These pages are going to be in ongoing modification.

Brief CV:

1973-8: University of Glasgow, MA (Hons First Class) in French and English

1978-81: University College Oxford, D.Phil (Oxford); MA also awarded

1981-85: Christ Church and Faculty of English, Oxford, Research Lectureship

1985-86: Corpus Christi College and Faculty of English, Oxford, Lecturer

1986-90: University College Dublin, Lecturer in Modern English and American Literature

1990-95: Trinity College Dublin, Chair Professor (1867)

1995-2004: University of Kent, Chair Professor of English, Director of Research

2004 to date: University of Warwick, Professor of English and of Comparative Literature

 

I'll also be placing links here to some samples of my work, both published and in preparation. Meanwhile, the link-bars at the top of the page will take you to other pages with fiction and academic books and so on. On the 'Journalism' tab, you will be able to read a number of essays and occasional pieces.

Publications a) Books

1 Confessions: The Philosophy of Transparency (Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2012) pp. xiv+208

2 For the University: Democracy and the Future of the Institution (Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2011), pp. ix+198

3 The English Question; or, Academic Freedoms (Sussex Academic, Brighton and Portland, 2008), pp. xiv+182

4 Aesthetic Democracy (Stanford University Press, Stanford Ca., 2006), pp. xix+185 5

Criticism and Modernity: Aesthetics, Literature and Nations in Europe and its Academies (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1999), pp. vii+248

6 After Theory (revised and expanded 2nd edition; Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1996), pp. vii+295

7 Alterities: Criticism, History, Representation (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1996), pp. xi+222

8 Ed., Postmodernism: A Reader (Harvester-Wheatsheaf and Columbia University Press, Hemel Hempstead and New York, 1993), pp. xiv+528

9 After Theory: Postmodernism / Postmarxism (Routledge, London and New York, 1990), pp. xii+248

10 On Modern Authority: The Theory and Condition of Writing 1500 to the present day (Harvester-Wheatsheaf and St Martin’s Press, Brighton and New York, 1987), pp. viii+310

11 John Donne, Undone (Methuen, London and New York, 1986), pp. xiii+253

12 Reading (Absent) Character (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1983), pp. xvi+288

13 Where We’re From: a novel (published via my Warwick website)

14 A Perfection: a novel (published via my Warwick website)

b) Series editorships:

A) PostModern Theory series (Edinburgh University Press) of which I was General Editor. Published titles include:

1. Costas Douzinas and Ronnie Warrington, Justice Miscarried: Ethics, Aesthetics and Law

2. Robert Holton, Jarring Witnesses: Modern Fiction and the Representation of History

3. Andrew Gibson, Towards a Postmodern Theory of Narrative

4. Rod Giblett, Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology

5. Thomas Docherty, After Theory

B) Modern Cultural Theorists (Harvester-Wheatsheaf series), of which I was General Editor. Published titles include: 1. Rick Rylance, Roland Barthes

2. Stuart Sim, Georg Lukács

3. Anne Samson, F.R. Leavis

4. Graham Allen, Harold Bloom

5. Verena Andermatt Conley, Hélène Cixous

6. Madan Sarup, Jacques Lacan

C) WISH-list (Warwick Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities), on which I am one of four General Editors. Published titles include:

1. Peter Mack, Reading and Rhetoric in Montaigne and Shakespeare

2. Jonathan Bate, ed., The Public Value of the Humanities

3. Joseph Crawford, Raising Milton’s Ghost

4. Nicholas Monk et al., Open-Space Learning: Transdisciplinary Pedagogy

5. Thomas Docherty, Confessions

6. Michael Gardiner, The Constitution of English Literature

7. Martin McQuillan, Critical Practice

8. Michael Piggott, Joseph Cornell versus Cinema

c) Articles and commissioned book chapters:

1. ‘ On Leadership’, in Roger Sugden, ed., Cooperation and Leadership in Academia (Edward Elgar, 2013), 269-282 2. ‘Sense and Sensibility in Academia’ in Roger Sugden, ed., Cooperation and Leadership in Academia (Edward Elgar, 2013), 58-69

3. ‘Official Identity and Clandestine Experience, in Ana Maria Sanchez., ed., Identity and Form in Contemporary Literature (Routledge, 2013), 7-31

4. ‘My Language!’ in William McKenzie and Theodora Papadopolou, eds., Shakespeare and I (Continuum, London and New York, 2012),126-143

