Dr Elizabeth English

Memberships:
Co-Chair - Modernist Network Cymru
Editorial board for Gold SF, Goldsmiths Press’ intersectional feminist science fiction imprint
Editorial board - Journal of Historical Fictions
Fellow - Higher Education Academy
British Association for Modernist Studies
Open Library of Humanities Early Career Researchers’ Forum

Research Interests:
Lesbian modernism
Modernist writing, particularly the work of women modernists
Literary censorship
Genre fiction and the middlebrow
The history of women’s education and women’s work
Speculative fiction, particularly the work of Katharine Burdekin
Modernism, journalism and gender
Sexology
Theosophy and early twentieth-century spirituality

Books
Lesbian Modernism: Censorship, Sexuality and Genre Fiction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015).

Book Chapters
‘Women Against the World: Margaret Goldsmith, Vita Sackville-West, and Queer Biography’, Interrogating Lesbian Modernism: Histories, Forms, Genres, ed. Elizabeth English, Jana Funke, and Sarah Parker, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming).

'"To find my real friends I have to travel a long way": Queer Time Travel in Katharine Burdekin’s Speculative Fiction', in The Female Fantastic: Gendering the Supernatural in the 1890s and 1920s, ed. Lizzie Harris McCormick et al. (New York: Routledge, 2018).

‘Tired of London, Tired of Life: The Queer Pastoral in Alan Hollinghurst’sThe Spell’, in Sex and Sensibility in the Novels of Alan Hollinghurst, ed. Mark Mathuray (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017).

‘Lesbian Modernism and Utopia: Models of Sexual Inversion in Katharine Burdekin’s Speculative Fiction’, in Utopianism, Modernism, and Literature in the Twentieth Century, ed. Alice Reeve-Tucker and Nathan Waddell. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
 
Journals & Essays
"Much learning hath made thee mad": Academic Communities, Women’s Education and Crime in Golden Age Detective Fiction, Women: A Cultural Review, 31 (2020), pp. 23-51.

‘Student Journals in Literary Theory’, in English in Education, 47.1 (2013). (Co-authored with Professor Robert Eaglestone).
 
Conference Papers
‘Women Against the World: Margaret Goldsmith, Vita Sackville-West, and Queer Historical Biography’, The European Society for the Study of English, September 2020 (postponed).

‘"Much learning hath made thee mad": Academic Communities, Women’s Education and Crime in Golden Age Detective Fiction’, Women's History Network Annual Conference, September 2019.

‘Early Career Academics and Class’, English Shared Futures, July 2017.

‘'‘she worships H.E.’: The Sacred and the Secular in the Utopian Writing of Katharine Burdekin’, British Association of Modernist Studies: 'Modernist Life', June 2017.

‘'‘she worships H.E.’: The Sacred and the Secular in the Utopian Writing of Katharine Burdekin’, London Modernism Seminar (invited Keynote), February 2017.

‘To find my real friends I have to travel a long way’: The Queer Time Traveller in Katharine Burdekin’s Speculative Fiction’, 7th International Conference of the Utopian Studies Society Europe’, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, July 2016.

‘"Much learning hath made thee mad": Academic Communities, Women’s Education and Crime in Golden Age Detective Fiction’, Captivating Criminality: Crime Fiction, Traditions and Transgressions, Bath Spa University, June 2015.

‘Foul Minds and Foul Mouths: Censorship, Lesbian Sexuality and a Turn to Genre Fiction’, Forbidden Access: Censoring Books and Archives, November 2014.

‘Tired of London, Tired of Life: The Queer Pastoral in Alan Hollinghurst’sThe Spell’, Literary London Conference 2014: Ages of London, July 2014.

‘‘she worships H.E.’ Sexology and Katharine Burdekin: Spiritualised Sexual Utopia’, Women Modernists and Spirituality: A Symposium, May 2014.

‘Student Journals in Literary Theory’, Royal Holloway Annual Teaching and Learning Symposium: Valuing Teaching and Sharing Approaches, Royal Holloway, University of London, April 2013.

