The Summer School Tutors

Modernism

Evan Smith

Evan's research interests center on the relationship between literature and philosophy, specifically the ontology of the literary work of art. He has received joint funding (2009-13) through the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship, the Overseas Research Scholarship Scheme (ORS), and the University of St Andrews in support of his current dissertation addressing the relation of Samuel Beckett's aesthetic project to the Phenomenological tradition embodied in the writing of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wolfgang Iser, Paul Ricoeur, Gianni Vattimo and others. His research is, to a certain extent, informed by the work of the Frankfurt School with a special interest in the writing of Max Weber, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, and Jürgen Habermas as well as more contemporary cultural theorists such as Jean Baudrillard, Slavoj Žižek, and Simon Critchley. He has presented widely at conferences from 2006 onward in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland on a range of topics relating to Critical Theory, Continental Philosophy, 20th Century Literature, and Aesthetics.

Nina Engelhardt

Nina works as a Postdoctoral Tutor at the Department of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, where she also completed her PhD in 2012. Her thesis explores illustrations of mathematics in modernist literature, focusing on fictional presentations of interrelations between the foundational crisis of mathematics and the social, political, linguistic, and epistemological crises around the First and Second World War. Her research continues to make connections across traditional disciplinary divisions by analysing conceptions of mathematics in the cultural imagination of the twentieth century. Nina’s research has led to publications in the fields of literature and science studies, modernism studies, utopian studies and Pynchon studies. Having studied in Munich, Paris and Edinburgh and consistently worked with a comparative angle, Nina enjoys exploring literature from different vantage points and is truly excited to be able to work with students and scholars from different cultural and academic backgrounds at SUISS.

Andrew Campbell

Andrew is a 3rd year PhD candidate in English Studies at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. His thesis research on the collaborationist aesthetics of 1930s poetry and art focuses on the interdisciplinary projects of W.H. Auden. Andrew holds an MSc in Literature and Modernity from the University of Edinburgh and an Honours Degree from the University of Strathclyde. His main area of specialism is Modernist literature, art and the culture of the inter-war years. His other research interests include J.G. Ballard, late 20th Century visual art and music, male sexuality and cultures of transgression, the avant garde, and contemporary media and popular culture. His academic writing on Modernist literature and art has been published and presented at numerous conferences and exhibitions across the UK and Europe. Andrew is the editor of ecloga, a print and online academic journal of Literature and the Arts, and is currently planning a Modernist special edition to be published in 2014.

Scottish Literature 1900-Present

Linden Bicket

Linden was awarded her PhD from the University of Glasgow in December 2011. Her research was funded by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, and her thesis, ‘”A God-Ordained Web of Creation”: The Faithful Fictions of George Mackay Brown’, focussed on the ways in which the Orcadian writer George Mackay Brown encapsulated his Catholic faith creatively. Linden has been a Graduate Teaching Assistant in Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow since 2008. She is currently working as a Research Assistant on the British Academy-funded project ‘George Mackay Brown: A Literary Executor’s Archive’. For this project she spent six weeks in Orkney in order to create the first single and autonomous archival collection of Brown’s manuscripts and other papers for Orkney Library and Archive. Her research interests include (particularly Scottish) Catholic fiction and children’s literature. She is really excited to be joining the SUISS team this summer!

Corey Gibson

Corey is currently completing his PhD thesis with the English Literature Department at the University of Edinburgh. It is concerned with the work of the poet, songwriter, folklorist, and political and cultural commentator, Hamish Henderson (1919-2002). Having studied Scottish History and Literature at undergraduate level, Corey's postgraduate research has allowed him to explore his interests in twentieth century Scottish poetry, the interwar Scottish Literary Renaissance, and the cultural-political visions of Scottish writers in the early and mid twentieth century. Corey works as a tutor on the first year Scottish Literature course at Edinburgh, and has also led seminars on contemporary Scottish writing for teachers of English from across the EU for the International Studies Programme.

Contemporary Literature

Tom Farrington

Tom gained an MA (Hons) in English Literature and an MSc in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh, where he is currently studying for a PhD. His thesis is on aesthetics and politics in the work of Sherman Alexie, a contemporary Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian writer, poet and filmmaker. Other research interests include the literature of the American South, representations of monstrosity, and narratives of trauma.

Tom has taught English Literature and Creative Writing at South East European University in Macedonia, and currently works in Academic Support at Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University.

