Patricia McManus

My core research interest is the history of the novel, the difficult practices involved in conceptualising and analysing such a multifaceted and global narrative form. Within this large problematic, I research specific genres and movements in the novel (dystopia; science fiction; modernism and contemporaneity). I have a related interested in the intersection of literary and social history in terms of how the novel addresses/readdresses its public, and how the latter erases class forms of identity. 

To work historically but with a sensitivity to formal differences and patterns, i use critical theory, in particular the work of Theodor Adorno and contemporary practitioners of marxism - Fredric Jameson, Franco Moretti and Sianne Ngai. 

I am currently supervising doctoral theses on techniques of interior narration in the twentieth-century novel; on the politics of L'ecriture feminine in the sub-genre of the commerical romance fiction; on satire and censorship in the post-War American novel; and on eco-criticism and the contemporary novel.  

I am particularly keen to supervise work on critical theory and literary history; on the revival of the aesthetic; on dystopia as a fiction committed to politics, and on marxism as a mode of decolonisation.