乱伦秀

William Andrews鈥檚 project is about description in contemporary poetry. Many poets 鈥� like Vahni Capildeo or Mark Doty 鈥� are writing texts that describe the world. This upends much thinking about language: this urge to describe suggests a different approach to and practice of language than that posited in most twentieth-century theories. The project comes as description is being re-evaluated in literary studies. But new thinking about description remains limited, while description continues to be predominantly treated in prose-based contexts. Reading for the descriptiveness of contemporary poetry, his project will explore what description does in, and what that means for, language. Email: wra.andrews.22@ucl.ac.uk

Killian Beashel completed a BA in English Studies at Trinity College Dublin (2017-2021), graduating with the Gold Medal. He completed an MLitt in Modern and Contemporary Literature and Culture at the University of St Andrews (2021-2022):听His research 鈥楢rtists鈥� Writing in Ireland from Independence to the Present鈥� examines the connections between visual arts and literature in Irish writing from the early decades of the twentieth century to the present, seeking to expand the scholarly lineage examining Irish literary avant-gardes and offering an addition to the literary history of global anglophone modernisms. Throughout the past decade, an increasing number of Irish visual artists have incorporated published literary work into their practice. This field of artists' writing has emerged as a vibrant, generative space, though a field whose aesthetics and thematic foci have scarcely received any sustained degree of scholarly attention. Beginning with a consideration of the novels of the painter Jack B. Yeats, the project charts something of a history of Irish artists鈥� writing. Considering figures and collectives such as the White Stag Group, Mainie Jellett, Tim Robinson, Erica Van Horn, Eimear Walshe, Adrian Duncan and more, the project indicates the heterogenous ways in which Irish artists have engaged with print and with literary production. This sustained consideration of a much-ignored strand within experimental Irish writing, far from being an exercise in obscurity, will hopefully cast a new light on the literary engagement with issues such as place and the environment, discourses of modernisation, and the treatment of print in Irish literature.听His primary supervisor is Dr Julia Jordan, with his secondary supervisor being Dr Dennis Duncan.Email: killian.beashel.23@ucl.ac.uk.

William Burns听graduated with a first-class degree from 乱伦秀 in 2018, before completing an MPhil at the University of Cambridge in 2020 (Distinction). Supervised by Mark Ford, his research is concerned with the ambivalent, often fractious interactions between American modernist poets and the modern American university, using theories of secularisation to explore the considerable overlap between institutional reforms and innovative poetics throughout the twentieth century. By focusing on moments where these tensions are staged in poets鈥� readings/lectures within the space of the university, his thesis will look to combine this approach with a close attention to both institutional contexts and stylistic intricacy, not only with regard to poetry but also critical prose as a creative medium. Prospective authors to be discussed include T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Frank O鈥橦ara, John Ashbery, and Adrienne Rich.听Email: william.burns.15@ucl.ac.uk

Sam Caleb is a London Arts and Humanities Partnership funded PhD candidate in the English Department at University College London. Provisionally titled Ludic Late Modernism: play, games, and sport in British experimental fiction of the long 1960s, his research explores the ludic turn in postwar experimentalist writing. His thesis contends that during the postwar period writing, and, more broadly, life itself, came to be viewed through the lens of games and play. The authors it focuses on鈥擟hristine Brooke-Rose, Zulfikar Ghose, B. S. Johnson, and Alexander Trocchi, among others鈥攃hallenge the longstanding association of the ludic with inconsequential and carefree play. Instead, the games their texts represent, whether football, pinball, cricket, or chess,听frequently confront us with aspects of the ludic that are unsettlingly adversarial and antagonistic, lude and deluded.听贰尘补颈濒: sam.caleb.18@ucl.ac.uk

Emma Cavell read English at the University of Cambridge before completing her MA in French literature at the Ecole Normale Sup茅rieure in Paris. Supervised by Marilyn Corrie, her research explores pioneering authors 鈥� including women 鈥� writing in French for the very first time in medieval Britain after the Norman Conquest. Her thesis examines an understudied corpus of Anglo-Norman saints鈥� lives, the most prolific genre in the period, to explore what these self-conscious writers can tell us about their own undertaking as translators reworking Latin into vernacular French. Email: emma.cavell.21@ucl.ac.uk

