Jo Croft
Lecturer in English
Research Interests
My research focuses on the interface between literature and psychoanalysis, and I am particularly interested in the political and psychic investments that have been made, since the late 19th century, in reading, writing and playing as constituents of identity. Adolescence has consistently been an axiomatic term within my work, because of its cultural purchase as a transitional or borderline category. Other key research interests include children’s fiction, disability in picture books, domestic space, twinship, and representations of trauma.
Current Projects
My current research engages with contemporary debates surrounding literacy policy within British primary education. I am keen to explore the ways in which ‘reading pleasure’ functions within the contested, and often emotive terrain, of literacy teaching. Since September 2008, I have been working with a group of primary school children (aged 8-11), meeting weekly in a book group, in order to carry out a series of qualitative studies of children’s perceptions of themselves as readers.
Publications (Selected)
Books
Our House: The Representation of Domestic Space in Modern Culture (edited, with Gerry Smyth; Amsterdam: Rodopi Press, 2006)
including: (with G. Smyth) "Introduction: Culture and Domestic Space," 11-26; &
"A Life of Longing Behind the Bedroom Door: Adolescent Space and the Makings of Private Identity", 209 25
Book Chapters
"'Go Hang Yourself, You Who Have Never Been Comfortably Seated and Eating an Olive': the Taste and Defiance of an Adolescent Body", M. Syrotinski & I. Maclachlan (eds), Sensual Reading: New Approaches to Reading in its Relations to the Senses (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell U.P., 2001), 213-225
Postgraduate Teaching and Supervision
I have supervised PhD theses in creative writing which explore psychoanalysis and the interrogation of memory; and the relationship between homophobia and the AIDS crisis.
Teaching: Undergraduate
I currently teach modules on childhood, adolescence, madness and psychoanalysis.
