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Personal Profile For Mr Richard Kerridge
Coordinator of Graduate Studies and Research Management. School of Humanities and Cultural Industries.
BA(Hons) [University of Cambridge], MA [University of Cambridge], PGCE [University of Sussex].
Personal Statement:
I designed and have taught the following modules:
EN2011: Contemporary Writing
EN2028: Practical Criticism and Close Reading
EN3018: Writing and Environmental Crisis
EN3019: Writing and Politics
CW4011: Writing and the Environment (MA Creative Writing context module)
CW4014: The Writer and Place (MA Creative Writing context module)
CS3010: Travel Writing and Nature Writing
I have supervised to successful completion three PhDs: an English Literature thesis on the novels of Don DeLillo, another on the idea of the love of nature as a source of human well-being in nineteenth-century literature and a Creative Writing thesis consisting of a novel with multiple ethnic viewpoints and a critical study of the pitfalls of this technique. I am currently supervising an English Literature thesis on the literature of metamorphosis and two Creative Writing theses. One is a novel about a train crash with a critical study of narratives of sudden disaster, the other a non-fiction lifewriting book about Alask with a study of lifewriting concerning place.
I received the BBC Wildlife Award for Nature Writing in 1990 and 1991, and have been engaged in research into ecocriticism and writing and environmentalism for more than ten years. EN3018, Writing and the Environmental Crisis, was introduced in 1992, possibly the first appearance of ecocriticism on an undergraduate programme in Britain. Writing the Environment, the first collection of ecocritical essays published in Britain, appeared from Zed Books in 1998, edited by myself and Neil Sammells. In part, this volume grew out of the experience of teaching EN3018 and CW4011. From 1998 to 2004, I was Chair of the new UK branch of ASLE. In 2001 and 2003 I was an invited speaker at the biennial ASLE conferences at Northern Arizona University and University of Boston. In 2000 and 2002 I was a keynote speaker at the ASLE-UK conferences at University of East London and Leeds University. In 2005 I was a plenary speaker at the opening conference of ASLE-Australia/NZ at Monash University.
Two of my ecocritical essays were anthologized in The Green Studies Reader, edited by Laurence Coupe (Routledge, 2000). I am on the editorial board of the University Press of Virginia ecocriticism series Under the Sign of Nature. I have written the entry on ecocriticism for The Theory and Practice of Literary Criticism: An Oxford Guide, edited by Patricia Waugh (2006), and am now writing a monograph entitled Beginning Ecocriticism for the Manchester University Press Beginnings series edited by Peter Barry, and editing Crowded Space, a new collection of British ecocritical essays, for University Press of Virginia.
In 1995, Nearly Too Much: The Poetry of J.H. Prynne, co-written by myself and N.H. Reeve, appeared from Liverpool University Press. This is the only critical book on this important poet.
Recent citations include:
Nineteenth-Century Literature, Volume 61, Number 3, December 2006, 400-401.
Buell, Lawrence, The Future of Environmental Criticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 51, 141.
Crawford, Robert, Contemporary Poetry and Contemporary Science (Oxford: OUP, 2006), 171
Rozelle, Lee, Ecosublime: Environmental Awe and Teror from New World to Oddworld (Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama Press, 2006), 68-69, 72.
Professional Qualifications:
MA PGCE
Membership of Professional Bodies/Subject Associations:
Elected to the Executive Committee of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), December 2005. Stood by invitation for election to Vice Presidency, 2007 (not elected).
Chair, ASLE-UK, 1999-2004.
Invited member, English Subject Centre Focus Group (Creative Writing).
Member, ESC/NAWE steering committee for A-Level Creative Writing, 2006.
Teaching Specialism:
Ecocriticism, writing and environmentalism, nature writing
Contemporary novels and poetry
Writing and politics
Creative writing, especially prose fiction and nature writing
The writer and place
Practical criticism and close reading
Literary theory
Modernism and postmodernism
Key Publications/Exhibitions/Performances:
Nearly Too Much: The Poetry of J.H. Prynne (book: co-authored with N.H. Reeve).
Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-85323-840-5.
Writing the Environment (collection of essays, edited with Neil Sammells). London: Zed
Books, 1998, ISBN 1-85649-430-6.