Sarah Chambr茅 is a graduate of Cambridge University and the Open University. She completed an MA in English Literature with distinction at KCL in 2017, with a thesis on Henry James and the theatre.听 Her PhD thesis at 乱伦秀, supervised by Professor Philip Horne, is entitled 鈥淗enry James and the Pastoral Imagination鈥�. James, the archetypal cosmopolitan author, arrays in his work an abundance of gardens, parks and landscapes and employs metonyms such as benches, balconies, terraces and penny chairs, challenging the usual dialectical distinction between urban and rural. This career-spanning study examines James鈥檚 representation of the garden as a flexible and self-referential literary trope that draws on a paradigm of retreat and return, a quest for the locus amoenus and biblical connotations of the acquisition of knowledge and the Fall. Gardens with their associations of innocence, fertile plenty and tranquillity enact a symbolic interrogation of transatlantic national identity and constitute a recurrent topos in James鈥檚 oeuvre. Concurrently, James鈥檚 fiction and non-fiction juxtapose the urban drawing room with a panoply of 鈥渙ut-of-doors鈥� arenas, offering a rich socio-historical, political and cultural commentary. James, ever the dramatist, engages with the liminal possibilities of the threshold, privacy and the suspension of 鈥渋ndoors鈥� social norms and constraints. Email: Sarah.chambre.18@ucl.ac.uk

Laurence Chen听was awarded his BA in English at 乱伦秀 in 2021, before completing a MSt in English (1550-1700) at the University of Oxford, Oriel College in 2022. Supervised by Anthony Ossa-Richardson and Eric Langley, his doctoral research explores the figural potential of alchemical metaphors in the early modern lyric poem. With the secrets of alchemy often concealed within a dense network of cover-names, metaphors, and allegories, the successful transmission of alchemical knowledge was reliant on the interpretative capacities of the diligent alchemical adept. His thesis contends that the hermeneutic interactions between adept and master, or moreover, reader and author, reveal alchemy鈥檚 essential kinship with both literature and poetry. Through close readings of lyric poets鈥� usages of various alchemical metaphors and doctrines, this thesis intends to reveal more about the fundamental relationship between science, magic, and literature in the early modern period. Writers to be discussed include alchemists such as George Starkey, founding members of the Royal Society such as Robert Boyle and Elias Ashmole, and poets such as Henry Vaughan, Hester Pulter, and Margaret Cavendish. Beyond his thesis, he has broader research interests in the history of science, the history of the book, and women鈥檚 writing. He has presented at conferences on such themes as the political usages of fear in the sermons of Lancelot Andrewes and trans epistemologies in the alchemical canon, and he would welcome any inquiries regarding his research and interests. Email: laurence.chen.18@ucl.ac.uk

Calum Cockburn obtained his BA in English from 乱伦秀 (2012-2015), before completing an MA in Medieval and Renaissance Studies (2015-2016), also from 乱伦秀. His MA thesis considered the interplay between text and illustration in the design of late Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and its subsequent effect on the development and transmission of devotional iconography in the post-reform era. His doctoral research examines the representation of the underworld across Anglo-Saxon art and literature, with an especial focus on the iconography of the hell-mouth and infernal devourers, whose gaping jaws became a standard eschatological motif in England and Western European until the end of the Renaissance. Email: calum.cockburn.12@ucl.ac.uk

Siobhan Cooke completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and History of Art at the University of Melbourne and her masters in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Her writing will explore how folk mythology and traditional oral folklore, which are often considered low culture, are appropriated into the high visual and material culture of the ruling houses of Britain at times of transition or crisis, as a way of connecting the new or challenged regime emotively to the national identity. This research considers the Jacobites as a focused case study. Her project combines methodology from both History of Art and English Literature in an interdisciplinary project. Email: siobhan.cooke.17@ucl.ac.uk

Lana Crowe completed her MA in Modern Literature and Culture at King's College London after graduating with a BA in English from the University of Cambridge in 2017. Her LAHP-funded project focuses on American composer Duke Ellington, examining his body of听unpublished writing, programmatic music and holistic, mixed-media approach to form as pivotal in the synthesis of the arts. Email: lana.crowe.21@ucl.ac.uk

Sarah Edwards graduated from Cambridge in 2019 with a BA in English Literature and an MPhil in Modern and Contemporary Literature. Her research explores how contemporary feminist essayists--writing in America, Britain and Canada--are influenced by the internet. Her dissertation focuses on theorising the essay in the context of fourth-wave feminism and digital publication methods. The project shows the ways in which fourth wave feminism, the digital age and the essay genre are intertwined by arguing that contemporary feminist essays are crafted in ways that respond to contemporary politics and life online. Further, it investigates claims made by fourth wave feminism about the role of digital spaces and digital platforms for feminist action. She received The Rossetti Prize from Gonville & Caius College for a modest poetry collection and the Cambridge University T.R. Henn Prize for an original composition. Alongside her studies, she organises community outreach events, teaches at widening participation events, and is a tutor on the Narrative Texts Module. 听贰尘补颈濒: sarah.edwards.19@ucl.ac.uk听