Michael Rodgers

Michael was awarded his PhD in December 2012 and is currently employed as a Research Assistant at the University of Strathclyde. His thesis explored the ways in which Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy interacts with a number of key literary problems in Vladimir Nabokov’s fiction. His work has been published by Johns Hopkins University Press, University of Alberta Press and McGill-Queen’s University Press and his research interests include the intersection between literature and philosophy, comparative literature, comedy, metafiction, David Foster Wallace, genre theory and cultural appropriation. He is currently co-editing Nabokov’s Morality Play: Ethics, Aesthetics and Metaphysics in His Fiction (a peer-reviewed volume that came out of a conference he organised) and is working on a new research project, 'Modernism and Literary Laughter', which looks at the idea of inappropriate responses in twentieth-century fiction. He is a contributor to The Slavonic and East European Review, The Literary Encyclopedia and the Nabokov Online Journal.

Creative Writing

Jane Alexander

 Jane originally trained as an illustrator,but swapped sketchbooks for notebooks several years ago. Since then she's published short stories and creative non-fiction pieces in magazines and anthologies including Litro, Mslexia, New Writing Scotland, ImagiNation: Stories of Scotland’s Future and A Wilder Vein; been awarded a Scottish Arts Council New Writer’s Bursary; and gained an M.Phil in creative writing from the University of Glasgow. Her focus is on writing novels and short fiction, with recent forays into screenwriting with Screen Academy Scotland and writing for radio with BBC Scotland Radio Drama/Scottish Book Trust. Jane teaches creative writing in higher, further, adult and community education: she's an Associate Lecturer with the Open University; she runs a creative writing class for Transition, as part of a programme of training for recovered and recovering drug users; and she teaches evening and community education classes for the City of Edinburgh Council. She is represented by Lutyens & Rubinstein literary agents.

Russell Jones

Russell is an Edinburgh-based writer, editor and tutor. He is currently completing his PhD in Creative Writing at The University of Edinburgh whilst tutoring in Creative Writing and Scottish Literature for The City of Edinburgh Council. Russell is the editor of Where Rockets Burn Through: Contemporary Science Fiction Poems from the UK (Penned in the Margins, 2012), 101 Things to Know About Unintentional Biases & 101 Easy Things You Can Do About Them (due 2013), and is a guest editor for Interdisciplinary Science Reviews. His collection of poems, The Last Refuge, was published by Forest Press in 2009. Russell co-moderates WritersDock.com’s poetry department, has written travel articles for exploration-online and has written on children’s literature for TheRustyKey. His main research interests are in contemporary poetry, interactions between science and literature, and the poetry of Edwin Morgan. This is his 4th year tutoring at SUISS and he’s as excited as ever! Details of Russell’s various publications and writing prizes can be found here.

Eoghan Walls

Eoghan teaches creative writing for the Open University. He has
also taught at Queen’s University, Belfast, where he completed his PhD
in 2009 in the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, reading the linguistic
theories of Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida through the
poetry of Seamus Heaney and Gerard Manley Hopkins. His first
collection of poetry, The Salt Harvest, was published in 2011 with
Seren, and he has published broadly in journals and anthologies throughout the UK and Ireland. He won an Eric Gregory award in 2006, an Irish Arts Council Bursary in 2009, and has been shortlisted and longlisted for many other prizes.

Deborah Andrews

Deborah gained an MLitt in Creative Writing (Distinction) from the University of Glasgow, where she is currently completing her PhD (AHRC funded). She has worked extensively in Scotland as a writer, theatre director, and workshop leader (in 1999, her theatrical adaptation of Dream State: The New Scottish Poets won a Scotsman Fringe First Award). In 2002, she co-founded Solar Bear Theatre Company, of which she was Artistic Director 2002-09. Deborah is particularly interested in inclusive, multidisciplinary work. Her thesis focuses on Deaf literature and explores the notion of accessible aesthetics and texts; it comprises: an exegesis, a novel, and an experimental essay. Her short stories have been published in anthologies The Research Club (Chroma) and Let’s Pretend (Freight), and an extract of her novel has been published in Tip, Tap, Flat (Freight). She is very much looking forward to joining the SUISS team this year.

Guy Mankowski

Guy gained an M. Phil in Psychology from Newcastle University, drawing from his work in this field for his first novel The Intimates. It was chosen as a ‘Must Read Title’ by New Writing North. He has had short stories, novellas and journalism published in magazines including Litro. In 2012 he was awarded an Arts Council Research and Development grant for his second novel, Letters from Yelena. This allowed him to research the world of ballet, in which the novel takes place, in St Petersburg. The novel was published in 2012 by Legend Press and reached #61 in Amazon’s Contemporary Bestsellers in Fiction chart. It was partially adapted for the stage as a ballet by the choreographer Dora Frankel. He is currently undertaking a Creative Writing PhD at Northumbria University. As part of this he is writing his third novel, on identity in post-punk subculture. The novel is also currently being developed as a film script with Northern Media. At Northumbria University he also lectures in Studies in Short Fiction.