary Tutor in English Literature 3
University of Liverpool
ESTEEM INDICATORS Spring Term (Jan-May) 2015 Lynn Wood Neag Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Connecticut, USA. June 2015 Invited to give a conference paper on Scottish children’s and young adult fiction at Moat Brae Trust, Dumfries. December 2014 Intend to apply to Horizon 2020 project ‘The Young Generation in an Innovative, Inclusive and Sustainable Europe’. October 2014 Applied to the Leverhulme Research Fellowships. September 2014 Applied for funding to the Toyota Foundation's 'Exploring New Values for Society' Research Grant Funding 2014. August 2014 Guest lecture for the Scottish Universities’ International Summer School (SUISS), University of Edinburgh, on Jenni Fagan’s The Panopticon. July 2014 Invited by Dr Maureen Farrell to give a keynote panel presentation on contemporary Scottish children’s and YA fiction at World Congress of Scottish Literatures, University of Glasgow. Paper entitled: ‘Scotland’s Future: Cosmopolitan Children’s and YA Fiction’. Since January 2014 Peer reviewer for Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature. January 2014-January 2015 Honorary Research Fellow, University of Bradford October 2013 Awarded funding from School of Social and International Studies Research Fund, University of Bradford. September 2013 Invited to present a paper at the Ali Smith conference (Royal Holloway, University of London). Paper entitled: ‘“Words, words, words”: Culture and Anna Key in Ali Smith’s There but for the’. 2013 – 2017 External examiner for English at the University of Hertfordshire. August 2013 Guest lecture for the Scottish Universities’ International Summer School (SUISS), University of Edinburgh, on Ali Smith’s There but for the. Since August 2013 Peer reviewer for Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural. July 2013 Internal examiner for PhD viva ‘Shakespearean Polyphony: An Exploration of Female Voices in Selected Shakespeare Plays Using a Dialogic Framework’. Jan. 2013 Invited to contribute a 9000 word chapter on the ‘Novel of Education: Bildungsroman for Children and Young Adults’ for her forthcoming book, the Cambridge Companion to the Bildungsroman (Cambridge University Press), to be completed by Feb. 2016. 4
April 2012 Keynote speaker on ‘The Counterfeit Child’ for ESRC funded seminar ‘The Other Child’ (Media City, University of Salford). Since 2011 I have successfully forged links with the Ilkley Literature Festival, culminating in the free attendance for our staff and students to many Festival events. Further, I negotiated the housing of the Festival’s archive within the J.B.Priestley Library’s Special Collections. Also, students have been given employment opportunities at ILF. Since 2009 Co-Editor of Texts and Contexts, (Continuum Press). March 2009 Keynote guest speaker on MA in Children’s Literature and Culture (University of Bolton). 2009 My AHRC application was awarded an A Grade but was unsuccessful due to the large volume of applicants. Sep. 2008 Article, ‘“The Broken Telescope”: Misrepresentation in The Coral Island reprinted in Children’s Literature Review. Sep. – Dec. 2006 Promising Researcher Fellowship, Manchester Metropolitan University, Research, Enterprise and Development Unit. This was a major achievement in the face of university-wide competition. I was one of the first academics to be awarded this (one of nine fellowships that year). 1994-1998 PhD fully funded by C.K. Marr Educational Trust Scholarship, including fees and grant.
