I supervise B.A. Theses in contemporary literature, particularly J.G. Ballard, Martin Amis, Angela Carter, Ali Smith, Zadie Smith, Monica Ali, Salman Rushdie, Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, Mary Gaitskill, Siri Hustvedt.
I also supervise creative writing projects in prose fiction and life writing (Individual Assignment BA English Language and Culture EN3V14004).
Students, please note in this context:
1. This absolutely does not replace your BA thesis;
2. You can only do one of these during your degree;
3. You'll need my advance permission to enrol & I'll only be able to accept a very limited number of students: you should therefore have done very well on the Creative Writing course and be prepared to write a detailed proposal.
The work itself wil consist of:
1. An exegetical statement (1,000 words) which identifies and comments on at least two texts/sources which have informed the creative work and details choices taken in composing it. Which elements of genre, trope, theme or technique does the creative work enact? What has been the aim of this work? This may take the form of either a) a unified text or b) a second copy of the creative work with annotations in footnotes.
2. An original creative work: fiction or non-fiction, poetry or drama. It constitutes an act of practice-based research of a length agreed in consultation with supervisor (perhaps 5,000-6,000 words if prose). This is a clean copy: any footnotes or paratexts must be integral parts of the work, i.e. they must be peritexts rather than epitexts (see Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/ron/1999-n13-ron425/005838ar/).
3. Works Cited list in MLA style, drawn from fields including but absolutely not limited to literature, literary criticism, literary theory, stylistics, creative writing.
Involved in the following study programme(s)
Involved in the following course(s)