'Ecological Hardy' (essay) in K. Armbruster and K. Wallace, eds, Beyond Nature Writing (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001), ISBN 0-8139-2013-2, pp 126-142. Partially anthologised in L.Coupe, ed., The Green Studies Reader (Routledge, 2000).
"Too Damn Close': Thresholds and Their Maintenance in Rick Bass's Work' (essay) in O. Alan Weltzien, ed., The Literary Art and Activism of Rick Bass (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2001), ISBN 0-87480-697-6, pp 182-196.
'Narratives of Resignation: Environmentalism in Recent Fiction' (essay) in J. Parham, ed., The Environmental Tradition in English Literature (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), ISBN 0-7546-0302-4, pp 87-99.
'Environmentalism and Ecocriticism' in Patricia Waugh, ed., The Theory and Practice of Literary Criticism: An Oxford Guide, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), ISBN 978-0-19-925836-9, pp 530-543.
Current Scholarship:
Beginning Ecocriticism, contracted monograph (Manchester University Press).
'Crowded Space', a collection of essays defining British ecocriticism, co-edited, for University Press of Virginia. Contracted.
Editing collection of papers from 'Romanticism, Environment, Crisis' conference, University of Wales Aberystwyth, June 2006.
Give details of conferences at which you have:
a. been an invited speaker (state if plenary)
Invited panel-member, US Association of Environmental History, University of Colorado, Denver, March 2002.
Plenary speaker, biennial conference of ASLE-UK, University of Leeds, September 2002.
Plenary panel-member, biennial conference of ASLE, Boston University, June 2003.
Opening plenary speaker, inaugural conference of ASLE-Australia/New Zealand, Monash University, March 2005.
Invited panel chair, inaugural meeting of the AHRC Landscape and Environment inter-disciplinary research project, University of Nottingham, July 2005.
Closing plenary speaker, biennial conference of ASLE-UK, University of Lincoln, September 2006.
Plenary speaker, 'Poetry and Public Language', University of Plymouth, March 2007.
Closing plenary speaker, ASLE-UK Graduate Students' Conference, University of Glasgow, September 2007.
Invited speaker, British Animal Studies Network symposium, September 2007.
Invited opening speaker, second workshop of the British Academy 'Embodied Values and the Environment' Research Project, IASH, University of Edinburgh, January 2008.
b. presented papers
'Beyond Anthropocentrism', University of Exeter, July 2002.
ASLE Biennial Conferences, University of Oregon, 2005, and Wofford College, Spartanburg, 2007 (received British Academy funding for both).
'Ecocriticism, Romanticism, Consumerism', at 'Countering Consumerism', London Metropolitan University, April 2006.
'Romanticism, Environment, Crisis', University of Wales Aberystwyth, June 2006.
'The Red and the Green', Oxford University, March 2007.
AHRC-funded 'Landscape and Environment' conference, University of Exeter, September 2007.
c. organised
Video conference on teaching creative writing (BSUC, Exeter, Bangor, Aberystwyth), November 2002.
Referee of papers and panel submissions for ASLE Biennial Conference, Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina, USA, June 2007.
External Examiners:
Creative Writing, Bucks Chilterns UC (2000-2004)
Creative Writing, University of Leeds (2003-)
MA in Creative Writing, Edge Hill UC (1999-2003)
MA in Creative Writing, University of Wales Aberystwyth (2006-)
MSc in Writing Non-Fiction, Imperial College London (2006-)
PhDs at Nottingham, Brunel, Exeter and Plymouth (2002-7)
Other External Roles:
Co-author, HEA/English Subject Centre report on 'Eduction for Sustainability' in English and Creative Writing, 2005.
Co-editor, 'New Writing', professional journal for teachers of creative writing in higher education, 2003-2006; Associate Editor, 2006-
Associate editor for the Virginia University Press ecocriticism series 'Under the Sign of Nature'
I have refereed manuscripts for Cambridge University Press, University of North Carolina Press, Blackwell, Routledge, Continuum and University of Cork Press.
Recent Professional Updating:
Invited speaker at two events at the 2005 Cheltenham Literature Festival: an interview with Richard Mabey and a panel on Literature and Global Warming.
Took part with an MP and an MSP in a public panel discussion of culture, politics and climate change, University of Glasgow, September 2007.
Last Updated: 01 July 2009.
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