Dr Alex Houen, Pembroke

ah217@cam.ac.uk

 

 

Biographical Information

I did a BA(Hons) and a two-year research MPhil at the University of Sydney before coming to King's College, Cambridge to do a PhD. After that I taught Modern Literature and American Studies at the University of Sheffield until 2009, when I took up a post back here in the Faculty of English. I am a University Associate Professor in Modern Literature, and a Fellow of Pembroke College.

 

Research Interests

General interests include: modern and contemporary fiction and poetry (particularly poetry sequences and poets' novels); war literature; avant-gardes; post-structuralism; performativity; affects; sacrifice; aesthetics of suspension.

I am currently finishing a monograph examining sacrifice and war literature from WWI to the present.

 

Areas of Graduate Supervision

Any of the research interests listed above. Authors, theorists, and philosophers of particular interest: Kathy Acker, Giorgio Agamben, Richard Aldington, Aristotle, Nadeem Aslam, W.H. Auden, John Balaban, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, George Barker, Samuel Beckett, Henri Bergson, Elizabeth Bowen, William S. Burroughs, Judith Butler, John Cage, Joseph Conrad, Don DeLillo, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, John Dos Passos, Ford Maddox Ford, Michel Foucault, Allen Ginsberg, René Girard, Henry Green, Graham Greene, Martin Heidegger, Lyn Hejinian, Ernest Hemingway, Henry James, Fredric Jameson, Immanuel Kant, Emmanuel Levinas, Wyndham Lewis, Curzio Malaparte, Frank O'Hara, Ezra Pound, Jacques Rancière, Claudia Rankine, Denise Riley, Lisa Robertson, Stevie Smith, Stephen Spender, Spinoza, Juliana Spahr, and Rebecca West.

 

Selected Publications

 

Peer-Reviewed Monographs and Edited Collections

 

Selected Peer-Reviewed Articles and Chapters

 

Novel, Poetry, and Poetry Editing

  • Co-written with Geoff Gilbert, Take / Give / Keep / Care / Hold / Well / Clear: A Novel (forthcoming).
  • Malapartings [chapbook] (Equipage, 2021).
  • Ring Cycle (Eyewear Publishing, 2018).
  • Co-written with Geoff Gilbert, Hold! West [chapbook, 28pp] (Eyewear Publishing, 2016).
  • Rouge States [chapbook, 28pp] (Oystercatcher Press, 2014).
  • Co-editor with Adam Piette of Blackbox Manifold, an online bi-annual poetry journal (since 2008).