Professor Carole-Anne Sweeney

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 have recently developed a new MA module called Reading and Wrting Creative Criticism: From Montaigne to Me Too that includes writing 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.