Zoë Brigley Thompson

I started this blog as a PhD student at Warwick, but now I work as a lecturer at Northampton University. This is my research blog which I use:
*to map my research – topics such as women’s writing,
*to express thoughts about political issues relevant to my research,
*and to keep logs of journeys/research trips.

There are two strands in my research: detailed analysis of the form and content of poetry (contemporary and nineteenth-century), and a commitment to furthering transnational feminist research (particularly issues surrounding violence, sexual violence and human rights). My most recent project has been editing and writing a chapter for Feminism Literature and Rape Narratives: Violence and Violation (co-edited with Sorcha Gunne). For more details see: http://www.routledge.com/books/Feminism-Literature-and-Rape-Narratives-isbn9780415806084

Though much of my research has been concerned with analysing poetry, I have also written or spoken about film (the Marx Brothers’ oeuvre), visual art (Hannah Wilke, Frida Kahlo) and the popular song (Amy Winehouse). As a PhD student, I attended research seminars with Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler and I have a strong commitment to employing feminist theory in my analysis, especially that of Irigaray, Butler, Julia Kristeva and Jessica Benjamin. These theoretical frameworks allow me to interrogate the performance of gender and heterosexual sex and love, especially in literature, art and film.

I also write poetry, my most recent poetry collection being The Secret: http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/titlepage.asp?isbn=1852247878

I teach both English Literature and Creative Writing. I convene a number of undergraduate Creative Writing modules including ‘Writing about Place’, ‘Reading for Writers 1’ and ‘Imagined Worlds: Writing Stories’. I convene an English Literature undergraduate module option titled ‘Singing the Earth: Poetry and the Environment’ and I teach a component of the English Literature MA on ‘Gender, Region and Poetry’.

I also regularly lecture for various undergraduate modules on topics such as: gender and masculinity in Martin Amis’ Money; violence in the dramatic works of Sarah Kane; poetry and eco-criticism; and the gender politics of Mary Wollstonecraft in Maria and A Vindication of the Rights of Women.