5. ‘Research by Numbers’, Index on Censorship 41: 3 (2012), 46-54

6. ‘Accidental Conditions: The social consequences of poststructuralist philosophy’, in Gerard Delanty and Stephen P. Turner, eds., Routledge International Handbook of Contemporary Social and Political Theory (Routledge, London and New York, 2011), 56-65

7. ‘Bez porównamia’ (translation of ‘Without and Beyond Compare’), Wielogłos, 1-2 (7-8) (2010), 181-192

8. ‘On Prejudice and foretelling’, in Martin McQuillan and Ika Willis, eds., The Origins of Deconstruction (Palgrave Macmillan, London and New York, 2010), 83-96

9. ‘On Critical Humility’, Textual Practice, 23: 6 (2009), 1029-1044

10. ‘Deconstruction Not Reading Politics’, in Martin McQuillan, ed., Deconstruction Reading Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, London and New York, 2008), 32-56

11. ‘Without and Beyond Compare’, Comparative Critical Studies, 3: 1 (2006), 25-36

12. ‘On Reading’, Critical Quarterly 45: 3 (2003), 6-19

13. ‘Clandestine English’, The Cambridge Quarterly 34: 3 (2005), 221-230 [Special Fortieth Anniversary edition]

14. ‘Die Welt ist alles’ in Ivan Callus and Stefan Herbrechter, Post-Theory (Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2004)

15. ‘The Existence of Scotland’ in Eleanor Bell and Gavin Miller, eds., Scotland in Theory (Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York, 2004), 231-248

16. ‘Newman, Ireland and Universality’, boundary 2 31: 1 (2004), 73-92 [Special Issue on Contemporary Irish Culture and Politics]

17. ‘The Question Concerning Literature’ in Elizabeth Beaumont-Bissell, ed., The Question of Literature (Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 2002), 126-141

18. ‘The Place’s Fault’, in Ondřey Pilný and Clare Wallace, eds., Global Ireland (Litteraria Pragensia, Prague, 2005), 13-32

19. ‘Aesthetic Education and the Demise of Experience’ in John Joughin and Simon Malpas, eds., The New Aestheticism (Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 2003), 23-35

20. ‘The Passion of the Possible’, in Daniel Thomières, L’ambiguité (Presses Universitaires de Rheims, 2002), 7-16 21. ‘Potential European Democracy’, Paragraph 25: 2 (2002), 16-35

22. ‘Hypocrisy in Aesthetic Education’ in Stefan Herbrechter and Ivan Callus, eds., Theory, Culture, Criticism (Bucknell University Press, 2003)

23. ‘…Declining the West…’ Cairo University Journal (2003)

24. ‘The Ethics of Hypocrisy’, in Jürgen Pieters, Fiction and Ethics (Academia Press, Belgium, 2003)

25. ‘Machiavelli and Modernity’ Shakespeare in Southern Africa 13 (2001), 11-22

26. ‘Ghosts; or, posthumous postmodernism’, in Brian Crews, ed., Postmodernisms: Prospects and Retrospects (Philologia Hispalensis, Sevilla, 2002), 105-115

27. ‘“sound sense”; or, “tralala” / “moocow”: Joyce and the anathema of writing’, in Laurent Milesi, ed., James Joyce and the Difference of Language (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2003), 112-127

28. ‘Responses’ in Paul Bowman, ed., Interrogating Cultural Studies (Pluto Press, London and New York, 2003), 221-232

29. ‘On Critical Humility’, in Paul Sheehan, ed., Becoming Human (Praeger, Westport, Connecticut, London, 2003), 165-180

30. ‘The Ethics of Alterity’ [reprinted from Alterities] in Brian Nicol, ed., Postmodernism and Contemporary Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2002), 355-370

31. ‘Just Events’, in Thomas Carmichael and Alison Lee, eds., Postmodern Times (Northern Illinois University Press, De Kalb, 2000), 53-66

32. ‘For a New Empiricism’, parallax, 5: 2 (1999), 51-64

33. ‘Now, Here, This’, in Roger Luckhurst and Peter Marks, eds., Literature and the Contemporary (Longman, 1999), 50-62

34. ‘Ethics of Alterity’ [reprinted from Alterities], in Niall Lucy, ed., Postmodern Literary Theory: An Anthology (Blackwell, Oxford and New York, 1999)

35. ‘International Postmodernism’, Comparative Criticism, 21 (1999), 242-252

36. ‘Ana-; or postmodernism, landscape, Heaney’ [reprinted from Alterities] in Michael Allen, ed., Seamus Heaney: New Casebooks (Macmillan, 1997), 206-222