PUBLICATIONS
* Items eligible for REF 2020 submission
Books
* Contemporary British Children’s Literature and Cosmopolitanism (New York and London: Routledge, manuscript deadline, August 2015. This is part of their prestigious Children’s Literature and Culture series) Cosmopolitanism in Contemporary British Fiction: Imagined Identities (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, July 2012) ISBN 978-0-230-23477-2 Children’s Literature in Context (London and New York: Continuum Press, 2011) ISBN 978-1-84706-487-5 The Fictional Role of Childhood in Victorian and Early Twentieth-Century Children’s Fiction (Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2004). Includes an Introductory Preface (‘Victorian Children’s Literature as Political Foreplay’) by Professor Nancy Armstrong, Duke University ISBN 0-7734-7322-X Series Co-Editor of Texts and Contexts (London and New York: Continuum Press, 2009-14). This is a series that combines textbook with original research 5
that I co-edited with Dr Gail Ashton, formerly University of Manchester. As part of the series, I have written a book on Children’s Literature in Context (September 2011) which provides a key text for the teaching and scholarship of this increasingly popular subject at university level. Others in the series include: Gail Ashton, Medieval English Romance in Context (2010), Julie Mullaney, Postcolonial Literatures in Context (2010), Andrew Dix, Brian Jarvis and Paul Jenner, The Contemporary American Novel in Context (2011), Grace Moore, The Victorian Novel in Context (2012), Rosie Miles, Victorian Poetry in Context (2013)
Articles, Chapters and Reviews
* ‘Novel of Education: Bildungsroman for Children and Young Adults’ in Sarah Graham (ed.), Cambridge Companion to the Bildungsroman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, manuscript deadline, Feb. 2016) * ‘“Daughter of an Outcast Queen”: Defying State Expectations in Jenni Fagan’s The Panopticon in Scottish Literary Review, forthcoming 7:1 Spring/Summer 2015, subject to minor revisions. ISSN 1756-5634 * ‘“Many Different Voices and Accents”: Cosmopolitan Time-Travel in Catherine Forde’s Think Me Back’ in International Review of Scottish Studies, 39:1, 2014, pp.55-80. ISSN 1923-5763 * ‘Dis-membering “Patriotism”: Cosmopolitan Haunting in Theresa Breslin’s Remembrance’ in The Lion and the Unicorn, 38:3, Sept. 2014, forthcoming. ISSN 0147-2593 * ‘“The Future of the Planet”: Scottish Cosmopolitanism/feminism and Environmentalism in Theresa Breslin’s Saskia’s Journey’ in Studies in Scottish Literature, 40:1, pp.121-142, 2014, forthcoming. ISSN 0039-3770 ‘“Looking Back”: Scottish Queer Gothic Returns in Zoe Strachan’s Ever Fallen in Love’, in The Irish Journal of Gothic Horror Studies, Issue 11, June 2012 (http://irishgothichorrorjournal.homestead.com/EverFalleninLove.html). ISSN 2009-0374 ‘“Different Backgrounds”: Post-Devolution Citizenship and Community in Theresa Breslin’s Divided City’, in International Research in Children’s Literature, 4:2, Dec. 2011, pp.223-237. ISSN 1755-6198 ‘“Cross That Bridge”: Journeying Through Zoe Strachan’s Negative Space’, in Journal of Gender Studies 17:4, Dec. 08, pp.303-319. ISSN 0958-9236 ‘“A New Home in the World": Scottish Devolution, Nomadic Writing, and Supranational Citizenship in Julie Bertagna's Exodus and Zenith”’, in Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, 38:4, Oct. 07, pp.69-96. ISSN 0004-1327 ‘“Refugees Returning to Their Homeland”: Regaining Paradise in His Dark Materials’, in Laurie Ousley (ed.), To See the Wizard: Politics and the Literature of Childhood (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), pp.150-175. 6
ISBN 1-84718-233-X ‘Boundaries. Desire’: Spatial Inter-Acting in The Powerbook’ in English: The Journal of the English Association, Spring 2007, 56:214, pp.57-71. ISSN 0013-8215 ‘“A Key to the Future”: Hybridity in Contemporary Children’s Fiction’ in Berthold Schoene (ed.), The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), pp.141-148. ISBN 978 0 7486 2396 9 ‘“A Strange Race of Beings”: Undermining Innocence in The Princess and the Goblin’ in Scottish Studies Review 7:1, Spring 2006, pp.53-67. ISSN 1475-7737 ‘“Playing Double”: Performing Childhood in Treasure Island’ in Scottish Studies Review, 4:2, Autumn 2003, pp.66-81. ISSN 1475-7737 Reprinted in Literary Criticism on Stevenson’s Treasure Island (forthcoming, Gale: Cengage Learning) ‘“The Broken Telescope”: Misrepresentation in The Coral Island’ in Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Fall 2000, 25:3, pp. 137-145. Reprinted in Children’s Literature Review, Sep. 2008, 137. ISSN 0885-0429 ‘J.M. Barrie’ in Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp.130-133. ISBN 13:978-0-19-516921-8 ‘Lewis Carroll’ in Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp.386-389. ISBN 13:978-0-19-516921-8 [review of] Jackie C. Horne, History and the Construction of the Child in Early British Children’s Literature, and Jennifer Sattaur, Perceptions of Childhood in the Victorian Fin-de-Siècle, in Victorian Studies, 55:2, Winter 2013, pp.346-348. [review of] Meyer, Michael, ed., Literature and Homosexuality, in New Comparison 30, Autumn 2000, pp.137-138.