Zoe Guttenplan received her BA in English and History from Columbia University, New York and stayed in the United States to work in literary publishing for three years. She completed her MA in English: Issues in Modern Culture at 乱伦秀, where her dissertation on Virginia Woolf鈥檚 Orlando earned the Hobbes Prize. Under the supervision of Dennis Duncan, her doctoral thesis will expand on this project, focusing on several female author run presses from the first half of the twentieth-century. Through archival research, object analysis, and literary study, this thesis will examine women often regarded as mere literary midwives, and seeks to place their work in the context of a network of Modernist writer-publishers. Alongside her studies, Zoe continues to work as a designer and editor for Archipelago Books in New York. Email: zoe.guttenplan.21@ucl.ac.uk.

Olivia Ho holds a BA in English literature from 乱伦秀, where she received the 2013 Morley Prize and John Oliver Hobbes Memorial Prize, and an MSc in Literature and Modernity from the University of Edinburgh. Her thesis considers interstitial space in fictional cities, with a core focus on Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, from which she aims to map a tradition of postmodern speculative city-texts ranging from China Mi茅ville's The City & The City to Paul Auster's In the Country of Last Things. The project will also draw on the work of spatial theorists such as Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault and Edward Soja, as well as urban planning and architectural theory.

Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou completed a BA in English Literature at the University of Cambridge, Lucy Cavendish College, and an MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies at King鈥檚 College London (in collaboration with the British Museum). Her thesis explores the representation of the body in the writing of Mary Wollstonecraft and her circle. She asks to what extent Wollstonecraft鈥檚 conception of the body was shaped by the prevailing philosophies and corporeal theories of the mid-late eighteenth century. Does Wollstonecraft鈥檚 formulation of the body conform to that found in, say, Whyttian neuro-physiology, Hartleian psychophysiology or Lavaterian physiognomy? Or does she contradict these scientific and pseudoscientific models when putting forward her own bodily ideal? Email: hannah.hutchings-georgiou.16@ucl.ac.uk

Chris Jones graduated with a first-class BA in English from 乱伦秀 in 2020, where he was awarded the Morley Prize and the Faculty Medal (Rosa Morison Prize), and graduated with an MSt in English (1900-present) from the University of Oxford in 2021 (Distinction). His doctoral research proposes that the venereal disease epidemic of the early twentieth century was a significant medical and cultural event of particular concern to literary modernists in and around the city, and examines the ways in which the eugenic language of sexual health and social hygiene influenced modernist aesthetic strategies. His project is supervised by Dr Hugh Stevens and Prof Peter Swaab and is generously supported by a Wellcome Trust Doctoral Studentship in the Medical Humanities. Chris's archival work on T. S. Eliot and Omar Pound has been published in the TLS. Alongside his studies, Chris taught English at Charterhouse for two years before moving to St Paul's Girls' School in 2023, where he is currently based. 听贰尘补颈濒: Christopher.jones.17@ucl.ac.uk

Kate Kinley received a BA in English Language and Literature from 乱伦秀 in 2018, and subsequently an MPhil in Renaissance Literature from Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 2019. Supervised by Helen Hackett, her research now interrogates how contemporary sociopolitical upheavals, coupled with mathematical advancements, increasingly destabilised the relationship between 鈥榩lace鈥� and 鈥榮pace鈥� in seventeenth century drama. Her research also draws upon urban development and architecture, observing how transformations in London鈥檚 cityscape manifested in the design of adjacent physical and imagined stage-spaces. Her thesis adopts a psychogeometrical approach to seventeenth century drama, exploring how angles, buildings, and plots are imagined to cohere or collapse; how spatial unities are gradually dismissed in favour of a more anti-Euclidean structural disorder. Email: catherine.kinley.19@ucl.ac.uk

