Benjamin Bateman
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 2019: Tuesdays, 2:30-3:30
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.
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 diminution,' 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 will soon appear in ISLE and Contemporary Women's Writing.
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.
Research activities
- Up in Smoke With José Muñoz Academic talk or presentation types › Invited talk
- 'On the Edge of Despair: Andrew Holleran's Dune Creatures' Academic talk or presentation types › Invited talk
- 'Speciation as Speculation: Foucault, Holleran, and Queer Value' Oral presentation
- Whose Survival is Wrapped Up in Mine: An Interview with Benjamin Bateman Other activity types › Types of Public engagement and outreach - Media article or participation
-
Queer Temporalities Continued
In:
American Literature
Contribution to journal › Review article (Accepted/In press) -
A flattened protagonist : Sleep and environmental mitigation in Lydia Millet's How the Dead Dream
In:
Contemporary Women's Writing
Contribution to journal › Article (Accepted/In press) -
Avian, anal, outlaw : Queer Ecology in E.M. Forster's Maurice
In:
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 26, no. 1
Contribution to journal › Article (Accepted/In press) -
The Modernist Art of Queer Survival
(158 pages)
Book/Report › Book (Published) -
Thalia Field's Unbuilt Fields, or, the Anthropocene's Slippery Textual Surfaces
Contribution to specialist publication › Featured article (Published)