About

My main role is to support research students towards a successful PhD outcome and to help to guide and develop staff in their pursuit of high quality publications. In addition, extending my own research and publications is uppermost in my current role.

Research interests

My research is in the field of American Studies and in particular the post-Second World War American West, where my interdisciplinary work examines the literature, film, photography and cultures of the region.

Recent publications

Books

2017 Under the Western Sky: Essays on The Fiction and Music of Willy Vlautin (as editor and with Introduction and one chapter – approx. 20,000 words) Reno: University of Nevada Press.978-1-943859-58-0

2016  Affective Critical Regionality. London: Rowman & Littlefield International. 978-1-78348-083-8

2013 Post-Westerns: Cinema, Region, West, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

2008 The Rhizomatic West: Representing the West in a Transnational, Global Media Age (University of Nebraska Press, USA)

2016 (with Alasdair Kean) American Cultural Studies: An Introduction to American Culture (Routledge). 4^th Revised Edition

2015  Affective Landscapes in Literature, Art and Everyday Life edited with C. Berberich and R. Hudson, Farnham: Ashgate

Chapters

2017  ‘A New Gentleness: Affective ficto-regionality’ in Affective Ecocriticism (eds, J. Ladino and K. Bladow) Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 

2016  ‘Postwestern Literature and Criticism’ in Susan Kollin (ed.), A History of Western American Literature, New York: Cambridge University Press

2015 ‘Popular Vampires: The Twilight Effect’ in C. Berberich (ed.) The Bloomsbury Guide to Popular Fiction. London: Bloomsbury.

Articles

2018  ‘The Seam of Something Else Unnamed: Sebastian Barry’s Days Without End in Western American Literature, 53, 2, Summer, pp. 231-252

2018 ‘Regionality’ in Western American Literature Special Edition

2017  ‘Walking into the world of the Western: The Rover as an Australian Post-Western’, in Studia Filmoznawcze 38. Contemporary Transnational Westerns: Themes and Variations since 2000 ISBN: 978-83-229-3569-9

Membership of professional bodies

Western American Literature Association.

Professional interests

I am co-editor of the book series Place, Memory, Affect with Rowman and Littlefield International and on the editorial board of the Western American Literature journal.

Qualifications

• BA American Studies (University of Wales)
• MA American Literature (University of Wales)
• PhD American Literature (University of Wales, Aberystwyth)
• PGCE University of Nottingham

Recent conferences

REWEST: 'The West Travels Beyond Itself: New Spaces, New Voices, New Forms', University of the Basque Country, Spain, October 2018 (Presented with the Federico Eguiluz Distinguished Achievement Award in Western American Literature and Culture) - paper on Hernan Diaz's novel In the Distance.

Western American Literature Association Conference, Minneapolis October,2017 - paper 'Haunting the solidity of things': Home and Homelessness in the American West.

Western American Literature Association Conference, Reno Nevada, 2015 - Chair Panel and Prresenter on the work of Willy Vlautin.

International experience

Guest lectures in the USA:

• University of Texas, El Paso 30th Annual Literature Lecture, 2015
• Rice University, Houston 2011

Guest lectures in Europe:

• University of Bergamo, Italy, 2016
• University of the Basque Country, Spain, 2016
• University of Helsinki, 2012
• University of Aalborg, Denmark, 2013
• University of Freiburg, Germany, 2009 (Workshop, lecture and Public Lecture)

Teaching responsibilities

I supervise PhD students.