Dr Carole Sweeney
Staff details
My research and teaching focuses on the intersections of race, class, sexualities and gender in modern and contemporary literature and culture. My first book, From Fetish to Subject: Race, Modernism and Primitivism, examined how the colonial iconography of the black body was deployed in cultural modernism and how anti-colonial and decolonising cultural movements emerged in opposition to this aesthetic racialisation. I followed up this work by publishing widely on Francophone-African writing, in particular by women writers and then by examining racism, anti-feminism and misogyny in contemporary fiction. My most recent book Vagabond Fictions: Gender and Experiment in British Women's Literature 1945-1970 examines the evolution of feminism and sexual identity in post-war Britain. My current research project is on the continuing battleground for women's bodies and sexualities in contemporary literature and culture and will include work on feminist creative criticism.
Academic qualifications
- DPhil English University of Sussex 2001
- MA English, Simon Fraser University 1992
Teaching and Supervision
I am interested in supervising Phds on all aspects of gender, sexuality in contemporary women's writing; gender thorry; race, anti-colonialism and modernism; neoliberalism in contemporary fiction; Michel Houellebecq; Anna Kavan; Christine Brooke-Rose; Annie Ernaux; Zadie Smith; Ann Quin; queer family-making; creative criticism as a feminist practice; cultural responses to the # metoo movement;
- BA English: Writing, Culture and Society, Shakespeare's Sisters: Women's Writing: 1960s to the present
- MA Literary Studies, Pathway Convenor, Modern & Contemporary Literature
Research interests
I teach and research on gender, feminism, sexuuality in modern and contemporary writing at both UG and PG level. My work adressses the broader political contexts of contemporary writing as well as examining anti-colonial responses to cultural modernism in the early 20th century. My MA And BA modules are cutting-edge, research-led providing an overview of the rich variety of women’s writing across a range of genres and from diverse cultural, critical and historical perspectives. Organised under a number of thematic headings covering debates around definitions of a 'woman' and women’s’ writing; the variety of feminisms; transgression; the # metoo effect, and Black Lives Matter, these module offer an engagement with the changing contexts of women writers, critics and readers in the twenty-first century where gender, race and class might be examined from new perspectives. I am currently developing a module on Creative Criticism which will form part of my future work on feminist readings of the role of the body in work by Zadie Smith, Lucia Berlin, Kathy Acker, Maggie Nelson, Elena Ferrante, Edwidge Danticat, Annie Ernaux, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Claudia Rankine, and Leonora Carrington. This new project will use contemporary feminist and queer theory to examine the interactions between creative writing and criticism to encourage a more creative practice of literary scholarship that brings together research and creativity. As a complement to my teaching and research in gender and writing, I also run an extra-curricular Feminist Reading Group which offers an inclusive, informal space for students to respond creatively and critically to key works in the feminist canon and to discuss the everyday experiences of gender and sexualities from a diversity of perspectives.
Publications and research outputs
Book
Sweeney, Carole. 2020. Vagabond Fictions: Gender and Experiment in British Women's Fiction, 1945-1970. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9781474426176
Sweeney, Carole. 2013. Michel Houellebecq and the Literature of Despair. London: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9780826422620
Sweeney, Carole. 2004. From Fetish to Subject: Race, Modernism and Primitivism, 1919-1935. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0275977471
Edited Journal
Boldrini, Lucia and Sweeney, Carole, eds. 2013. Fractured, Travelling, Transformed Narratives, Comparative Critical Studies, 10(3-supp). 1744-1854
Book Section
Sweeney, Carole. 2021. I’m a Woman Experimental Writer … Get Me Out of Here! In: Andrew Radford and Hannah Van Hove, eds. British Experimental Women’s Fiction, 1945—1975: Slipping Through the Labels. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 279-284. ISBN 9783030727659
Sweeney, Carole. 2020. Brigid Brophy, The Dissenting Feminist. In: Richard Canning and Gerri Kimber, eds. Brigid Brophy: Avant-Garde Writer, Critic, Activist. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9781474462662
Sweeney, Carole. 2016. 'After Beauvoir: French Feminism and The Question of Difference'. In: Stuart Sim, ed. The Edinburgh Companion to Critical Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9780748693399