Joshua Lok听received from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore a first-class bachelor鈥檚 degree and a master鈥檚 by research degree in English Literature; the latter with a dissertation that considered Muriel Spark鈥檚 fiction in light of postmodernism and what came after. More broadly, he is also interested in German philosophical aesthetics, discourses of cynicism, postmodernism (its genesis, its residue), and the postcritique. Josh鈥檚 doctoral research, funded by 乱伦秀鈥檚 Graduate and Overseas Research Scholarships, is provisionally titled 鈥楧isharmoniously, Muriel Spark.鈥� This project aims to foreground 鈥榙isharmonies鈥� as an aesthetic category unique to, and indeed carrying potential for reorienting critical approaches to, Spark鈥檚 oeuvre. And because it aims to formulate a fuller critical context for Spark鈥檚 work, it recalibrates the longstanding preoccupation with her novels by reading them鈥攖ogether with the more established body of criticism that they bring鈥攁longside her short stories, poetry (many of them uncollected and forgotten), literary journalism and criticism, plays and radio plays, and little-known children鈥檚 stories. All this is in turn informed by archival and biographical research into how disharmonies in Spark鈥檚 life and experiences frame the form and function of disharmonies in her creative work. Josh鈥檚 project is supervised by Julia Jordan. Email: joshua.lok.21@ucl.ac.uk

Alice Maltby-Kemp graduated with a BA (Hons.) in History from the University of Warwick in 2010 before receiving an MA in Religious, Social and Cultural History 1500-1750 in 2011. After leaving university she worked in archives and records management whilst studying for a MSc Econ in Archive Administration via distance learning from Aberystwyth University which she received in 2018. Her thesis is an LAHP-funded collaborative PhD Studentship between 乱伦秀 and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (SBT) entitled 鈥楽hakespeare and the Stratford-Upon-Avon Antiquarians鈥�. This thesis is primarily supervised by Professor Ren茅 Weis of 乱伦秀 and Dr Paul Edmondson of the SBT with Dr Chris Stamatakis as secondary. The project aims to systematically explore the archival collections of antiquarians who worked to create the discourse of Shakespearian scholarship and the local history of Stratford-Upon-Avon from the 18th century through to the 20th century for new insights into their research and collections, local history and Shakespeare biography. Email: alice.maltby-kemp.18@ucl.ac.uk

Victoria (Tori) Mangan听studies literature by and about trans people and is interested in how the reading practises modelled in these texts can form the basis of a distinctively transgender literary criticism. Having completed a BA in English Literature and an MSt in Women鈥檚, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Wadham College, Oxford between 2017 and 2021, she draws on traditions of feminist and queer literary theory to interrogate the increasingly large corpus of 鈥榯rans literature鈥� and ask what meaning this term takes on, whether as a description of genre, origin or form, and what challenges it might hold for literary criticism both within the academy and outside of it. She is also interested in the relationships between trans studies, queer theory, and feminist theory over time, and in forms of writing not normally emphasised in literary criticism such as zines, pamphlets, comics and genre fiction.听贰尘补颈濒:听victoria.mangan.22@ucl.ac.uk

Ilona Mannan obtained her BA in English from 乱伦秀, where she returned to complete her MA: Issues in Modern Culture, with a thesis on Henry James and Venice. 听Under the supervision of Professor Philip Horne, her doctoral thesis will enlarge upon this research to consider the significance of the city to James both professionally and personally. James鈥檚 continued engagement with Venice will be examined through his recognition of the city as a model republic with which to analyse America鈥檚 growing economic and cultural power. Email: Ilona.mannan.10@ucl.ac.uk

Mahishi Ranaweera received a B.A. (Hons) in English Literature and an MA in Linguistics from the University of Kelaniya.听 She obtained an MA in Teaching English as a Second Language from the Northern Arizona University, USA on a Fulbright Master鈥檚 Fellowship award.听 At 乱伦秀, she is currently engaged in a variational pragmatics research on pragmatic markers in English spoken in Sri Lanka.听 The main focus is to understand the use of pragmatic markers by Sri Lankan English speakers.听 Additionally, the study aims to investigate the impact of social factors such as gender, age and occupation may have on the use of pragmatic markers.听 In the process, a corpus of online English interviews by Sri Lankans (COEI-SL) will be created. Email ranaweera.ranaweera.19@ucl.ac.uk听

Will Rees received a BA and an MA in philosophy from the University of Sussex, and then an MA in literature from Goldsmiths. He spent a year at the University of Chicago before coming to 乱伦秀 to complete his doctoral research. His Wellcome-funded project, tentatively titled 鈥淪tudies in Hypochondria鈥�, is a cultural and literary history of that phenomenon. By examining the medical, psychiatric and popular discourses of the fin de si猫cle, and its literary texts, he seeks to cast light on how during this period the hypochondriac of Renaissance medicine was reinvented as a figure of modernity. Away from academia, he writes for the TLS and is a founder of the literary publisher Peninsula Press. Email: will.rees.19@ucl.ac.uk

