People

Dr Owen Robinson

Senior Lecturer
Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Dr Owen Robinson
  • Email

  • Telephone

    +44 (0) 1206 872617

  • Location

    5NW.4.11, Colchester Campus

Profile

Biography

Owen Robinson is Senior Lecturer in U.S. Literature at the University of Essex. He is the author of Creating Yoknapatawpha: Readers and Writers in Faulkner’s Fiction (Routledge, 2006), as well as several journal articles and book chapters on Faulkner. With Richard Gray, he has co-edited A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American South (Blackwell, 2004). He is currently working on writing centred on New Orleans, as part of the AHRC-funded project American Tropics: Towards a Literary Geography, and co-edited Surveying the American Tropics: A Literary Geography from New York to Rio (Liverpool University Press, 2013), as well as further articles and book chapters on New Orleans writing including contributions to The Oxford Handbook of the Literature of the U.S. South (ed. Hobson and Ladd, OUP 2016) and Tropical Gothic in Literature and Culture: The Americas (ed. Edwards and Vasconcelos, Routledge, 2016). Owen teaches a variety of modules at undergraduate and MA levels, including survey modules on U.S. literature and more specialised modules on Southern literature and culture, post-war U.S. fiction, African American literature, and writing centred on New Orleans. Owen would welcome research proposals on any aspect of U.S. literature, but particularly Southern writing, William Faulkner, New Orleans, African American writing, and post-war U.S. fiction; he is also interested in literary geography, and Bakhtinian and reader-response theory.

Qualifications

  • BA Essex

  • PhD Essex

Research and professional activities

Research interests

Literature and culture of the US South

Open to supervise

William Faulkner

Open to supervise

New Orleans

Open to supervise

Post-war US fiction

Open to supervise

African-American literature

Open to supervise

Theory Bakhtin, reader-response, literary geography

Open to supervise

Teaching and supervision

Current teaching responsibilities

  • Origins and Transformations in Literature and Drama (LT111)

  • Introduction to United States Literature (LT161)

  • I, too, sing America: Identity, Diversity, and Voice in United States Literature (LT203)

  • Post-War(s) United States Fiction (LT320)

  • The Story and Myth of the West (LT385)

  • The Humanities Graduate: Future Pathways (LT705)

  • Independent Literature Project (LT831)

  • �Tell About the South�: Literary Identities and Dialogues in a U.S. Region (LT936)

  • African American Literature (LT937)

Previous supervision

Catriona Mary Chappell Gilmour
Catriona Mary Chappell Gilmour
Thesis title: Forecasting the Past and Recalling the Future: Lemniscate Narratives in the Work of Richard Powers
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 13/11/2023
Francesca Claire Govia
Francesca Claire Govia
Thesis title: Diversifying Dialogues: How Schizophrenia-Centred Neuro-Memoirs Challenge Understandings of Otherness
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 28/10/2022
Jessica Lana Houlihan
Jessica Lana Houlihan
Thesis title: Making Home: (Re)Writing Motherhood and Identity in African American Women's Fiction
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 17/2/2021
Elisabeth Caroline Ashley Collier
Elisabeth Caroline Ashley Collier
Thesis title: Deviancy and Disorder - the Visual Legacy of the Venus Hottentot in the Novels of Toni Morrison.
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 1/12/2020
Sophie Louise Joshua
Sophie Louise Joshua
Thesis title: 'Man Will Not Merely Endure: He Will Prevail': How the Characters in William Faulkner's Novels Meet and Defy the Expectations of the Hero
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Master of Arts (by Dissertation)
Awarded date: 31/3/2020
Maria-Irina Popescu
Maria-Irina Popescu
Thesis title: American Made: The Homegrown Terrorist and 9/11 Myths in the Contemporary US Novel
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 29/5/2019
Lee William Smith
Lee William Smith
Thesis title: A Specific Elsewhere: Locating Masculinity in Jack Kerouac's on the Road
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Master of Arts (by Dissertation)
Awarded date: 21/6/2017
Iman Hami
Iman Hami
Thesis title: Alice Walker's Womanist Fiction: Tensions and Reconciliations
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 18/5/2016
James Frederick Charles Stannard
James Frederick Charles Stannard
Thesis title: The Influence and Subversion of the Southern Folk Tradition in the Work of William Faulkner
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 30/10/2015
Sarah Ives
Sarah Ives
Thesis title: Sylvia Plath and Cold War Politics: From the Personal to the Political in 'Ariel: the Restored Edition' and 'The Bell Jar'
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 15/6/2015
Danielle Louise Mortimer
Danielle Louise Mortimer
Thesis title: Traumatic Seductions: Bret Easton Ellis's Lunar Park, the Postmodern, and the Reader
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 31/1/2012

Publications

Journal articles (14)

Robinson, O., (2018). FROM DEEP SOUTH TO FREEDOM HIGHWAY Some Thoughts on Teaching Southern Race in the United Kingdom. SOUTH-A SCHOLARLY JOURNAL. 50 (2), 187-194

