Dr Rob Spence
As Associate Head of Department, my main focus is on the development of teaching and learning within the subject areas. My main teaching interests are in poetry (I teach the third year poetry module LIT 3112 Poets and Places) and in modern and contemporary literature. I teach the third year module LIT 3101 Make it New: Modernism and a module on the postmodern novel, LIT 3106 Flight from Realism.
LIT 2105 The Grand Tour explores the emergence of travel writing in the eighteenth century. The first year module Introduction to Narrative brings together a number of interesting strands from the fields of literature, mythology and anthropology.
My research and publications focus mainly on the twentieth century and the contemporary. My most recent published work includes two book chapters on Anthony Burgess,, who is also the subject of a forthcoming monograph. In addition, I have published on Jane Rogers , George Mackay Brown, Robert Nye and Penelope Fitzgerald. I would be interested to hear proposals from students interested in conducting research in twentieth and twenty-first century literature.
I am co-editor of 21, Edge Hill’s Journal of Contemporary and Innovative Fiction.
Research
- Twentieth century and contemporary fiction
- Anthony Burgess
- British poetry of the urban and rural environment
- Travel writing
- Technology-enhanced learning in the humanities
Publications
- Anthony Burgess (Manchester University Press, forthcoming 2010)
- Louis De Bernières: A Student Guide London: Greenwich Exchange, 2009
- “Hogg, Hoggart and the Uses of Illiteracy: Anthony Burgess and Pop Music” in Jeannin, M. (ed.) (2009) Anthony Burgess: Music in Literature and Literature in Music. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press.
- “Mr Burgess, Mr Nye, Mr Shakespeare and Mr Pickleherring: representations of Shakespeare in Burgess and Nye” in Roughley, A. (ed) (2008) Anthony Burgess and Modernity. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp.207-222
- “Burgess’s Manchester, Manchester’s Burgess” in Woodroffe, G. (ed) (2006). Anthony Burgess: Autobiographer Angers: Presse de l’Universite d’Angers, pp.105-112.
- “Penelope Fitzgerald: Offshore” in Moseley, M. (ed) (2006) Dictionary of Literary Biography 326: Booker Prize Novels 1969-2005. Detroit: Thomson Gale, pp. 110 – 119.
- “Robert Nye” in Moseley, M. (ed) (2002) Dictionary of Literary Biography 271: Contemporary Novelists. Detroit: The Gale Group, pp.281-289
- “George Mackay Brown” in Moseley, M. (ed) (2002) Dictionary of Literary Biography 271: Contemporary Novelists Detroit: The Gale Group, pp 81-91)