Timothy Ashplant
Professor of Social and Cultural History
Research Interests
My current research interests include working-class autobiography and life-writings, and their relationships to political identities and autobiographical theory; the historical construction of masculinity, and its relationship to class and political identities; and historiographical theory, including its relationship with psychoanalytic theory.
Current Projects
I am working with Dr Petar Vodenicharov (South-Western University "Neophit Rilski", Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria; Visiting Research Fellow, 2008) on comparative psychoanalytical readings of Communist autobiographies.
Publications (Selected)
Books
Fractured Loyalties: Masculinity, Class and Politics in Britain, 1900-30 (London: RiversOram, 2007)
Explorations in Cultural History (co-edited, with G. Smyth; London: Pluto, 2001)
including: "Schools, Methods, Disciplines, Influences", 3-27; &
"'A secret conviction that nothing can be changed', or 'abolishing a part of yourself'?: George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)", 101-37
The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration (co-edited, with G. Dawson & M. Roper; London: Routledge, 2000)
including: "The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration: Contexts, Structures and Dynamics", 1-85 (with G. Dawson & M. Roper)
"War Commemoration in Western Europe: Changing Meanings, Divisive Loyalties, Unheard Voices", 263-72
Journal Articles
"Dis/Connecting Whiteness: Biographical Perspectives on Race, Class, Masculinity and Sexuality in Britain c.1850-1930", L'Homme: Europäische Zeitschrift für Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft (Vienna) 16.2 (2005), 68-85
Book Chapters
"Introduction: R. A. Scott Macfie and the Gypsies of Bulgaria", to R. A. Scott Macfie, With Gypsies in Bulgaria: Diary of a Journey in 1913 (Sofia, Bulgaria; Sofia University Press, 2007), 11-57
"'The Narrow Margin of Long Days of Toil': Class and Education in the Writings of Ruth Slate", in A. Donnell & P. Polkey (eds), Representing Lives: Women's Lives into Print (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 228-37
"Anecdote as Narrative Resource in Working-class Life Stories: Parody, Dramatization and Sequence", in M. Chamberlain & P. Thompson (eds.), Narrative and Genre (London: Routledge, 1998), 99-113
Research Awards
AHRB Resource Enhancement Scheme: "The Everyman Theatre, Liverpool: an Electronic Catalogue of its Archive and Associated Developments" (with Dr Ros Merkin, Drama; 2004-7)
External Professional Activities
I have been a Visiting Professor at St Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, Bulgaria; and South-Western University "Neofit Rilski", Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria.
Member, editorial team, International Yearbook of Oral History and Life Stories (OUP, 1992-6)
Member, editorial board, Auto/Biography (Manchester U.P., 1994-2000)
Principal Editor, Memory & Narrative (Routledge, 1997-2003; Transaction Books 2004-7)
Postgraduate Teaching and Supervision
I have supervised PhD theses on a range of subects, including: meaning and identity in Woman Magazine (1890-1910); the politics of contemporary dance culture and its televisual representations; slave medicine in the American South; George Tabori's theatre practice; the literature of the Cold War; the photography of Edward Chambré Hardman (1898-1988); and the fiction of Raymond Williams.
Teaching: Undergraduate
I teach a range of courses including "Texts and Contexts: the Tutorial Module", "The Great War: Cultural Histories", "Voices and Votes: Women and Writing in Britain, 1900-39" and "Observing the Thirties: Britain 1900-39".
