Dr Anthony Rowland
Professor in Memory Studies
Crescent House 115
T +44 (0)161 295 3615
F +44 (0)161 295 5077
I am a Chair in Memory Studies and lead the Poetry and Poetics and Memory Studies research clusters. My research interests include memory studies, Holocaust studies, contemporary poetry and masculinity. My most recent book, Holocaust Poetry (2005) is the first critical study of post-Holocaust poetry in Britain, and focuses on the work of Sylvia Plath, Tony Harrison, Geoffrey Hill and Ted Hughes. I have also written a monograph on Tony Harrison's Holocaust poetry.
I am currently working on a project which considers how Holocaust poetry can be understood as a form of testimony, looking in particular at the poetry of Tadeusz Borowski, Primo Levi, Charlotte Delbo, the Oasis poets (including Keith Douglas and John Jarmain) and Voices magazine. This project argues that once the genre is prised away from an historico-juridicial context, other forms of writing - such as poetry - can be fruitfully analysed as instances of testimony.
Supervision
I have supervised postgraduate research students working in a broad range of subjects, including postcolonial poetry, war literature and cricket literature. I am currently supervising projects on contemporary fiction and masculinity, female masculinity, and Ted and Frieda Hughes. I welcome applications for PhD theses in a range of areas including memory studies, masculinity and contemporary poetry, and particularly welcome expressions of interest from prospective students wishing to conduct research on issues surrounding testimony and memory, or on Holocaust poetry or Holocaust literature more broadly.
Teaching
- Representing the Holocaust
- Signs of Masculinity
- Contemporary Poetry
- Creative Writing
- Introduction to Poetry
The innovative Representing the Holocaust module was recently described by Robert Eaglestone in Teaching Holocaust Literature and Film (2008) as the 'benchmark course' in interdisciplinary Holocaust studies in the UK.
Selected publications
Special edition of Critical Survey on Holocaust poetry, eds. Antony Rowland and Robert Eaglestone (Royal Holloway), including an introduction and an interview with Tadeusz Pióro (about Tadeusz Borowski's Selected Poems) by Antony Rowland (Berghahn Journals, 2008).
Holocaust Poetry (Edinburgh University Press, 2005)
The Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy: [Choosing Tough Words] (co-edited with Angelica Michelis) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003)
Tony Harrison and the Holocaust (Liverpool University Press, 2001)
With S McCracken (Eds.), 'Hating Tradition Properly: The Legacy of the Frankfurt School in Cultural Studies', special issue of New Formations, No. 38 (1999), pp. 175.
'"All is not Dead": Phillip Larkin, Humanism and Class', in Critical Survey, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1998), pp. 1-14.
With E. Liggins & E.Uskalis (Eds.), Signs of Masculinity (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998), pp. 274.
'Re-reading "Impossibility" and "Barbarism": Adorno and Post-Holocaust Aesthetics', in Critical Survey, Vol. 9, No.1 (1997), pp. 57-69.
Selected Creative Publications
The Land of Green Ginger (Salt Press, 2008).
Poems in New Poetries III, ed. Michael Schmidt (Carcanet, 2002), pp.98-106.</p>
For more information, please see my SEEK research page.