Alice Ferrebe
Lecturer in English
Research Interests
A lot of my research work to date has been initiated by my initial realisation as a PhD student that there was very little in the way of rigorous literary critical models for a consideration of masculinity – work in the field tended to be sociological in nature, or seen as a kind of "poor cousin" to feminist studies. Ever the optimist, I took this as a positive thing, as it allowed for the testing of various critical paradigms – feminism, film theory, reader-response, existentialism, for example – to forge new ways of thinking about the way masculinity is represented in literature. My publication list to date, hopefully, is evidence of the varied and interdisciplinary nature of my approach.
Current Projects
I'm currently researching and writing The Edinburgh History of Twentieth-Century Literature in Britain 1950 – 1960: Good, Brave Causes. The 1950s has acquired almost as many mythic associations as its glamorous, swinging successor. Its presiding political consensus and increasing affluence are routinely understood as resulting in apathy and smugness. My study aims to rereads the decade and its literature as crucial in twentieth-century British history for its emergent and increasingly complicated politics of difference, as ideas about identity, genealogy and belonging were tested and contested. The Fifties is characterised as a time of literary and cultural confrontation with a range of concerns still avidly debated today, such as immigration, education, the challenging behaviour of youth, nuclear threat, the post-industrial and -imperial, a consumerist economy and a feminist movement hampered by the perceived comprehensive nature of its recent success. Contrary to Jimmy Porter's sombre judgement on his era in John Osborne's 1956 Look Back in Anger, the volume will uphold such concerns as "good, brave causes" indeed.
By way of contrast, I'm also preparing a contribution to a book of essays on Irvine Welsh, also for EUP, that will consider Welsh's place within the traditions of Scottish Literature.
Publications (Selected)
Books
Masculinity in the Male-Authored Novel 1950-2000: Keeping it Up (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)
Journal Articles
'Dreamerica: Visions of Transatlantic Masculinity in the Sixties English Novel', Symbiosis 7.2 (October 2003), 275-282
'The Gaze of the Magus: Sexual/Scopic Politics in the Novels of John Fowles', JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory 34.2 (Summer 2004), 207-225
Book Chapters
'Between Camps: Masculinity, Race and Nation in Post-Devolution Scotland', in Berthold Schoene (ed.), The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 275-282
'High Visibility: Teaching Ladlit', in Ben Knights (ed.), Masculinities in Text and Teaching (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 220-234
"John Berger's 'G'", in Merritt Moseley (ed.), Booker Prize Novels 1969-2005 (Dictionary of Literary Biography, 2005)
External Professional Activities
I was Director of the Scottish Universities International Summer School from 2001-3 and have been involved in an Aim Higher initiative to ensure greater inclusion in Higher Education in the Merseyside area.
Postgraduate Teaching and Supervision
I'm currently on the supervision team for a PhD which brings together concepts from Masculinity studies and Green studies to analyse the relationship between, and evolving representation of, male bodies and ecological crisis in English and Scottish fiction; and another on Electronic Generative Poetry. I've also recently supervised MRes dissertations on constructions of masculinity in Auschwitz, and on the work of Ian Rankin.
Teaching: Undergraduate
I teach on a range of modules across all 3 levels including "Analogue to Digital: Introduction to Narrative, Technology and Theory", "Relating Gender: Fiction from the Nineteenth Century to the Present" and "Representing Masculinities".