SAMPLE CITATIONS AND REVIEWS OF PUBLISHED WORK Zoe Strachan sent a message on 7 Aug 2012 to The Irish Journal of Gothic Horror Studies’ Twitter page: ‘Scottish Queer Gothic is where it’s at! Please pass on my thanks to Fiona, I found her article really interesting’ Aaron Kelly (University of Edinburgh) has reviewed my book, Cosmopolitanism in Contemporary British Fiction (2012) as a 'fresh and stimulating study which devolves contemporary British fiction in new and insightful directions' Julie Bertagna has commented on my book Children’s Literature in Context on her website, that it ‘has a whole chapter on the Exodus trilogy - which she dissects so brilliantly I feel as if she's been sneaking about the inside of my head. Perfect for anyone who reads, teaches or writes children's and YA lit, it's a fresh and brilliant discussion of some of the greats of children's literature’(http://spark- gap.blogspot.co.uk/) Marion Boucher, ‘Gender and Gernre in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden’ in La clé des langues, 2009 7
Adrienne E. Gavin and Andrew F. Humphries (eds.), Childhood in Edwardian Fiction: Worlds Enough and Time (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) Peter Hunt (ed. and intro.), Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 2011) Timoth S. Hayes, ‘Colonialism in R.L. Stevenson’s South Seas Fiction: “Child’s Play” in the Pacific’ in English Literature in Transition 1880-1920, 52:2, 2009, pp.160-181 Ymitri Mathison, ‘Maps, Pirates and Treasure: The Commodification of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century Boys’ Adventure Fiction’ in Dennis Dennisoff (ed.), The Nineteenth-Century Child and Consumer Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008) Glenda Norquay, ‘Trading Texts: Negotiations of the Professional and the Popular in the Case of Treasure Island’ in Richard Ambrosini and Richard Drury, Robert Louis Stevenson: Writer of Boundaries (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2006) Glenda Norquay, Robert Louis Stevenson and Theories of Reading: the Reader as Vagabond (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007)
TEACHING DOSSIER UG: Children’s Fiction – I have directed, revised and taught this 3 hour weekly core module at my previous university and as a 3 hour weekly option module when at MMU, and have adapted assessment and teaching to suit delivery at year 3 level or year 2 level. It has always recruited very strongly both within English and from other subject areas for which it served as an option. It explores a range of children’s literature, while also considering the socio-historical construction of childhood. The module examines ways in which texts dialogically engage with this construction of childhood innocence. It seeks to determine if childhood is a unified, stable structure, or whether it is prone to fluid mutability in accordance with socio-political influences, such as class, nationhood, and gender. Texts are, therefore, considered with a view to placing them within their framework of socio-historical production, beginning with the first Golden Age of children’s fiction and concluding with more recent works. Rather than perceiving childhood to be a coherent and inherent facet, this unit will demonstrate the cultural conditioning of such a crucial element of individual consciousness. Primary material is also be examined concerning ways in which texts do not necessarily mimetically reproduce dominant discourses of childhood but, on the contrary, may well intervene and actively subvert them through a playful genre which portrays childhood as an aspect of adult authorial performance. Texts include a selection of fairy tales, Carroll’s Alice Books, Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Burnett’s The Secret Garden, Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, LeGuin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, Pullman’s Northern Lights and Rowling’s Harry Potter, and Bertagna’s Exodus
Imagined Identities in British Literature – I have directed, revised and taught this 3 hour weekly core module at my previous university and when at MMU. It has always recruited very strongly, serving as an option for other subject areas. It considers a range of identity issues, such as gender, sexuality, social class, and race, by exploring literature from the early 20th Century to contemporary fiction. Texts include Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, West’s The Return of the Soldier, Forster’s Maurice, Fowles’s The Collector, Carter’s The Magic ToyShop, Barker’s Union Street, Welsh’s Marabou Stork Nightmares, Winterson’s The Powerbook and Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers. 8
