Dr James Christie: academic profile
Welcome! I am an early career academic and part time tutor based in the department of English Literature at the University of Warwick. My main area of interest is Twentieth Century literature; in particular European modernism and early postmodernism. I also have a strong focus on literary theory, with a specific interest in the development of Marxist critical theory since the Second World War. Figures of special interest to me include Joseph Conrad, Henry James, T.S. Eliot, Franz Kafka, Cormac McCarthy, Theodor Adorno, Louis Althusser and Jean François Lyotard.
My thesis, entitled 'Fredric Jameson and the art of modernism' is on the work of the Marxist critic and theorist Fredric Jameson. It focusses in particular on the work which Jameson has published since the year 2000, which I feel has been a comparatively overlooked area of his work. My examination of these more recent works, such as The Modernist Papers (2007) and A Singular Modernity (2002), is then also tied to a wider argument about the significance of Jameson as a critic of modernism and the role of modernism in his thinking. This argument focusses on the role that modernism plays in his widely-known theory of postmodernity and his more controversial ideas on the question of 'Third World Literature'. I am especially interested in allegory as an expression of modernism in Jameson's work (particularly the concept of allegory as Jameson inherits it from from both Paul de Man and Walter Benjamin). This work was supervised by Professor Thomas Docherty and Professor Neil Lazarus and funded through an AHRC studentship. The thesis was examined by Doctor Nick Lawrence (Warwick) and Professor Timothy Bewes (Brown USA), passing with a successful viva in January 2014.
Since submitting my PhD for examination in September 2013 I have continued my research as an Early Career Fellow in the Warwick Institute of Advanced Study. During this time I have commenced a new project looking at the American novelist Cormac McCarthy.
Andy Warhol, Diamond Dust Shoes
