PhD successes in Culture

The Department of Culture is pleased to announce four recently completed PhDs:

• Dr Marjan Shokouhi. The Nature/Culture Dichotomy in an Ecocritical Study of W.B. Yeats, Patrick Kavanagh, and Louis MacNeice. (Supervised by Drs Alison Younger and Angela Smith)
• Dr Akram Dik. Revisiting the Concept of Displacement: Representations of Home and Identity in Contemporary English Post-colonial Metropolitan Fiction (1956-1990). (Supervised by Drs Kath Kerr-Koch and Geoff Nash)
• Dr Darren Brooks. Rankin's Scotland: Scottish Crime Fiction and The Narration of Modern Scotland. (Supervised by Dr Barry Lewis and Peter Dempsey)
• Dr Danny Crew. Published Music as Political Research Tool in American Politics. (Supervised by Dr Kevin Yuill and John Kefala-Kerr)

English Research Seminar

Students and staff from all faculties are invited to a talk by English PhD student Marjan Shokouhi on Wednesday 2nd April 2014 at 5.00pm (Priestman 313). Marjan's paper is entitled 'Love and the Big City: Patrick Kavanagh in Dublin'.

Patrick Kavanagh by Patrick Swift (1960)

English Research Seminars

George R.R. Martin.
Source: Wikipedia

This semester there are four English Research Seminars featuring speakers from the University of Sunderland. Jamie Spears, a PhD student in English, kicks off the series with a talk entitled 'Late Victorian and Fin de Siècle Spiritualism in the North East' on Wednesday 19th February. On 19th March Dr Susan Mandala will present on 'The Archaic in George R.R. Martin's Novel A Game of Thrones: Re-Assessing Heroic Fiction on Stylistic Grounds'. PhD student Marjan Shokouhi will speak on 'Love and the Big City: Patrick Kavanagh in Dublin' on 2nd April. These events take place in Priestman 313 and start at 5pm. The final seminar will be given in June by Peter Dempsey and is entitled 'Morte D'Author: Philip Roth and the Writing Life' (date to be confirmed). As usual, student and staff from all faculties are welcome.

Kavanagh's urban flânerie

Patrick Kavanagh by Patrick Swift (1960)

PhD student Marjan Shokouhi has published an article in the Journal of Franco-Irish Studies on the poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967). Her work examines the ways in which Kavanagh picked his subject matter from the streets of Dublin, capturing memories in the form of poetic sketches like pictures recorded on a photographer’s camera. Marjan offers Kavanagh’s flânerie in Dublin as an example of how poetry can define/redefine our understanding of urban life.

Marjan Shokouhi (2013). "'If you ever go to Dublin town': Kavanagh's urban flânerie and the Irish capital". Journal of Franco-Irish Studies 1(1): 131-142.

PhD student chairs panel at international conference

Department of Culture PhD student Marjan Shokouhi will be chairing a panel at 'New Crops, Old Fields: (Re)Imagining Irish Folklore', an interdisciplinary conference to be held at Queen's University Belfast (5th-7th September 2013). The panel, entitled 'Re-Imagining Storytelling', is made up of scholars from the USA, Canada and Ireland. Marjan, whose PhD research is on Irish poetry and ecocriticism, is also on the organizing committee of the conference.

Marjan Shokouhi reviews Foster on Yeats

W.B. Yeats by George Beresford (1911)
© National Portrait Gallery, London

PhD student Marjan Shokouhi has published a review of R.F. Foster's Words Alone: Yeats and his Inheritances in the journal Irish Studies Review. Marjan, whose research on Irish poetry and ecocriticism is supervised by Drs Alison Younger and Alex Pheby (English), is also on the organizing committee of 'New Crops, Old Fields: (Re)Imagining Irish Folklore', an interdisciplinary conference to be held at Queen's University Belfast in September 2013.