Colonial to Cosmopolitan Fiction – I wrote, direct and teach this Level Three core module at my previous university which examines the influence of colonial discourse, postcolonialism and cosmopolitanism upon a range of British literary texts, including Ballantyne’s The Coral Island, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, Kureishi’s The Black Album, Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, Smith’s Hotel World, and Cross’s Where I Belong.
Study Skills for English – I wrote, direct and co-teach this Level One module at my previous university. It introduces students to the demands of the university study of English and includes sessions which help to equip the student with the necessary skills to write good essays, book reviews, to learn time management, referencing and plagiarism avoidance, as well as gaining an understanding of reading Literature at university by focusing on the rise of the study of English as a university subject and the move towards theory, as well as a selection of poetry and short stories to develop critical reading skills. Texts include poetry by Jackie Kay, Iain Crichton Smith, Fred D’Aguiar, Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, Stevenson’s Markheim, Mansfield’s The Daughters of the Late Colonel and Smith’s True Short Story.
Modernism and Postmodernism – I directed and taught this first year core module while at MMU, which proved very popular with students. It introduced students to the literary and historical aspects of modernism and postmodernism, discussing a range of key texts. Texts include Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Mansfield’s The Garden Party and Other Stories, Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, and Barnes’s A History of the World in Ten and a Half Chapters.
Contemporary Literature in English - I co-taught this year 3 core module while at MMU, which introduced and examined some key issues within contemporary literature, such as sexuality, gender, the death of the author. Texts include Cunningham’s The Hours, Frayn’s Headlong, Winterson’s The Powerbook, Carter’s Glory Goes and Gets Some, Sebald’s Austerlitz, Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, Eavan Boland’s poetry, and Chevalier’s Girl With a Pearl Earring.
Victorian Literature – I have directed, revised and taught this year 3 core module at my previous university and while at MMU. It introduces students to the Victorian era by discussing British society and a range of key literary texts, including Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’, Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Kingsley’s The Water-Babies, Dickens’s Great Expectations, Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters, Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Dissertation Workshops – I have supervised a range of final year undergraduate dissertations throughout my career and, at my previous university, this was a lengthy piece of work at 12000-15000 words. As such, it requires a significant amount of support and direction for students, and I have taken the innovative step of reforming the curriculum for this by solely directing, creating and then co-running a series of 2 hour Dissertation Workshops that address important research and methodology skills and provide vital guidance for often otherwise anxious and overwhelmed students.
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Literature and Society - I directed, created and taught this Foundation Year core module which introduced students to a range of literary texts in order to explore the relationship between literature and society. I also embedded key skills to help students in the transition to the university study of English Literature. It introduced some critical and theoretical thinking concerning the positioning of literature within a socio- historical framework, and considering factors, such as gender, class, childhood, colonialism, and sexuality. Texts include fairytales, such as Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, Hall’s Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself, Ballantyne’s The Coral Island and West’s The Return of the Soldier.
