About this group

Research group leader: Dr Matthew Treherne

The purpose of the SMLC Literary Studies Research Group is to foster and enrich research into literary texts written in any of the languages studied in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures. There are currently 48 members of the group, whose research interests overlap in the following areas:

• concepts and formations of identity/identities and alterity/alterities as distributed along diverse axes (age, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, social class) and their widely varying cultural instantiations in literary texts
• questions of literary production, reception and impact across time and space, including questions of authorial control over her/his own reception and the fluctuating criteria by which works have been and are judged
• cultural networks and processes of intellectual exchange and dialogue
• the intersections between literary traditions and history, theory and thought
• the formal and aesthetic dimensions of literary texts, focusing in particular on questions of language, style, technique and genre
• translation and/as literary criticism

In 2011/12 the group is running the following activities:

• a series of agenda-setting research seminars, entitled "Literature among the Disciplines", which aim to explore the ways in which literary studies are contributing to and interacting with other modes of knowledge
• a public series of visiting writers, building on the successes of previous visits
• exploring ways in which our research in literary studies can inform our undergraduate teaching
• research "surgeries", to enable colleagues to explore live issues in their research.

Primary members: Margaret Atack; Rosalind Brown-Grant; Ingo Cornils; Rhiannon Daniels; Helen Finch; Frank Finlay; David Frier; Russell Goulbourne; Alison Hardie; Irena Hayter; Richard Hibbitt; Claire Honess; Sarah Hudspith; Paul Melo E Castro; Anna Pegoretti; Kristina Pla Fernandez; Brian Richardson; Massimo Rospocher; Olivia Santovetti; Gigliola Sulis; Stuart Taberner; Matthew Treherne; Frances Weightman; Mark Williams.

Secondary members: Diana Holmes; Jeremy Munday; David Pattinson; David Platten; Jonathan Sutton; Duncan Wheeler; Lan Yang; Thea Pitman; Paul Rowe; Nigel Saint; Zahia Salhi; Maxim Silverman.

For more information about the group's activities, please contact Dr Matthew Treherne.