Post-Doc, English Studies
Ustinov College
Thesis Title: Mid-Twentieth Century Dystopian Fiction and Political Thought
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Prof. Patricia Waugh
Dr. Jason Harding |
About
I am a Post-Doc tutor in English Studies at Durham University, where I currently teach on two modules: 'The Theory and Practice of Literary Criticism', and 'Introduction to the Novel'. I also have three years' teaching experience in Combined Honours, where I was a seminar leader and lectured on several occasions.
I passed my doctoral examination in December 2011. My thesis examines political and social thought in dystopian fiction of the mid-twentieth century. It focuses on works by four authors: Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), and John Wyndham’s postwar novels (especially The Day of the Triffids (1951), The Kraken Wakes (1953) and The Chrysalids (1955)).
The central concern of the thesis is how political and social ideas are developed within a literary mode which evolved as response to both literary concerns and political ideas, including on the one hand literary utopias, science fiction, satire, and literary modernism; and on the other hand modernity, social Darwinism, apocalypse, war, and changes in gender roles in the broader culture. I argue that the narrative structures of these novels are crucial in enabling them to perform such critical tasks. The thesis will be available from Durham's e-depository in the near future.
I published an article in 2009 on imagery in Enlightenment political thought in Kaleidoscope (3.2) - see http://www.dur.ac.uk/kaleidoscope/issues/v3i2/. I have a forthcoming book chapter on Orwell, Arendt and Adorno in Dystopia Matters, ed. Fátima Vieira (CSP), and another on Orwell's concept of Nature in Orwell Today, ed. Richard Keeble (Arima). I recently submitted an article on narrative strategies in dystopian fiction to a major journal, and I am working on a number of projects seeded from my thesis. I have presented work at numerous conferences, seminars and symposia. One of my earlier conference papers can be found at http://www.altertopian.com/Site_3/Need,_Desire_and_Politics_in_Adornos