Robinson, O., (2011). Our South: Geographic Fantasy and the Rise of National Literature. Journal of American History. 98 (3), 856-857

Robinson, O., (2011). Magic Portraits Drawn by the Sun: New Orleans and the sense(s) of death in Josh Russell’s Yellow Jack. Transatlantica : Revue d'�tudes Am�ricaines

Robinson, O., (2007). Truly strange New Orleans: The unstable city in George Washington Cable's Strange True Stories of Louisiana. European Journal of American Culture. 26 (2), 97-108

Borsley, RD., Roberts, I., Sadler, L. and Willis, D., (2006). Introduction. Lingua. 116 (11), 1745-1749

ROBINSON, O., (2005). Charles A. Peek and Robert W. Hamblin (eds.), A Companion to Faulkner Studies (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004, $99.95, £56.99). Pp. 431. ISBN 0 313 32030 6.. Journal of American Studies. 39 (2), 338-338

ROBINSON, O., (2005). Alan Rice, Radical Narratives of the Black Atlantic (London & New York: Continuum, 2003, £65 cloth, £19.99 paper). Pp. 244. ISBN 0 8264 5606 5, 0 8264 5607 3.. Journal of American Studies. 39 (1), 136-137

ROBINSON, O., (2003). “Liable to be anything”: The Creation of Joe Christmas in Faulkner's Light in August. Journal of American Studies. 37 (1), 119-133

ROBINSON, O., (2003). Maria Balshaw, Looking for Harlem: Urban Aesthetics in African American Literature (London and Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2000, £12.75). Pp. 169. ISBN 0 7453 1334 5.. Journal of American Studies. 37 (2), 308-309

ROBINSON, O., (2003). Maria Balshaw, Looking for Harlem: Urban Aesthetics in African American Literature (London and Sterling, Va.: Pluto Press, 2000, £12.75). Pp. 169. ISBN 0 7453 13344 5.. Journal of American Studies. 37 (3), 455-456

Robinson, O., (2003). Interested Parties and Theorems to Prove: Narrative and Identity in Faulkner's Snopes Trilogy. The Southern Literary Journal. 36 (1), 58-73

Robinson, O., (2001). Monuments and Footprints: The Mythology of Flem Snopes. The Faulkner Journal. 17 (1), 69-86

Robinson, O., (2001). That florid, swaggering gesture: Faulkners Thomas Sutpen as Southern Writer. European Journal of American Culture. 20 (2), 100-111

Robinson, O., (1999). Faulkner: Masks and metaphors. JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES. 33, 538-539

Books (1)

Fumagalli, MC., Hulme, P., Robinson, O. and Wylie, L., (2013). Surveying the American Tropics: A Literary Geography from New York to Rio. Liverpool UP. 9781846318900

Book chapters (8)

Robinson, O., (2017). "Don't anyone tell me that New Orleans is a filthy swamp-hole": Fate, Fever, and the City as Nexus in Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein's The Mysteries of New Orleans. In: New Orleans and the Global South: Caribbean, Creolization, Carnival. Editors: Ette, O. and M�ller, G., . Tranvia. 139- 157. 978-3-487-15504-3

Robinson, O., (2017). "Don't Anyone Tell Me That New Orleans Is a Filthy Swamp-Hole": Fate, Fever, and the City as Nexus in Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein's The Mysteries of New Orleans. In: New Orleans and the Global South: Caribbean, Creolization, Carnival. Georg Olms Verlag. 135- 152. 9783487155043

Robinson, O., (2016). George Washington Cable and Grace King. In: The Palgrave Handbook of the Southern Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan UK. 201- 214. 9781137477736

Robinson, O., (2016). “Proffered for Your Perusal in Ring by Concentric Ring”. In: The Oxford Handbook of the Literature of the U. S. South. Oxford University Press. 253- 269. 9780199767472

Robinson, O., (2016). ‘The Head-Quarters of Death’: Early Nineteenth-Century New Orleans as Gothic Nexus. In: Tropical Gothic in Literature and Culture: The Americas. Editors: Edwards, JD. and Vasconcelos, S., . Routledge. 40- 55. 9781138915862

Fumagalli, MC., Hulme, P., Robinson, O. and Wylie, L., (2013). Introduction. In: Surveying the American Tropics: A Literary Geography from New York to Rio. Editors: Fumagalli, MC., Hulme, P., Robinson, O. and Wylie, L., . Liverpool University Press. 1- 20. 9781846318900

Robinson, O., (2012). “That City Foreign and Paradoxical”. In: Faulkner and Formalism. University Press of Mississippi. 56- 75. 9781617032561

Robinson, O., (2007). Reflections on Language and Narrative. In: A Companion to William Faulkner. Wiley. 115- 132. 9781405122245

Other (1)

(2004).A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American South. A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American South,Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Contact

orobin@essex.ac.uk
+44 (0) 1206 872617

Location:

5NW.4.11, Colchester Campus