20th Century and Contemporary Literature and Culture
We're researching how culture and transnational identity is portrayed in twentieth-century and contemporary literature
With expertise in British, American, and global twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature and culture, members of this research area are involved in projects ranging from Brexit literature, contemporary reading and readers, forms of academic reading, the Holocaust in literature and culture, magic(al) realism, comparative indigenous writing, the methods of criticism, and PG Wodehouse.
Our researchers have published monographs on the English gentleman, magic(al) realism, reading during lockdown, and contemporary representations of time and space. Members have also published several edited collections on subjects including Brexit Literature, the Holocaust, John Burnside, Indigenous Literary Activism, and Polish culture in Britain.
Members of this research area are active in a variety of forms of public engagement. They have worked with the Duchess of Cornwall’s Reading Room Instagram project, СÀ¶ÊÓƵ’s D-Day Story Museum, СÀ¶ÊÓƵ Literature Map Project with local schools, communities, and writers groups. Our wide-ranging research has fostered a nurturing environment for graduate research at MRes and PhD level.
Our research
Our members focus on research areas including:
- National identity
- Trauma theory
- War commemoration
- Holocaust studies
- Multi-ethnic writing
- Postcolonialism
- Magical realism
- Narrative theory
- Reading, readers, book culture
- Sociology of literature
- Time / temporality
- Indigenous studies
Recent publications
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Berberich, C. (Editor) (2022) "Brexit and the Migrant Voice: EU Citizens in post-Brexit Literature and Culture", Routledge
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Berberich, C. (Editor) (2021) "Trauma & Memory: The Holocaust in Contemporary Culture", Routledge
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Berberich, C. (2022) "Philip Kerr, Berlin Noir and the (Problematic) Representation of History", Central European History
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Bowers, M. (2020) "Magical realism and indigeneity", Cambridge University Press
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Bowers, M. (2020) "Outrageous humour: satirical magical realism", Palgrave Macmillan
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Davies, B., Lupton, C., Gormsen Schmidt, J. (2022) "Reading Novels During the Covid-19 Pandemic", Oxford University Press
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Davies, B. (Editor) (2020) "John Burnside: Contemporary Critical Perspectives", Bloomsbury Publishing Company
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Davies, B. (2020) "The darkness-within-the-light of contemporary fiction: Agamben’s missing reader and Ben Lerner’s 10:04", Textual Practice
Recent projects
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This two-year project investigates the time British author PG Wodehouse spent at the Nazi Internment Camp at Tost (now Toszek) in Silesia; it evaluates his own writing on the topic alongside the memoirs, letters and reminiscences of other former inmates in order to compile a compelling story of this civilian internment camp in order to fill a gap in existing research.
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Supernatural Cities is an interdisciplinary network of humanities and creative industries scholars based at the СÀ¶ÊÓƵ. It explores the relationship between the imagination and urban environments, especially aspects of the supernatural, the Gothic, folklore, and storytelling.
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СÀ¶ÊÓƵ Cathedral Storytelling Festival
KEF Faculty-funded Collaborative Project, 2023.
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Building upon previous studies on time-use in the university, this project specifically investigates the interconnected issues of when and why reading happens in the humanities today. Funded by the Council for the Defence of British Universities ().
Lockdown reading
This project researches reading habits during the COVID-19 pandemic through surveys, publisher data and interviews.
СÀ¶ÊÓƵ Literary Map
Explore СÀ¶ÊÓƵ's rich literary heritage and contemporary literature scene through an interactive map and blog
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Related PhD projects
- Hannah Coombs: ‘A Place of your own: Understanding children’s experiences of refugeedom’
- Sally Emms: ‘British National Identity and the Migrant Experience in BrexLit’
- Ashleigh Hannay: ’Going Back to Move Forward: The Role of the African American Woman in Black Women’s Literature’
- Marjorie Huet-Martin: ‘Translating Crime: Constructing National Culture’
- Gemma Lake: ‘Solo Women Travelers and Affect’
- Lauren Macpherson: ‘Turbulent Mobility: Transitions of Englishness in Interwar Feminine Middlebrow Novels’
- Jack Fox-Williams: ‘Representations of Opium Addiction in nineteenth and twentieth century literature’