I was once told that a professor in discourse analysis – who shall go nameless – said routinely that literary studies had no concepts. I think of this professor often, which is to say every time that I come across a new or interesting literary concept. This week has been particularly good for this, because…

I’ve returned to Cicley Berry’s writing recently, and wanted to register in a blog post how good it is. I mean ‘good’ as both impressively skillful but also ‘good’ as, well, wholesome: the analysis she provides to help actors read difficult texts is exactly the kind of thing that my own academic background has led…

I was one of those pubescent boys who read a lot of Terry Pratchett. I used to hide this fact, and concentrate on my reading all of Dickens, or my other literary exploits. But now I can be more honest, and admit that Pratchett’s writing shaped me and my thinking profoundly, often leading me to…

This is another one of those posts that I am writing a week late but backdating so as to preserve (in a certain sense of the word) a sense of regular progression with my research leave blogging. This time last week I was travelling down to London, ready to run some pilot workshops for a…

I returned from the USA two weeks ago, and have now switched to the second stage of my research leave: writing funding bids in an attempt to earn both prestige and time to do more research. This is a new thing for me, and I’m not particularly at ease with it. I’ve written plenty of…