Research Students in CTTR

Recalling Trauma: The Legacy of Slavery and Colonialism in Black Women’s Fiction

Nneoma Otuegbe

 My research centers on how Black history has been significantly impacted and traumatized by slavery and colonialism as well as the often-sidelined perspective of women’s implication in that trauma. One of my major arguments is that as a result of some of the horrific manifestations of slavery and colonialism many decades after their occurrences, black women’s identity is shaped by these traumas which are passed down from generation to generation. In order to understand these traumatic histories and some of their consequences like war, genocide and racism, my thesis explores the literary recollection of women’s historical trauma through fiction by analyzing the traumatic effects of colonialism and slavery on women in my selected primary texts. The traumas are examined, not as personal experiences, but as collective memory within the framework of cultural trauma theory and postcolonial feminist theories.

The black female writers selected for my cross-cultural comparative readings and their novels are: American Toni Morrison (A Mercy 2008), Haitian Edwidge Danticat (The Dew Breaker 2006, Claire of the Sea Light 2013), Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Half of a Yellow Sun 2009), Zimbabwean Tsitsi Dangarembga (The Book of Not 2006) and Rwandan Scholastique Mukasonga (Our Lady of the Nile 2014). The selected writers share some similarities especially in their commitment to inscribing black womanhood. Their novels are all fictional engagements with painful historical events connected to slavery or colonialism and I analyse them as inscriptions of black women’s traumatic history in order to highlight the interconnectedness of history, trauma and the identity of black women.

‘To render present that which is absent’: Hair, mourning, and memory in Victorian and Neo-Victorian literature and culture

This research project examines the use of hair to aid with mourning and stimulate memory during the nineteenth century as depicted in the contemporary popular press, literature, and culture, and its later reconstruction in neo-Victorianism.

Found in numerous Victorian and neo-Victorian texts, a popular practice during the nineteenth century involved retaining a lock of hair, or fashioning it into jewellery or artwork, to help evoke memories of an absent or deceased loved one. However, the preservation of hair is also described as being used for duplicitous and sometimes nefarious means, with preserved locks representing clandestine relationships, illegitimate children, and concealing affection in plain sight when it is assumed to be someone else’s hair.

Drawing on both object and psychoanalytical theory, an analysis of both nineteenth-century depictions of the use of hair to memorialise, and neo-Victorian interpretations of the same, this study will explore whether the representations of the role of hair in mourning in neo-Victorianism is a contradiction of historical fact, and whether the practice has been, in a sense, mythologised by modern authors. The extent to which hair is used as a commodity for subversion and deception in neo-Victorianism, and whether this reflects its nineteenth century use or is a unique trope, will also be considered.

Email: c.k.bartle@wlv.ac.uk

Twitter: @CKBartle

Dusk of Realities: Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality and Virtual Reality: a looming chimerical world of the digital and physical

A multi-layered reality will be unfolding in the coming decades through the development of Augmented Reality (AR), which places digital objects in the physical reality; Mixed Reality (MR), which merges the digital and physical even more; and Virtual Reality (VR), which situates one in a completely digital world. AR, MR and VR will present us with more options in personalizing our experience of reality and further integrate our off- and online lives. My research focusses on questions of selfhood in this ambiguous dusk of realities, asking in what kind of hybrid spaces we will exist and how we will decide which of our actions are real. I approach these questions transnationally as Japanese thought plays an important role in my research – especially concerning the flexibility of ‘the real’.

Email: M.C.Berghege@wlv.ac.uk

Zelda Fitzgerald: A Modernist Aesthetic

Zelda Fitzgerald is most widely known in popular culture as the “Jazz-Age High Priestess” and mentally ill wife of author, F. Scott Fitzgerald. This perception of her has influenced many readings of Zelda Fitzgerald’s literature - particularly her only completed novel Save Me the Waltz (1932) . My research will take into consideration Fitzgerald’s other artistic practices (ballet and painting) to demonstrate that she is conscious of the modernist style and that, although heavily influenced by the experiences of her own life, Fitzgerald is writing with intent. My research will consider Zelda Fitzgerald independently of her husband’s work, establishing her as a social critic and modernist author in her own right.

Rendering the invisible visible: the application of Actor-Network-Theory to the everyday performances of hidden, mental dis/abilities

My research aims to bring into focus the tricky issues of “seeing” to dis/ability studies by shifting the exploration of dis/ability from a fixed state to conditions of possibilities. Actor-Network-Theory offers a novel methodological and theoretical analysis outside of the conventional health and social approaches to explore the mundane, the specifics, and the subtleties of hidden, mental dis/abilities not yet available to practitioners. I hope to offer alternative ways of raising awareness to dis/ability issues as the complex and entangled accounts might afford an actor-network-theory grounded understanding of what is negotiable by people in dynamic everyday performances.