‘Student Journals in Literary Theory’, The Higher Education Academy Arts and Humanities Annual Conference 2012: Pedagogies of hope and Opportunity, Glasgow, May 2012.

‘Katharine Burdekin, “Murray Constantine”, and the Intermodernist Invert’, Inaugural London Intermodernism Seminar, Brunel University, May 2011. (Invited paper).

‘“The book is a sort of touch-stone to other people”: Models of Inversion and Desire in Katharine Burdekin’s Utopian Fiction’, Modernism and Utopia: Convergences in the Arts, The University of Birmingham and The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, April 2010.

‘‘Murder is a queer crime’: Lesbian Criminality and Violence in Golden Age Detective Fiction’, Gender, Agency and Violence: European Perspectives from Early Modern Times to the Present Day, Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies and the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Sexuality and Gender in Europe at the University of Exeter, March 2010.

‘The Lesbian Utopian Vision of Katharine Burdekin’s Fiction’, ‘Far Worlds and Other Seas’: The 10th International Conference of the Utopian Studies Society, University of Porto, Portugal, July 2009.

‘Lizzie Borden and Criminal Heterosexuality in Gertrude Stein’s Detective Fiction’, Rethinking Genre: The Politics of Cultural Form, Royal Holloway, University of London, June 2008.

 My first monograph, Lesbian Modernism: Censorship, Sexuality and Genre Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2015) is an interdisciplinary investigation into the effects of governmental censorship on literary production, drawing on cultural and social history, medical humanities, and gender and queer studies. My next monograph, Labouring Women: Professionals, Mothers, and Scholars in Twentieth Century Literature investigates societal and literary attitudes to women’s work and education. I have also published work on time travel and speculative fiction, sexology and utopian fiction, and women’s education and Golden Age crime fiction. I am currently working on an edited collection titled Interrogating Lesbian Modernism: Histories, Forms, Genres, which is under contract with Edinburgh University Press. This edited volume presents thirteen newly commissioned chapters that reassess and interrogate the meanings, uses and limitations of lesbian modernism by exploring a broad range of authors, genres and histories.

I joined Cardiff Metropolitan University in 2014, having previously worked as a Visiting Lecturer at Royal Holloway and Goldsmiths, University of London. I completed my BA in English Literature, MA in Modernism and Modern Writers, and Phd in English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. My postgraduate degrees were undertaken with the aid of AHRB and AHRC funding. My doctoral research was completed in 2011 and focussed on the relationship between popular cultural forms and lesbian literature in relation to British literary censorship in the early twentieth-century. My first monograph, Lesbian Modernism: Censorship, Sexuality and Genre Fiction, builds on this research and is an interdisciplinary investigation into the effects of governmental censorship on literary production, drawing on cultural and social history, medical humanities, and gender and queer studies.

At the heart of my research is the desire to celebrate the history of women’s writing and its relevance for us today. My research focuses primarily on women’s writing from the twentieth century and the use of literature to navigate the complex political and social conditions of gender. It draws on a range of other disciplines to do this, including medical humanities, social and cultural history, and gender and queer studies. I have published numerous essays and articles on twentieth and twenty-first century culture and literature, including subjects such as women’s education and crime fiction, queer time travel, sexology in utopian fiction, and women’s queer historical biographies. I am currently working on an edited collection titled Interrogating Lesbian Modernism: Histories, Forms, Genres, which is under contract with Edinburgh University Press. This edited volume presents thirteen newly commissioned chapters that reassess and interrogate the meanings, uses and limitations of lesbian modernism by exploring a broad range of authors, genres and histories. I am the Joint Chair for the Modernist Network Cymru (https://modernistnetworkcymru.org); I sit on the editorial boards for the Journal of Historical Fictions and the Goldsmiths Press science fiction imprint, Gold SF; and I have served as a reviewer for Pennsylvania State University Press, the University of Florida Press, the Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, and the Journal of Homosexuality. I have organised several international interdisciplinary conferences and public engagement events.
 
I welcome expressions of interest for PhD research in the above areas.

For more information, follow me on Twitter @E_C_English or on Academia.edu.