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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
Jan. 2010 – Jan. 2014
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.
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
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English had the best pass and proceed rate in the
Division of Peace Studies.
April 2003 – Jan 2010
Duties
Senior Lecturer in English Literature
Department of Interdisciplinary Studies
Manchester Metropolitan University
Due to the retirement of the Head of English, I was CoActing 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
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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.
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April 2012
Since 2011
Since 2009
March 2009
2009
Sep. 2008
Sep. – Dec. 2006
1994-1998
Keynote speaker on ‘The Counterfeit Child’ for ESRC
funded seminar ‘The Other Child’ (Media City,
University of Salford).
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.
Co-Editor of Texts and Contexts, (Continuum Press).
Keynote guest speaker on MA in Children’s Literature
and Culture (University of Bolton).
My AHRC application was awarded an A Grade but
was unsuccessful due to the large volume of applicants.
Article, ‘“The Broken Telescope”: Misrepresentation in
The Coral Island reprinted in Children’s Literature
Review.
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).
PhD fully funded by C.K. Marr Educational Trust
Scholarship, including fees and grant.
PUBLICATIONS
* Items eligible for REF 2020 submission
Books
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* 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
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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.
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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://sparkgap.blogspot.co.uk/)
Marion Boucher, ‘Gender and Gernre in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret
Garden’ in La clé des langues, 2009
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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.
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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 sociohistorical 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
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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
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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.