Victor Rees鈥檚 PhD examines Performance Writing as a speculative continuum that emerged in the late 20th听and 21st听centuries, using the novels of Brian Catling as a central point of reference.听听He intends to analyse the influence of performance art upon Catling鈥檚 books, positioning them within the contested space of literary experimentalism in order to emphasise the cross-fertilisation of ideas between text and performance that emerged from the 1960s onwards.听贰尘补颈濒: victor.rees.22@ucl.ac.uk

Luisa Signorelli received her bachelor鈥檚 degree in Modern Languages and Communication (2018) and her master鈥檚 degree in Modern Languages and Comparative Literature (2020) from the University of Catania, Italy, where she also received a master鈥檚 degree in Humanities and Social Sciences (2022) from the interdisciplinary programme of the Scuola Superiore di Catania. Her doctoral research at 乱伦秀 explores the circulation of passages from Shakespeare鈥檚 plays in anthologies and miscellanies during the eighteenth century, arguing that literary collections influenced not only the dissemination, but also the mode of reading Shakespeare鈥檚 drama. Luisa鈥檚 research is funded by 乱伦秀鈥檚 Graduate and Overseas Research Scholarship and is supervised by Dr Charlotte Roberts and Prof Helen Hackett.听贰尘补颈濒:听luisa.signorelli.17@ucl.ac.uk

Daisuke Suzuki completed his BA in Law at Waseda University in Japan and worked as an English teacher after his first career as international sales. Before joining 乱伦秀, he obtained his MSc in TESOL and Applied Linguistics from the University of Stirling and MA in Linguistic Science from Kwansei Gakuin University in a double degree programme in 2019. His doctoral study explores the pragmalinguistic aspects of requests in student-faculty e-mails written in English by university students who have different nationalities. The main focus of the investigation is on the epistemic stance such as modal auxiliary verbs. In addition, the project aims to build a corpus using these collected data with pragmatic annotation. Email: daisuke.suzuki.19@ucl.ac.uk

James Waddell completed his BA in English at Pembroke College, Oxford (2016; First Class). After working at The Economist for a year, he completed an MPhil in Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University (2018; Distinction). He was awarded the Benjamin Franklin House Literary Prize in 2019, for his essay on the history of privacy. He continues to write about books and arts for The Economist, as well as for the Times Literary Supplement and others. His PhD research, funded by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership (AHRC), investigates early modern anxieties about distraction and shortened attention spans, with particular regard to popular romance narratives. Romance reading was a principal target of anti-distraction discourse in this period, and was accused of inducing devious mind-wandering, absorbed reverie, and lax attention to worthier materials. Romances were also maligned for being intrinsically distracted, with their absent-minded protagonists and digressive narrative strands. Focussing on Spenser, Sidney, Nashe and Wroth, James鈥檚 research examines how literary form was mirrored and moulded by Renaissance metaphors of mind, their ethical valences, and their psychosomatic manifestations. Email: james.waddell.19@ucl.ac.uk

Damian Walsh graduated with a first-class BA from the University of Cambridge in 2018, before completing an MPhil at Cambridge in 2020 (Distinction). His doctoral research, which is funded by LAHP, is concerned with global cultures of spirituality at fin-de-si猫cle. Focusing provisionally on Oscar Wilde, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Vernon Lee, Walt Whitman, and W. B. Yeats, his thesis examines the parallels between literary forms and religious ritual, engaging with recent scholarship in affect theory to explore how certain literary forms might seek to alter and overpower their readers and act as aids for cultivating certain affective states. His research also seeks to unearth the largely unacknowledged debt these writers owed to South- and East-Asian philosophies and religious practices, and to contribute towards a more fully transnational understanding of late Victorian interfaith exchange. He also maintains a longstanding interest in the environmental humanities and has written and given papers on Vernon Lee鈥檚 travel writing, nonhuman aesthetics, and animal voices in the work of John Clare.听贰尘补颈濒: damian.walsh.21@ucl.ac.uk

Sarah-Jean Zubair holds an MA in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University (New York) and a BA in English from the University of Victoria (Canada). Her research centres upon motifs of disturbed sleep and liminality in Romantic poetry, focusing in particular on the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Drawing upon eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century philosophy and medical sciences, she aims to deconstruct the relationship between disturbed sleep and poetic form, and examine the connectivity between liminal states of consciousness and imagination in the Romantic psyche. Email: sarah-jean.zubair.17@ucl.ac.uk