School of English, Film, Theatre, Media and Communication, and Art History Te Kura Tānga Kōrero Ingarihi, Kiriata, Whakaari, Pāpāho, Tāhuhu Kōrero Toi

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English Literatures and Creative Communication research interests

Browse the research interests of staff in the English Literatures and Creative Communication programme.

For detailed research interests and lists of publications, click on the staff name which will direct you to their respective staff page.

Overview

The English Literatures and Creative Communication Programme at Victoria University of Wellington has a broad range and depth of research skills. Some specific areas of specialist research represented in the Programme are:

Children’s Literature

The study of children's literature as a literary genre, with specialist expertise in nineteenth century children’s literature and the literature of adolescence, and in Gothic literature for children and Young Adults.

Creative Writing

Creative Writing Staff within the English Programme have extensive practitioner expertise in poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction. They teach and publish creative writing as well as critical literary work. Research in this field is creative practice.

Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literature

The study of literature written during the 18th and 19th century, with specialist interests in the study of literary journalism; chance and probability in the nineteenth century novel; indigenous literatures and translation; colonial writing; and a Victorian concept of adolescence (see Children’s Literature).

The Alexander Turnbull Library holds a vast array of relevant material for study in this area, particularly in relation to colonial literature. Victoria University of Wellington hosts the New Zealand Nineteenth-Century Novels project as part of its NZ Electronic Text Collection in which graduate and postgraduate students can train in the digital editing of nineteenth-century New Zealand texts.

Early Modern Literature

We have staff expertise in Shakespeare, Milton, and poetry and prose from the medieval period until the English Civil Wars, including specialist interest in gender studies and women’s writing from the Early Modern period.

The Alexander Turnbull Library holds a notable Milton collection, and the Victoria University of Wellington Library holds relevant databases including EEBO and ECCO.

Modernisms

Staff have expertise in Modernist literature, Edwardian and ‘Intermodernist’ studies, with specialist interests in Global Modernisms; psychoanalysis; English War Poetry; literature of the 1930s; Kipling as a proto-Modernist; and Katherine Mansfield.

New Zealand Literature

The English Programme at Victoria University of Wellington has a particularly strong focus on New Zealand literature, with some specialist interest in Māori & Pasifika literatures, and links to the Stout Centre for New Zealand Studies, the International Institute of Modern Letters, and the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre