Centre for Women's Writing and Literary Culture
Director: Dr Sarah Prescott
Deputy Director: Dr Tiffany Atkinson
Operational since September 2010, the official launch of the Centre took place on 31 May 2011 when Professor Margaret J. M. Ezell, Distinguished Professor of English and Sara and John Lindsey Chair of Liberal Arts, Texas A&M University delivered the first Annual Lecture. Full details in the Centre for Women's Writing Launch Report and the CWWLC Launch Programme.
Research Expertise
The breadth of research on women’s writing indicates the strength of interest and expertise in this area in the department. There are currently 10 members of the Department and 14 postgraduates who are active researchers in this field. Staff publish widely on women’s writing from the medieval period to the present day. We also have a number of practitioners of creative writing who are either published women writers themselves or who explore themes concerning women in their work. There is also particular expertise in Welsh women’s writing from the seventeenth century to contemporary work by women in Wales and a new MA strand on Welsh Writing in English and women’s writing. If you are interested in studying for an MA or PhD in any area of women’s writing please contact the Director, Dr Sarah Prescott, scp@aber.ac.uk.
Lectures and Seminars
The Centre hosts an annual lecture presented by a key figure in the field and will organise a major international conference every three years (which will be a forum for addressing key themes and future developments in the field of women’s writing). In addition, it will mount a series of workshops and colloquia organised by and shaped for postgraduate members. The first event in this series was a day symposium on Contemporary Welsh Women's Writing which was held in the National Library in March 2011 for International Woman’s Day, coordinated by Dr Natasha Alden and doctoral student Jemma King. The Centre also hosts research seminars in the Department. The two most recent were: Jemma King on ‘Sorophobia! Sylvia Plath and her daughter versus Ted’s “other women’’’ (October 2010) and Sarah Prescott on 'Writing Welsh Women's Literary History 1600-1800’ (November 2010).
Staff Members (and research areas)
Professor Peter Barry (C20th Poetry)
Dr Helena Grice (Asian American C20th)
Professor Sarah Hutton (early modern and eighteenth century; philosophy, science & literature)
Dr Louise Marshall (eighteenth-century)
Dr Sarah Prescott (seventeenth and eighteenth-century; Anglophone Welsh writing 1600-1800)
Professor Lyn Pykett (nineteenth century)
Dr Luke Thurston (C20th Literature)
Dr Damian Walford Davies (C20th Welsh Writing)
Professor Diane Watt (medieval and early modern)
Dr Kate Wright (African/multicultural British writers C20th/21st)
Postgraduate Members (and research areas)
Kirsten Bartels (Holocaust Fiction)
Katy Birch (nineteenth-century poetry)
Seth Clabough (CW/Willa Cather))
Mary Chadwick (C18th Welsh)
Sally Demarest (Eliza Haywood/C18th)
Amy Dennis (CW)
Alys Henley-Einion (Life writing and Islam))
Jemma King (Frieda Hughes/C20th/21st)
Brandi Mantha (CW)
Carol Morris (Renaissance)
Gwyneth Roberts (Jane Williams (Ysgafell) C19th)
Katherine Stansfield (CW)
Bill Welstead (Contemporary Welsh poetry)
Tamar Yoseloff (CW)
Key Publications
Tiffany Atkinson, Kink and Particle, (Seren, 2006)
Tiffany Atkinson, The Body: A Reader, ed. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)
Helena Grice, Negotiating Identities: Asian American Women's Writing (Manchester UP 2002)
Helena Grice, Maxine Hong Kingston (Manchester UP 2006)
Helena Grice, Asian American Fiction, History, and Life Writing: International Encounters (Routledge, 2009)
Sarah Hutton, Anne Conway, a Woman Philosopher (Cambridge University Press, 2004)
Sarah Hutton, The Conway Letters: the Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More and their Friends, 1642-1684, a revised edition, with a new introduction and new materials, of a collection originally edited by Marjorie Nicolson in 1930. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992)
Sarah Hutton, Women, Science and Medicine in Early Modern England, ed. L. Hunter and S. Hutton (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1997)
Louise Marshall, Na t ional Myth and Imperial Fantasy: Representations of British Identity on the Early Eighteenth-Century Stage (Palgrave, 2008)
Sarah Prescott, Women, Authorship and Literary Culture, 1690-1740 (Palgrave, 2003)
Sarah Prescott, Women and Poetry, 1660-1750, ed. S. Prescott and D. Shuttleon (Palgrave 2003)
Sarah Prescott, Eighteenth-Century Writing from Wales: Bards and Britons (UWP, 2008)
Sarah Prescott, Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Women Writers from Wales: The Cambrian Muses (UWP, 2011/2)
Lyn Pykett, Emily Bronte (Macmillan, 1989).
Lyn Pykett, The Improper Feminine: The Women's Sensation Novel and the New Woman Writing (Routledge,1992)
Lyn Pykett (ed.), Mary Elizabeth Braddon, The Doctor's Wife (Oxford University Press, 1998)
Lyn Pykett (ed.), May Sinclair, The Creators (Continuum, 2004)
Lyn Pykett (ed.), Ellen Wood, St Martin’s Eve (Pickering Chatto, 2004)
Lyn Pykett (ed.), Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret (Commissioned: Oxford University Press)
Dian Watt, Medieval Women's Writing (Cambridge: Polity, 2007)
Diane Watt, The Paston Women: Selected Letters, ed. (Cambridge: DS Brewer, 2004)
Diane Watt, Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Cambridge: DS Brewer, 1997)
Diane Watt, Medieval Women in Their Communities (Cardiff and Toronto: UWP and U of Toronto P, 1997)
Kate Wright, Three African Women Novelists: Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta and Tsitsi Dangarembga (Manchester University Press; submission date, July 2010)
Advisory Board
Professor Jane Aaron (University of Glamorgan)
Paula R Backscheider (Philpott-Stevens Eminent Scholar, Auburn University)
Dr Heike Bauer (Birkbeck College, University of London)
Dr Cathryn Charnell-White (Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, Aberyswtyth)
Professor Margaret J. M. Ezell (Texas A&M University)
Dr Katie Gramich (Cardiff University)
Dr Catharine Gray (University of Illinois)
Professor Isobel Grundy (University of Alberta)
Dr Liz Herbert McAvoy (Swansea University)
Alison Hindell (Head of Drama, Radio, BBC)
Professor Elaine Hobby (Loughborough University)
Professor Catherine Ingrassia (Virginia Commonwealth University)
Helgard Krause (Head of the University of Wales Press)
Professor Heidi Macpherson (De Montfort University)
Professor Felicity A. Nussbaum (UCLA)
Dr Francesca Rhydderch (Aberystwyth University)
Professor Denise Riley
Dr Zoë Skoulding, (Bangor University, Editor of Poetry Wales)
Professor Jane Spencer (University of Exeter)
Alicia Stubbersfield (Liverpool John Moores University)
Professor David Wallace (University of Pennsylvania)
Amy Wack (Poetry Editor, Seren)
Professor Diane Watt (University of Surrey)
Professor Helen Wilcox (Bangor University)
Links
The Centre is pleased to maintain formal links with Honno Press, based in Aberystwyth, and with the Chawton House Library, Alton, Hampshire.