Faculty of English

When we talk about mothering and politics together, we usually consider isolated moments: the policing of breastfeeding, or the cost of childcare. This book argues that this is not enough, constructing an alternative history of the UK—from the Women’s Liberation Movement to austerity—that reveals motherhood itself to be an inherently political state. ‘Mother State places […]

Claudia Cornelissen (PhD candidate, Faculty of English and St John’s College) was selected to Chawton House as a Summer Fellow.  Her research revolves around feminist revisionist literature and she is spending her time as a Visiting Fellow at Chawton working on the parts of her research related to works by Aphra Behn and Charlotte Lennox. […]

A new exhibition, curated by Professor Laura Wright jointly with Gibraltar National Archives, entitled “Llanito: Past, Present, Future”, can be seen at the Fine Arts Gallery, Casemates Square, La Esplanada, Gibraltar, from 19 August to 13 September 2024.  

Dr Tom Zille speaks to Dr Gillian Dooley, the author of ‘She played and sang’ (Manchester University Press, 2024), which explores Jane Austen and music.  The conversation takes place at Heffers Bookshop, Cambridge, on Monday 12 August at 6pm. Link to further information and tickets: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/she-played-and-sang-gillian-dooley-at-heffers-bookshop-tickets-927208574807  

Recent graduate, Megan Hickes, was awarded The Cambridge Quarterly Prize in 2023 for her final-year dissertation on Marianne Moore. The Cambridge Quarterly Prize is awarded annually to the best dissertation in the final examination in English and subsequently published in the journal. Megan will be continuing her studies this year on the Cambridge Master’s course. Link […]

Dr Claudia Tobin shows Her Majesty The Queen around her exhibition Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors at the Garden Museum, London

Professor Laura Wright’s new book, English Grammar for Literature Students: How to Analyse Literary Texts, was published by De Gruyter on 22 July 2024. Link to further information: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111348896/html

Professor Sarah Dillon has been awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for a project entitled “Literature and AI: Rhetoric, Influence and Epistemology”. The research project historicises current AI hype by revealing the literary nature of the origins of Western AI science, both in terms of the speculative rhetoric of the founding papers, as well as the […]

Dr Claudia Tobin has curated the first exhibition to explore the gardens of the women of the Bloomsbury group. Focusing on the writer Virginia Woolf, the painter Vanessa Bell, the arts patron and photographer Lady Ottoline Morrell, and the garden designer and poet Vita Sackville-West, the exhibition tells the stories of these women and their […]

Professor Gopal’s election was announced by the Royal Society of Literature at an event on Thursday 11 July.  Link to further information: https://rsliterature.org/announcement-of-2024-fellows-and-honorary-fellows/