Sweeney, Carole. 2016. After de Beauvoir: 'French' Feminism & Sexual Difference. In: Stuart Sim, ed. The Edinburgh Companion to Critical Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9780748693399
Sweeney, Carole. 2010. Race, Modernism and Institutions. In: Nicky Marsh and Peter Middleton, eds. Teaching Modernist Poetry. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 77-93. ISBN 9780230202320
Sweeney, Carole. 2010. 'Race, Writing and Institutions'. In: Nick Marsh and Peter Middleton, eds. Teaching Modernist Poetry. London: Palgrave MacMillan. ISBN 978-0230202337
Sweeney, Carole. 2005. ‘Josephine Baker’, ‘Haiti’, ‘Joseph Zobel’, ‘Claude McKay’. In: Bill Marshall, ed. France and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History (Transatlantic Relations). ABC-CLIO Ltd. ISBN 978-1851094110
Sweeney, Carole. 1997. C.E. Gittings Imperialism and Gender and Bruce King ed. National And Postcolonial Literature. In: Jean Howard; Alan Sinfield and Lindsay Smith, eds. Textual Practice: Volume 11 Issue 2: Vol 11, Issue 2. Routledge, pp. 349-352. ISBN 978-0415161763
Article
Sweeney, Carole. 2023. See the old ladies decently: 'Ageing and Embodiment in Christine Brooke-Rose’s Life, End Of.'. Polish Journal of English Studies, ISSN 2545-0131
Sweeney, Carole. 2020. Cadaverised girls: the writing of Anna Kavan. Textual Practice, 34(4), pp. 647-668. ISSN 0950-236X
Sweeney, Carole. 2019. ‘Le mot déclin est presque trop doux’: Michel Houellebecq’s (Euro)déclinisme. Modern and Contemporary France, 27(1), pp. 45-59. ISSN 0963-9489
Sweeney, Carole. 2018. "Why This Rather Than That?": The Delightful Perversity of Brigid Brophy. Contemporary Womens Writing, 12(2), pp. 233-247. ISSN 1754-1476
Sweeney, Carole. 2018. ‘Groping Inside Language’: Translation, Humour and Experiment in Christine Brooke-Rose’s Between and Brigid Brophy’s In Transit. Textual Practice, 32(2), pp. 301-316. ISSN 0950-236X
Sweeney, Carole. 2017. 'Keeping the Ruins Private': Anna Kavan and Heroin Addiction. Women: A Cultural Review, 28(4), pp. 312-326. ISSN 0957-4042
Sweeney, Carole. 2013. Introduction: Fractured, Travelling, and Transformed Narratives. Comparative Critical Studies, 10(Supp), pp. 1-10. ISSN 1744-1854
Sweeney, Carole. 2012. “And yet some free time remains. . . .”: Post-Fordism and Writing in Michel Houellebecq's Whatever. Journal of Modern Literature, 33(4), pp. 41-56. ISSN 0022-281X
Sweeney, Carole. 2012. Natural Women? Anti-Feminism and Michel Houellebecq's Plateforme. Modern & Contemporary France, 20(3), pp. 323-336. ISSN 0963-9489
Sweeney, Carole. 2011. Fin de millénaire French Fiction: The Aesthetics of Crisis. Modern and Contemporary France, 19(3), pp. 367-368. ISSN 0963-9489
Sweeney, Carole. 2007. The Unmaking of the World: Haiti, History and Writing in Edouard Glissant and Edwige Danticat. Atlantic Studies, 4(1), pp. 51-66. ISSN 14788810
Sweeney, Carole. 2007. Experimental Nations: Or, the Invention of the Maghreb. Comparative Literature Studies, 44(1-2), pp. 208-211. ISSN 0010-4132
Sweeney, Carole. 2005. `One of them, but white': The Disappearance of Negro: An anthology (1934). Women a Cultural Review, 16(1), pp. 93-107. ISSN 09574042
Sweeney, Carole. 2005. Le Tour du Monde en Quatre Jours: Empire, exhibition, and the surrealist disorder of things. Textual Practice, 19(1), pp. 131-148. ISSN 0950236X
Sweeney, Carole and Clarke, Jackie. 2005. France and America: Introduction. Nottingham French Studies, 44(3), pp. 1-3. ISSN 0029-4586
Sweeney, Carole. 2005. ‘Le tour du monde en quatre jours’: empire, exhibition, and the surrealist disorder of things. Textual Practice, 19(1), pp. 131-147. ISSN 0950-236X
Sweeney, Carole. 2004. Resisting the Primitive: The Nardal Sisters, La Revue du Monde Noir and La Dépêche Africaine. Nottingham French Studies, 43(2), pp. 45-55. ISSN 0029-4586
Sweeney, Carole. 2003. Vestimentary identities: the politics of dress in everyday life. Journal of Romance Studies, 3(2), pp. 95-101. ISSN 1473-3536
Sweeney, Carole. 2001. La Revue Nègre: négrophilie, modernity and colonialism in inter-war France. Journal of Romance Studies, 1(2), pp. 1-14. ISSN 1473-3536
Sweeney, Carole. 2000. ‘Diasporic Voices in Pre-Negritude Paris’. Southampton Papers in Language and Culture, 1,
Further profile content
Featured publications
Sweeney, Carole . 2020. Vagabond Fictions: Gender and Experiment in British Women's Fiction, 1945-1970. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Sweeney, Carole . 2013. Michel Houellebecq and the Literature of Despair. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Sweeney, Carole . 2004. From Fetish to Subject: Race, Modernism and Primitivism, 1919-1935. Greenwood Press.
2020. Brigid Brophy, The Dissenting Feminist. In: Richard Canning and Gerri Kimber, eds. Brigid Brophy: Avant-Garde Writer, Critic, Activist. Edinburg
2010. Race, Modernism and Institutions. In: Nicky Marsh and Peter Middleton, eds. Teaching Modernist Poetry. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