37. ‘The Sign of the Cross’ [reprinted from Irish Review] in Michael Alen, ed., Seamus Heaney: New Casebooks (Macmillan, 1997), 147-154

38. ‘Tragedy and the Nationalist Condition of Criticism’, Textual Practice 10: 3 (1996), 479-505

39. ‘The Aesthetic Event’, in Pavel Buehler and Nikos Papastergiadis, eds., Ambient Fears (Rivers Oram Press, 1996), 129-142

40. ‘Big Texts: A Critique of Literary Economy’, Year’s Work in English Studies (1996), 249-259 [Special issue on Strategies of Reading: Dickens and After, ed. Nicola Bradbury]

41. ‘Donne: the Body without Organs, the Mechanics of Love, and Truth’ Confluences, 11 (1995), 51-61

42. ‘Postmodernism: Lyotard, Baudrillard and others’, in Richard Kearney, ed., Continental Philosophy in the Twentieth Century [Routledge History of Philosophy, vol. 8] (Routledge, London and New York, 1994), 474-505

43. ‘Procesul de construire a personajului postmodern: o etica a alteritatii’, Revista de istorie si teorie literara, 42:3 (1994), 307-318

44. ‘Christopher Norris and the Truth about Postmodernism’, Textual Practice 8:3 (1994), 503-507

45. ‘Theory and Difficulty’, in Richard Bradford, ed., The State of Theory (Routledge, London and New York, 193), 20-34

46. ‘Authority, History, and the Question of Postmodernism’, in Nicola Miller and Maurice Biriotti, eds., What Is An Author? (Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 1993), 53-71

47. ‘Initiations, Tempers, Seductions: Postmodern McGuckian’, in Neil Corcoran, ed., The Chosen Ground (Poetry Wales Press / Seren Books, 1992), 189-210

48. ‘Criticism, History, Foucault’, Journal of the History of European Ideas, 14:3 (1992), 365-378

49. ‘Lyotard’, Paragraph, 15 (1992), 105-116

50. ‘Ana-; or, Postmodernism, Landscape, Heaney,’ in Antony Easthope and John O. Thompson, eds., Contemporary Poetry Meets Modern Theory (Harvester-Wheatsheaf, 1991), 68-80

51. ‘Postmodern Characterisation: The Ethics of Alterity’, in Edmund J. Smyth, ed., Postmodernism and Contemporary Fiction (Batsford Academic, 1991), 169-188

52. ‘War and Cinema’. Textual Practice, 4:3 (1990), 465-469

53. ‘Anti-Mimesis: the Historicity of Representation’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 26 (1990), 272-281

54. ‘New Maps for Field Day’, The New Nation, 4 (1989), 22-23

55. ‘Lyotard: Philosophical and Political Events’, Textual Practice, 3:3 (1989), 430-439

56. ‘Passages to Postmodernism’, in Richard Kearney, ed., Across the Frontiers (Wolfhound Press, Dublin, 1989), 261-275

57. ‘The Sign of the Cross: Governing Heaney’s Tongue’, The Irish Review, 5 (1988), 112-116

58. ‘Theory on Ashbery: “Wet Casements”, Revolving Doors, Involving Secrets’, Verse, 4 (1987), 57-60

59. ‘Theory, Enlightenment and Violence’, Textual Practice, 1:2 (1987), 192-216

60. ‘Donne’s Praise of Folly’, in Richard Machin and Christopher Norris, eds., Poststructuralist Readings of English Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 1987), 85-104

61. ‘Recent Scottish Poetry’, Verse, 1 (1985), 48-49

62. ‘Betraying the Text: Postmodern Critical Theory’, Entropy 1 (1985)

63. ‘The Ecstasy of the Screen: Kosinski and Being There, White Room, 1 (1982)

64. ‘A Constant Reality: Presentation of Character in the Fiction of John Fowles’, Novel, 14 (1981), 118-134

d) Translations:

‘Preview for a New Stage’ (translation of J-F Lyotard, ‘Billet pour un nouveau décor’) in Richard Kearney, ed., Across the Frontiers (Wolfhound Press, Dublin, 1989), 261-263

‘Svelte appendix to the Postmodern Question’ (translation of J-F Lyotard, ‘Apendice svelte à la question postmoderne’), in Richard Kearney, ed., Across the Frontiers (Wolfhound Press, Dublin, 1989), 263-267

e) Short Story: 'Old Keys', in Warwick Review, 3:4 (2009)

Forthcoming; commissioned:

‘The Rise of Theory’ for The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism

‘The States of the University’

‘Globalisation and the University’