Category Archives: Interviews

New Book Releases: ‘Irish London: A Cultural History 1850-1916’

By Richard Kirkland

Written by Professor of Irish Literature & Cultural Theory Richard Kirkland, Irish London: A Cultural History 1850-1916 was published by Bloomsbury in September 2021, and has a paperback release forthcoming in 2022.

What drew you to this subject?

I’ve always written about Irish culture – it’s been my life really – and in the area of Camden where I live the history of Irish London is inescapable and compelling. So I hoped the book would be a way of connecting my research interests with my day-to-day experience and the friends I have here. I’ve also thought a good deal about London itself over the years, partly because it is such a strong research and teaching area in the English department. In fact, so many of the events I describe in the book happened within a few hundred yards of what is now the Virginia Woolf Building!

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New Book Releases: ‘Samuel Beckett’s Legacies in American Fiction’

By James Baxter

Written by London-based independent scholar James Baxter, Samuel Beckett’s Legacies in American Fiction: Problems in Postmodernism was published by Palgrave Macmillan in December 2021, as part of their series ‘New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty First Century.’

What drew you to this subject?

At the outset, I think it was an intuited connection between a lot of the fiction that I was reading and enjoying at the time; Beckett of course, but also American writers like Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover, Thomas Pynchon, etc. A lot of headache-inducing postmodern stuff. While there is certainly no shortage of scholarship on Beckett’s relation to the more theoretical body of postmodernism, I was quite struck by the absence of any sustained work on literary postmodernism and the way Beckett skewers the work of periodisation by serving as an end but also a beginning for this new paradigm (not unlike the kind of stalled narrative sequences that a reader encounters in his mid-century Trilogy).

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INDUCTION WEEK SOMERSETTING TAKEOVER: FIRST YEAR MODULE EARLY MODERN LITERARY CULTURE

Each year, departing third-year students in our department put together a guide for arriving first years. This year’s magazine – titled “Somersetting” – offers a student perspective on studying English at King’s and addresses some issues of concern for new students. During induction week, the blog will be spotlighting sections of this year’s magazine. 

For today, we have an insight into the module ‘Early Modern Literary Culture’, including a chat with Dr Sarah Lewis, the module convenor.

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Induction Week Somersetting Takeover: Interview with Dr Carl Kears

By Carl Kears and Cornelia Sheppard Dawson

Each year, departing third-year students in our department put together a guide for arriving first years. This year’s magazine – titled “Somersetting” – offers a student perspective on studying English at King’s and addresses some issues of concern for new students. During induction week, the blog will be spotlighting sections of this year’s magazine.

First up… Cornelia Sheppard Dawson interviews Dr Carl Kears, Head of First Year and Lecturer in Medieval Literature.

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“attracting black poets and increasing the volume of those that are seen in the world”: An Interview with Nick Makoha on the Obsidian Foundation

By George Kowalik (editor)

I sat down with Nick Makoha, second year PhD student in the English department here at King’s. We mainly talked about Nick’s work with the Obsidian Foundation, but also moved on to his creative work generally. Below is a transcript of our discussion of the Obsidian Foundation. See the attached audio file for the full interview…

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