School of Arts, English and Languages

EDEL LAMB

Senior Lecturer in Renaissance Literature

Edel's research focuses on early modern literature, Renaissance performance cultures, and childhood studies. Her book, Performing Childhood in the Early Modern Theatre, offered a new understanding of early modern childhood through its focus on the child performer.

Her second book, Reading Children in Early Modern Culture, explores how textual cultures articulate alternative understandings of childhood. She is developing a collaborative project, Shakespeare and Riot, that examines Shakespeare as a battleground for cultural, social and national identity.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m currently working on writing by early modern girls to explore the unique contribution of girls to Renaissance literary cultures. As part of this new project, I’m co-writing an essay with Prof. Kate Chedgzoy (Newcastle University) for The Cambridge History of Children’s Literature in English on the ways in which texts by children disclose their experiences; writing a piece on the drama of the teenage Rachel Fane forThe Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women’s Writing in English; and preparing an essay on the disruptive and protesting voices of girls in the seventeenth century.

How does it fit in with your previous research?
My first book on the children’s playing companies of the early seventeenth century argued that early modern theatre produced a distinct concept of childhood. My second monograph extended this thesis to explore the ways in which fresh concepts childhood and youth emerged through the changing relationships between oral, manuscript and print cultures of the period. My interest in girls’ writing develops this work to focus on the ways in which young female writers negotiated their place in the world and contributed to social, religious and political debate. My focus on girls’ protesting voices also builds on another research interest in Shakespeare and riot.

What's next?
I’m planning to write the first book-length study of early modern girls’ writing. Writing Early Modern Girlhood will evaluate work by approximately 50 girls, largely in their early adolescent years, between 1544 and 1704 to argue for the significant participation of girls in early modern textual culture and to provide a new understanding of girlhood as creative and disruptive state. I’m also continuing to develop a longer-term project with Dr Kate Flaherty (Australian National University) and Assoc. Prof. Fiona Ritchie (McGill University) on the ways in which Shakespeare in performance has instigated riotous response throughout history.

Dr Edel Lamb is Senior Lecturer in Renaissance Literature (e.lamb@qub.ac.uk)

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ALEX MURRAY

Senior Lecturer in Modern Literature

Alex's research covers British and American literature and culture, 1880-1940, with particular expertise in the following: Decadence and writing of the fin de siècle; Literature and place (particularly London and New York); Travel Writing; Modernism; Literary and Critical Theory.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m currently completing a monograph with the provisional title ‘Decadent Conservatism: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Past’. The core argument of that book is that many of the writers we associate with the late-Victorian literary ‘movement’ of Decadence held deeply conservative views, and that these views have been largely neglected in secondary criticism. It has taken me into some interesting byways of literary history, and forced me to interrogate some of my own assumptions about the nature of ‘progressive’ art forms.

How does it fit with your previous research?

The monograph before this one - Landscapes of Decadence: Literature and Place at the Fin de Siècle - explored the politics of place in Decadent writing and I’ve edited or co-edited three essay collections on Decadence in the past few years, and published a number of essays on matters Decadent, so this current project is in keeping with my earlier research. Yet in many ways it marks something of a break. That earlier book certainly bought into the idea that Decadence challenged bourgeois values by deconstructing the association between place and identity. This current project nuances that: the Decadent challenge to Victorian values was also undertaken for conservative, nationalistic ends.

What’s next?

While writing ‘Decadent Conservatism’ I’ve been sketching out in my mind my next book: ‘A Decadent History of English Literature’. I’m interested in two interrelated questions: a) how and when did the concept of decline take hold in literary criticism? b) how did Decadent writers challenge the idea of literary decline or ‘decadence’ in their work? So many of the figures associated with Decadence were literary critics and so I’m planning to plot their revisionist account of English literary history, from Chaucer to Thomas Hardy. I’ve published an article on Decadence and early modern drama, and two essays on Decadent writers and Romanticism so far.

Dr Alex Murray is Senior Lecturer in Modern Literature (a.murray@qub.ac.uk)

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SIMON STATHAM

Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics

Simon's research focuses on the critical linguistic analysis of literary and non-literary discourses. He is particularly focused on the ideological operation of institutional discourses, especially media language, legal language and the language of crime and deviance. His additional research interests in stylistics and literary linguistics, particularly the multimodal and pragmatic analysis of televisual dialogue.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m currently putting the finishing touches to an article for the journal Social Semiotics which analyses the language of social media comments on a recent and high profile criminal case. The article demonstrates how established models in critical linguistics can be used to interrogate the language of newer and emerging discourse arenas. I am also completing a new textbook on critical discourse analysis provisionally titled Power in Language which includes commentary on some of the language associated with recent socio-political upheavals such as the rise of populism and begins to think critically about the political discourse of the pandemic.

How does it fit with your previous research?

Much of my research has been preoccupied with the language of crime and deviance in various contexts. My first monograph Redefining Trial by Media focussed on the critical analysis of language in the press and in the courtroom and I have produced several pieces of literary-linguistic research on crime fiction, including a new chapter which analyses the stylistics of the television series The Sopranos. My current projects reflect this ongoing interest in the operation of language in various sections of the social world and showcase some of the many and varied trajectories for research in this area.

What’s next?

It is a very interesting time to be working in critical linguistics and related fields. Whilst seismic events like Brexit and the pandemic are truly disturbing, they also offer a lot of analytical possibilities for the linguist and my next paper focuses on the language of condemnation in the British press. My recent literary-linguistic research on crime fiction has also got me thinking about its connections to my earlier work on the language of the justice system, particularly the representation of the process of justice in crime literature and its various adaptations, and I am beginning to develop ideas for a new monograph which analyses further these connections.

Dr Simon Statham is Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics (S.Statham@qub.ac.uk)

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Ann-Maria Walsh

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow in English/Renaissance Literature

What are you working on at the moment?

I have just embarked on a two-year Marie Curie Fellowship and one of the centre pieces of this project is to prepare for publication a scholarly edition of the seventeenth-century Boyle women’s outgoing letters. The initial phase of the research involves targeted visits to private archives and libraries to search, identify, and photograph the women’s extant correspondence. Having located the letters, the most challenging aspect of the editorial process is having to decipher the handwriting and transcribe the content, while also trying to maintain as much as is possible the individual epistolary styles of twenty-six different female correspondents.

How does it fit with my previous research?

Having completed my PhD in 2017, my immediate aim was to build on those findings with a view to publishing thematic essays, a monograph, and a scholarly edition. My detailed survey of the Boyle women’s writings provided the basis of an essay which I contributed to Women’s life writing & early modern Ireland (2019). I also carried out further research on questions of identity and religion, and combined with three chapters from my PhD, I completed my monograph, The daughters of the first earl of Cork: writing family, faith, politics and place, which was published in 2020.

What’s next?

Close readings of the edited letters will open up new avenues of enquiry and the possibility of additional publications. On a macro level, the data recovered in the edition will enable me to study trends in female literacy and developments in epistolary conventions within one cohort of women across the regions of Ireland, Britain, and Europe. I also want to consider what is specifically gendered in the women’s written responses to their surrounding environments in sociocultural terms but also in regard to their observations about the impact of both climate and the physical landscape on their daily lives.

Dr Ann-Maria Walsh is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow in English/Renaissance Literature (a.walsh@qub.ac.uk)

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