Beyond Social Realism: Fantasy and Gender in Contemporary Women’s Fiction – I taught and revised this year 3 option module, which proved very popular with the students taking the course. It examined the importance of fantasy for women writers as a means of subverting dominant realist modes privileged by patriarchal discourse and the literary canon. Theoretical definitions of fantasy were considered and some sub-genres within fantasy explored, including fairy tales, gothic romance, magic realism, science fiction, utopia/dystopia and horror fiction. Texts include Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, The Magic Toyshop, The Passion of New Eve, DuMaurier’s Rebecca, Russ’s The Female Man, LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Hill’s The Woman in Black, Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, Weldon’s The Life and Loves of a She Devil, Winterson’s Oranges are not the Only Fruit, Sexing the Cherry.
Language and Cultural Theory – I co-taught this Level 2 option module which introduced students to ways of considering language not merely as a mimetic tool to describe reality, but rather as actively constructing culture and subjectivity, and thus functioning as a site of socio-political struggle. Texts included a combination of theoretical and literary works: Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics, Whorf’s Language, Thought and Reality, Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Voloshinov’s Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, Williams’s Keywords, Foucault’s Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, White’s ‘The Political Vocabulary of Homosexuality’, Cameron’s ‘Naming of Parts’, Bernstein’s ‘Social Class, Language and Socialization’, Labov’s ‘The Logic of Non-Standard English’, Harrison’s V, Bourdieu’s ‘The Production and Reproduction of Legitimate Language’, Cox’s ‘Teaching Standard English’, Welsh’s Trainspotting, Vossler’s ‘Language Communities’, Kachru’s ‘The Alchemy of English’, Friel’s Translations, Cixous’s ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’, Irigaray’s ‘When our Lips Speak Together’, Winterson’s Oranges are not the Only Fruit, Bakhtin’s ‘Unitary Language’, Achebe’s ‘The African Writer and the English Language’, Thiong’o’s ‘The Language of African Literature’.
Contemporary British Culture – a Level 3 course which combines the study of literary text and films and is complemented with relevant theoretical and critical reading material. It considers the diversity of discourses which dialogically negotiate a position within modern cultural studies, such as gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality and youth culture. Texts include Kureishi’s The Black Album, Welsh’s Marabou Stork Nightmares, Leigh’s Naked, Amis’s London Fields, Herman’s Brassed Off, Barker’s Union Street, Warner’s The Sopranos, Frears’s My Beautiful Launderette, Hornby’s Fever Pitch and Cattaneo’s The Full Monty.
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Academic Development 1 and 11 – This 1 hour core course for undergraduates aims to facilitate the learning of key academic skills including essay writing and oral presentations. I taught one group of 12 on this course acting as their personal tutor as well. I facilitated the group's chosen theme of Children's Literature which formed the basis for oral presentations and extended essays in Year 2. I also teach one 1 hour lecture each year on this course, either essay Writing Skills or Oral Presentations.
Academic Development III, taught dissertation module: Popular Culture and Literature – This 1 hour specialist option was offered as part of the then compulsory dissertation provision for final year undergraduates. It was a course centred on the needs and interests of the group and, as such, was put together in collaboration with them so that its outline was different each year. I facilitated its final content.
20th Century Fantasy Fiction – Level 3 module - substantially rewritten and taught by myself - which combines the study of literary texts and films. It introduces and considers various theoretical definitions of “fantasy’’ through a diverse range of texts, also considering their socio-historical production. Texts include Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Barrie’s Peter Pan, Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Pearce’s Tom’s Midnight Garden, Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach, Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Conflicts of Culture: Britain, 1850-1899 – I co-taught this Level 3 optional module which considers definitions of culture within a historical and literary framework. Culture in this context is understood as produced by and therefore inevitably expressing the divisions and conflicts of interests in society at any particular historical moment. Course texts include Dickens’s Great Expectations, R.M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island, Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters, Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Voices and Votes: Women and Writing in Britain, 1900-1939 – I co-taught this Level 3 optional module which examines the ways in which women fought for political representation, challenged existing representations of femininity, and articulated new feminist perspectives. Course texts include West’s The Return of the Soldier, Woolf’s Orlando, Hall’s The Well of Loneliness.
