Meet the staff from our English Literature courses

Dr Frank Wilson- Head of the School of Humanities

 'I can date my first awareness that I had a special interest in literature to when I was about 13 years old, and came across a poem by Ben Jonson – probably for an assignment – entitled ‘On My First Son’, about the death of the boy on his 7^th birthday. It’s very old, written over 400 years ago. It’s also very short  – only 12 lines – but very tightly constructed, and takes some effort to unpack.  The tremendous power of the poet’s grief jumps off the page, however, in a way everyone can access, and although I didn’t know right away exactly how the end of the poem worked, I wanted to find out, because I wanted to share as much of the experience of this voice as the poem could give me, so authentic and direct a link with ‘real life’ did it seem.  And looking back, I see that’s how I got started: drawn to the stories, emotional experiences, and shared perceptions of others – some still living, some long dead, some fictional characters who seemed more ‘real’ than people I knew – with which literary prose and poetry allowed me to connect, and which repaid many, many times over the efforts I needed to invest to learn how to read them.  Helping others to discover these treasures, to experience the excitement of making similar connections for themselves, and to learn much more about themselves as they did so, seemed a worthwhile way to spend my time.  Although I am now the Head of the School of Humanities at Wolverhampton, I would never want to stop teaching, and to see those same moments of discovery in others.'

Dr Daisy Black- Senior Lecturer in English literature

'I specialise in medieval religious drama, with a particular interest gender, queer theory and race.  I have written on the nails used to crucify Christ in the York Crucifixion pageant, domestic arguments between Mary and Joseph and why Herod was staged as such a camp, glittery villain.'

'I have been a drama geek since I was tiny, but really fell in love with the medieval world when I realised that the medieval style of humour – which includes gargoyles pulling faces in church, naughty fart jokes, and improbable tricks – was worryingly close to my own.  I also work as a theatre director and storyteller, write short stories and plays, and make BBC radio broadcasts as an AHRC / BBC New Generation Thinker. At Wolverhampton I run all the drama modules, and particularly enjoy teaching English Literature students how to take a play from the page to a working theatre production.  I also teach Fantastic Beasts: a module on medieval animals.'

Dr Benjamin Colbert- Reader in English Literature 

I started out wanting to write poetry as much as study it, took every creative writing class I could as an undergraduate in the US, and wrote an original book of poems called Proving the Almanac for my BA Honors thesis. After that, I went to Oxford to study what I thought were the origins of the best contemporary American poets in the British Romantics, discovered the stunningly crafted work of the poet Shelley, and never looked back.

I’m a peripatetic, too, having lived, worked, and studied in the US, Greece, and the UK, so it seemed natural to move from Shelley into travel writing and the global contexts and cross-cultural reach of literature more generally. Many of these interests come together in my research website on British Women’s Travel Writing which contains biographies of well- and little-known writers whose individual stories of writing against adversity can be both moving and inspiring. At Wolverhampton, I teach poetry, Romanticism, and travel writing at all levels and coordinate the Masters programme in English Literature. 

Prof Sebastian Groes

When I was a teenager in the Netherlands I saw Shakespeare’s The Tempest and was blown away. It was in Dutch, and I thought, ‘Well, if it is this good in translation, who good will it be in the original language?!’ And before I knew it I was studying English Literature in Norwich, and developed a life-long commitment to understanding why literature is so important for understanding human beings and the world. Now that we’re surrounded  by digital technology I got really interested in understanding how memory and human behaviour are changing in the twenty-first century. Does Wikipedia make us smarter?  Does GPS on our mobile phones make our brain lazy?  I call people ‘prosthetic gods’ because we use own phones and other technology to become like a god.  I am thinking through such questions on the module Literature in the Digital Age, where we study Instagram poetry by, for instance, Rupi Kaur, and TikTok poetry by Michaela Angemeer.  I’m also promoting gender (and other forms of) equality with my project Novel Perceptions, where we try to understand prejudices people have but are not aware of. I wrote a couple stories about this for the BBC. If you want to study really engaging, original courses that speak to young people, come to Wolverhampton – we will surprise you!

Mark Jones - lecturer in English Literature

My earliest memories turned out to be false. I was never, apparently, deprived of my supper and so forced to run off to rule the wild things. It was only two decades later, when my partner was in primary teacher training and enthusing about some of the great picture books, that I found the images from my childhood that had clearly, but also obscurely, formed me in some way. As it happens, I also have what I thought was a different memory of sitting on the floor of the children’s section in the local library (remember them), and holding the book – Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are.

Words (and pictures) are significant. They get into our heads and mess around with them. Ultimately, that’s why I could never leave them be, either through total immersion or critical distance. After a degree in English Literature, for my MA dissertation I wrote on films, and I’ve been transitioning between the media ever since. In addition to my contribution to the English degree, I also run an MA in Popular Culture, one of the few in the country. My teaching includes issues around censorship and audiences, popular fiction and politics, true crime in various media, and cartoons. I’ve written articles on many obscure topics, including tribute bands, novelisations, the counter-culture, and cosmic horror. I won’t necessarily force you to study any of those things at Wolverhampton, but I can promise that there’ll be something even more interesting on your course.