Email: A.Goldschmied@wlv.ac.uk

Greening Wells: Ecocritical Readings of The Time Machine, The Island of Dr Moreau, War of the Worlds and The First Men in the Moon

An unending love and passion for Science Fiction and Dystopian Literature has led me to pursue research at Doctoral level within this field. In particular, I am fascinated by the work of H.G. Wells and the way in which his fiction articulates numerous concerns in relation to nature and the environment, which existing scholarly debates have not always acknowledged, as much as other social, cultural and political anxieties. My project aims to explore The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, The Island of Dr Moreau and The First Men in the Moon. Through a systematic and comparative examination of these texts, I will apply ecocritical perspectives to them as well as consider how these texts articulate concerns surrounding the Anthropocene, Climate Trauma and Violence. Crucially, 'what relationship does Wells present between the human, nature and time itself in his works?' will be of particular importance here. As concerns for the environment are growing apace, revisiting texts from the past and applying ecocritical perspectives on them has never been more crucial. 

Email: m.moore5@wlv.ac.uk

The Making of Mary Prince, 1811-1831

My interest in the West Indian slave narrative The History of Mary Prince (1831) is three-fold.  First, I intend to review Thomas Pringle’s role in the production of History and to undermine the current scholarly view of Pringle as the white male editor who stifled Mary Prince’s black female voice through his ‘obsessive use’ of paratextual materials. Secondly, I will analyse Prince’s oral narration as a contribution to the co-construction of her image as a compliant Christian woman attempting to appease a 19^th century white readership; I will also argue that she fails to hide her ‘formidable’ independent nature.  Thirdly, I will examine the role of Susanna Strickland, Prince’s anonymous amanuensis against the backdrop of white female benefactors such as the Birmingham Ladies’ Society for the Relief of British Negro Slaves.

In re-positioning this Prince-Strickland-Pringle triad, I argue that there is an essential value in reading Pringle’s paratextual material hand-in-hand with Prince’s History in order to understand the complex social relationships which, if carefully read, defy the simplistic binary narrative of powerful/powerless, white/black and slave master/slave.

Autism, Neurodiversity and Discrimination in the Twenty-First Century

My research focused on the discrimination faced by those who have Autism Spectrum Condition. Neurodiversity is the idea that autism is a natural variant of the human mind and a part of one's identity akin to ethnicity, gender and sexuality. Mainstream research into the condition has been slow to acknowledge this autistic perspective. My research aims to correct that imbalance. 

The cognitive nonconscious and the nouveau roman tradition

My research brings together the concept of our cognitive nonconscious alongside experimental literary techniques and narrative stylistics part of the nouveau roman tradition to demonstrate the underlying connection between (non)conscious states and language. I propose a shift in terminology in order to provide a grounding for the concept of nonconscious processes within habitual realities that we can already navigate. I argue that the nonconscious is a postverbal state closely dependent upon a form of language that is devoid of expression. Thoughts are the senses of sentences and a sensorial mode of thinking amplifies our understanding of our immediate reality. The main body of research comes from tracing a loose lineage of literature, spanning from the modernist to the contemporary era, that contains examples of postverbal behaviour to resituate the limits of language.

Email: L.M.Worsdall@wlv.ac.uk

The Bookbinder and Historical Invisibility: Bookbinding and the Staffordshire Book Trade 1750 – 1850 

My thesis argues that the historical 'image' of bookbinding was centred on the London trade, and it was given that the best quality work could only originate there. I want to investigate and challenge this attitude. Bookbinding and the Staffordshire book trade have had a substantial presence within the UK publishing scene between 1750-1850. This is overlooked by current scholarship, and my thesis aims to put this contribution on the map.

Consumed by the Spirit: How does the seventeenth century prophetic body become a site of political signification (1640-1660).

During the  period  covering  the  English  Civil  Wars  and  Interregnum (1645-60)  factors including the fluctuating state of print regulation, the rise of cheap pamphlet culture, alongside the growth of religious enthusiasm contributed to a corresponding increase in the number popular prophetic texts in print circulation.  Largely grounded in biblical prophecy the ‘manic rhetoric’ of these texts has been academically received as both marginalised ramblings and as a potent discourse of popular, radical dissent. Exploring the latter approach, I intend to interrogate the extent to which the symbolic adoption of the biblical identities and their associated prophetic performance, within these texts, facilitated a dialectic relationship between the prophet, the public, and contemporary power structures. I shall also assess the extent to which this dialogue, once established, presented as a politically oppositional medium to those otherwise assigned a marginalised social identity.