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Christopher Maughan

Research

I am a current doctoral student at the University of Warwick. My research interest is the intersection between contemporary literature and environmental activism, focusing specifically on the relationship between real and/or perceived environmental degradation and the responses to it by the literary community.

The structure of my research is based around four broad approaches:

1) Critical interventions in, or responses to, literary texts as activism (with specific emphasis on Marxist theory (esp. Fredric Jameson) as a means to uncover what I am calling the 'ecological unconscious' in all contemporary literary production).

2) Representations of the activist in the contemporary novel.

3) Literature as activism.

4) Activist responses to environmentally redolent and engaged literary production.


I am also preparing to do field work with a view to producing some ethnographical material gleaned from interviews with environmental activists, educators, and artists.


Conference papers and publications

  • June '12 - 'Structural Violence and the Constraints of Ecological Crisis' - The Oxford Postgraduate Conference: 'Return to the Political'.
  • August '12 - 'Fiction as Activism - Maggie Gee and The Flood' - Gylphi 21st Cebtury Writers Conference Series: Maggie Gee.
  • September '12 - 'Towards an Ecological Unconscious - Representing the Violence of Capitalist Economies', Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) conference.


Teaching

2012/13 - 'Modes of Reading'

Term 1 handouts

Handout Week 2 (11.10.12)

Handout Week 3 (18.10.12)

Handout Week 4 (25.10.12)

Handout Week 5 (01.11.12)

Handout Week 7 (08.11.12)

Handout Week 8 (15.11.12)

Handout Week 9 (22.11.12)

Handout Week 10 (29.11.12)

Term 2 handouts

Handout Week 1 (10.01.13)

Handout Week 2 (17.01.13)

Handout Week 3 (24.01.13)

Handout Week 4 (31.01.13)

Handout Week 5 (07.02.13)

Handout Week 7 (21.02.13)

Allotment

Christopher Maughan

C dot J dot Maughan at warwick dot ac dot uk