Equal or Different: Women and Writing in Britain, 1850-1899 – I co-taught this Level 2 module which explores both writings by women and the conditions in which their work was produced in the late 19th century. Course texts include Bronte’s Villette, Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret.
Power and the People: Public Struggles and Private Spheres, 1790-1850 – a Level 2 module which examines responses to the French Revolution, tracing some of the major cultural, social and political developments in Britain and mainly concerned with questions of power and the public struggles for those excluded from social and political power. Course texts include Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit.
Gender and Representation – I co-taught this Level 1 module which explores literary and cultural productions of gender, considering theoretical debates 11 concerning, for example, interpellated positions and performativity. This module includes literary and cinematic texts, including Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary, Hornby’s Fever Pitch, Scott, Thelma and Louise, Cattaneo, The Full Monty.
MA: Sexuality, Class and Culture in Britain between the Wars - an MA course option - substantially rewritten by myself - which considers a range of medical, psychoanalytic and socio-scientific discourses in relation to sexuality, parenthood and marriage in the inter-war period, and how women’s imaginative writing intervenes in these debates. Texts include Freud’s Civilisation and its Discontents, West’s The Return of the Soldier, Townsend-Warner’s Lolly Willowes, Ellis’s Female Inversion, Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, Rado’s The Modern Androgyne Imagination, Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, Orlando, McCrindle & Rowbotham’s Dutiful Daughters, Sinclair’s The Life and Death of Harriett Frean, selected writings of Stella Browne and Marie Stopes, Brittain’s Honourable Estate, Light’s Forever England, Sayers’s Gaudy Night, Haste’s Rules of Desire, Brookes’s Abortion in England 1900-1967, Lehmann’s The Weather in the Streets, Kennedy’s The Constant Nymph, Felski’s The Gender of Modernity, DuMaurier’s Rebecca.
Culture and Sexuality – an MA course option co-written by myself which explores a range of literary texts, films and theoretical writings in a consideration of cultural discourses on sexuality. Texts include Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, Vol.1, Freud’s Three Essays on Sexuality, Lacan’s ‘The Mirror Stage’, Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, Cixous’s ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’, Irigaray’s This Sex Which is Not One, Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, Segal’s ‘Feminist Sexual Politics and the Heterosexual Predicament’, Scott’s Thelma & Louise, Walker, The Color Purple, Doan (ed), The Lesbian Postmodern, Winterson, The PowerBook.
Identity, Text, Event: Ways of Reading – an MA module which examines alternative ways of reading with a particular focus on readings of Bronte’s Jane Eyre propagated by Feminist Criticism, Marxist Criticism, Postcolonial Criticism and Psychoanalytic Criticism.
PhD: Part of supervisory panel for thesis on ‘Machine Anthropomorphism in Children’s Fiction’. While at MMU I was co-supervisor of a PhD student based at MIRIAD (thesis: animal imagery in children’s picture books, 1960s-1970s). I was recently asked to be involved as a special advisor on a thesis on Gender Performance in Shakespeare.
STATEMENT OF TEACHING PHILOSOPHY I strongly believe in research-led teaching in order to offer my students cutting edge critical and theoretical knowledge in my field. My teaching ability has been positively assessed by peer review and by student feedback surveys, as well as at a more informal level via co-teaching. Students consistently rate me as approachable, helpful and supportive, while they rate my classes as stimulating and well-prepared. Student comments for my taught modules available on E-Vision include, for example, ‘awesome’, ‘a credit to the University’, ‘really interesting lectures’, ‘clearly knows 12 her subject really well’. The Directors and students of SUISS described my guest lecture on Ali Smith in August 2013, University of Edinburgh, as ‘the best lecture of the entire series’. I was again regarded as the best lecturer of the series in August 2014 and have been asked to return again next year. I have also been asked to be a guest lecturer on the MA in Children’s Literature at the University of Glasgow.