Dr Helen Charman, Clare

hmhc2@cam.ac.uk

 

Biographical Information

I am a Fellow and College Teaching Officer in English at Clare College. Before joining Clare, I spent three years as a Teaching Fellow in English Studies at Durham University, and I have taught both English and Creative Writing at Glasgow University, Glasgow School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University and Camberwell College of Arts. I completed my BA and MPhil degrees at Emmanuel College, and my PhD at Trinity Hall. 

Research Interests

My research is broadly focused on the relationship between literary representation, social history—particularly history from below—and psychoanalysis, from the nineteenth century to the present day. My first book, Mother State, which is forthcoming from Allen Lane in 2024, combines a variety of interpretative modes to consider mothering as an explicitly political and public act, from 1970 to the present. I’m currently working on two new projects: the first is another public-facing book, Hothouse Freaks, about the psychosocial history of the governess in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century literature and culture. The second is an academic monograph, Deep Down Below the Memory, that considers the relationship between the psychoanalytic case history and narrative style, from George Eliot’s influence on Sigmund Freud to Lydia Davis’s relationship to Melanie Klein. I also have a particular interest in experimental modern lyric poetry​.

I’ve recently written or presented work at conferences on: consciousness raising and the talking cure in feminist fiction of the 1970s; Freud's Case History of Miss Lucy R.; Denise Riley's publication histories; nineteenth-century pleasure dairies; and the relationship between feminist publishing and the British welfare state​. I also regularly write critical essays about literature, film and visual art for The White Review, Parapraxis, Another Gaze and Frieze, among others. I held a Creative Scotland-funded editorial residency at MAP magazine from 2020-2021.

Areas of Graduate Supervision

I'd be very happy to supervise work in areas related to my research interests. 

Selected Publications

Recent and forthcoming publications include: