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Dr Catherine Morley
BA (Cork), MA (Cork), PhD (Oxford Brookes)
Lecturer
Contact Details:
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T: +44 (0)116 252 1068
Research Interests
Dr Catherine Morley works on modern and contemporary American literature, with particular interest in the epic novel, transnational literary exchange, fictional responses to the terrorist attacks of September 2001, and American literary modernism. Her PhD examined the novels of John Updike, Philip Roth and Don DeLillo, and was published in 2009 as The Quest for Epic in Contemporary American Fiction: John Updike, Philip Roth and Don DeLillo.
Dr Morley has also co-edited collections of essays on contemporary American thought and culture and on transatlantic modernism, and is currently working on a book on modern American literature for Edinburgh University Press. Her major current research project, however, is a book entitled The Ache of Modernism. It will examine the work of a series of American writers on the cusp of modernism.
The former Assistant Director at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, and a former editor of US Studies Online, Catherine has been a member of the BAAS (British Association for American Studies) Executive Committee since 2001 and was editor of American Studies in Britain from 2004-2007. In 2007 she was elected Secretary of BAAS and served on the Editorial Board for the Journal of American Studies from 2007-2011. She currently sits on the Editorial Board of Philip Roth Studies and US Studies Online. Professional membership includes the Modernist Studies Association (MSA), BAAS and the Philip Roth Studies Association.
Projects
Dr Morley is currently working on a study of reluctant American Modernists, entitled The Ache of Modernism, as well as various essay projects on Jewish American modernism and writerly tensions amongst the Lost Generation.
Current Postgraduate Supervision
Dr Morley would be delighted to have enquiries and applications from postgraduate students interested in any modern or contemporary American topics, and especially in the following areas:
- genre;
- the 'state of the nation' novel;
- Jewish-American fiction;
- African-American writing;
- fictions of New York City;
- the Lost Generation writers;
- transatlantic literary and cultural relations;
- American regional writing.
She has supervised postgraduate dissertations on a range of authors including Joyce, Roth, DeLillo, the Beats, Faulkner, Kushner, Updike, McCullers and Glaspell.
Teaching and Administration
- AM2013 Ethnicity and Diversity in American Literature 1950-2000
- EN3040 Postwar to Postmodern
- EN3149 / AM3043 New York Stories
- EN3150 / AM3044 American Masculinities
- EN7136 Jewish American Literature
- EN7031 Modernism: A Movement
- EN7001 Bibliography, Research Methods and Writing Skills for PG Students
Dr Morley is Tutor for the BA in English and American Studies; American Studies Student-Staff Consultative Committee member; and she is a member of the Admissions team.
Recent Publications
BOOKS
Modern American Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming in 2012).
The Quest for Epic in Contemporary American Fiction: Philip Roth, John Updike and Don DeLillo (New York: Routledge, 2009; paperback edition, 2010).
American Thought and Culture in the Twenty-First Century, co-edited with Martin Halliwell, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008).
American Modernism: Cultural Transactions, co-edited with Alex Goody, (Durham: Cambridge Scholars' Press, 2009).
RECENT CHAPTERS
'Possessed by the Past: Hostory, Memory and Nostalgia in The Human Stain' in Philip Roth: American Pastoral, The Human Stain, The Plot Against America, ed. Debra Shostak (London: Continuum, 2011), pp. 80-92.
'American Modernism: Cultural Transactions' in American Modernism: Cultural Transactions, ed. Catherine Morley and Alex Goody (Durham: Cambridge Scholars' Press, 2009), pp. 1-25.
'Writing in the Wake of 9/11' in American Thought and Culture in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Martin Halliwell and Catherine Morley (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), pp. 211-227.
RECENT ARTICLES
'"How Do We Write About This?" The Domestic and the Global in the Post-9/11 Novel', Journal of American Studies, 45 (Fall 2011), pp. 717-731.
'Crossing the Water: Willa Cather and the Transatlantic Imaginary', European Journal of American Culture, Vol. 28, No. 2, (Fall 2009), pp. 125-140.
‘Bardic Aspirations: Philip Roth's Epic of America’, English, Vol. 57, No. 218 (Summer 2008), pp. 171-198.
Other writings include review essays for the Journal of American Studies, European Journal of American Culture, Review of English Studies, Vagant, Philip Roth Studies and Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions.
