Benjamin Bateman
Senior Lecturer in Post-1900 British Literature

- English Literature
- School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
Contact details
- Tel: +44 (0)131 650 4288
- Email: benjamin.bateman@ed.ac.uk
Address
- Street
-
Room 2.24
50 George Square - City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH8 9LH
Availability
Fall 2021: Wednesday, 12-1
Background
Benjamin studied English and political science as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, where he remained for his graduate study. After completing his doctorate in 2009, he taught and served as the director of The Center for the Study of Genders and Sexualities at California State University, Los Angeles. He joined The University of Edinburgh in 2018 as a lecturer in post-1900 British literature. Benjamin is currently the lead judge for The James Tait Black Prize in Fiction, the coordinator of the How to Read a Novel MOOC, and the People and Equalities Director for the School of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures (LLC).
Undergraduate teaching
Benjamin teaches Global LGBT Fiction and Climate Change Fiction at the honours level, and he delivers lectures for CP: Criticism. He has also led tutorials in EL1 and EL2, and he has served as course organizer for CP: Prose.
Postgraduate teaching
Benjamin teaches Modernist Aesthetics and Late Modernism and Beyond for the MSc in Literature and Modernity.
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Areas of interest for supervision
Benjamin welcomes project proposals in modernism and contemporary literature, queer theory, queer of colour critique, LGBT fiction, and the environmental humanities.
Current PhD students supervised
Chloe Leung (Principal Supervisor)
Heather Milligan (Principal Supervisor)
Aiswarya Jayamohan (Principal Supervisor)
Eftychia Saxoni (Principal Supervisor)
Umar Shehzad (Principal Supervisor)
Rupeng Chen (Assistant Supervisor)
Avani Udgaonkar (Assistant Supervisor)
Past PhD students supervised
Bridget Moynihan (Assistant Supervisor)
Research summary
Benjamin's primary research interests lie in modern and contemporary literature, queer theory, and the environmental humanities. His first book, The Modernist Art of Queer Survival--published by Oxford University Press in 2017--examines precarious and collaborative forms of survival in the fiction and autobiographical prose of Oscar Wilde, Henry James, E.M. Forster, and Willa Cather. In his newest work on 'queer disappearance,' Benjamin is bringing novels by Forster and Cather into conversation with more recent LGBT and climate change fiction to explore how queer communities' stubborn attachments to despair, discretion, deprecation, and disappearance offer a counterpoint to the ecologically destructive and self-inflationary hyperproductivity of contemporary biopolitics and neoliberalism. Early material from this project has recently appeared in ISLE and Contemporary Women's Writing, and the full manuscript--entitled Queer Disappearance in Modern and Contemporary Fiction--is under contract with Oxford University Press.
Knowledge exchange
Benjamin is interested in bringing his teaching and research in contemporary LGBT fiction and climate change fiction into conversation with local schools, nonprofits, community organizations, and book clubs. He has led seminars and tutorials in queer theory at the Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research in Athens, Greece, and he is currently working with a team of teachers/researchers through the Council for At-Risk Academics (Cara) to provide humanities-based pedagogical assistance to Syrian academics.
Research activities
-
Avian, anal, outlaw: Queer ecology in E.M. Forster's Maurice
In:
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. N/A, pp. 1-29
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isaa015
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Vaporous vows: Queer weather in Claude Hartland's Story of a Life
Research output: › Chapter (peer-reviewed) (Accepted/In press) -
[Review of] Dead Letters Sent: Queer Literary Transmission Old Futures: Speculative Fiction and Queer Possibility Circulating Queerness: Before the Gay and Lesbian Novel Melodrama: An Aesthetics of Impossibility
(4 pages)
In:
American Literature, vol. 91, pp. 898-901
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-7917452
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Book/Film/Article review (Published) -
A flattened protagonist: Sleep and environmental mitigation in Lydia Millet's How the Dead Dream
In:
Contemporary Women's Writing
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/cww/vpz012
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
The Modernist Art of Queer Survival
(176 pages)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190676537.001.0001
Research output: › Book (Published)