States of Sleeplessness: Insomnia, Fiction & Globalisation

Researcher: Fergus McErlean
Supervised by: Pablo Mukherjee
Home department: English and Comparative Literary Studies
Project department: English and Comparative Literary Studies
Expected start date: 13/06/2016
Expected end date: 22/07/2016

I am a recent graduate in English Literature at Warwick and my research project builds upon ideas and literature from modules I studied in my final year; States of Damage and The Global Novel. I consider these as two of the most engaging and politcally relevant modules that I was fortunate enough to gain a place on and strongly recommend them to anyone undertaking an English degree here. It was my hope that this project could act as a form of bibliography and be a beneficial source of further reading to anyone who chooses these modules and has an interest in it's topic; the intrusive effects of 24/7 capitalism upon sleep. It is also possible that I may use the research area of this project as a springboard for studies I pursue at a postrgraduate level. The main reseach areas of interests that I developed whilst studying at Warwick include American Literature, Science Fiction and Devolutionary British fiction.

This project will build upon ideas expounded in Jonathan Crary's work, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, by exploring the intrusive and debilitating effects of capitalism upon the human need for sleep and the representation of this dynamic within fiction, highlighting in the process the relationship between Crary's politics of sleep and the experience of globalisation.
The majority of this project will be spent researching fictional depictions of insomnia, sleep deprivation or attitudes towards sleep as a hindrance, and how there may be an intrinsic link in these depictions between sleeplessness and the process of globalisation. It will also consider works of fiction that invoke capitalism and globalisation as processes that are themselves sleepless.