Frances Rowbottom

Thesis title: 'William Faulkner's Uses of Myth'

Background

Frances Rowbottom is a final-year PhD researcher at the University of Edinburgh. Focusing on William Faulkner’s uses of myth and legend, her research is based primarily on the American South, and the parallels of Mississippi to Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County.

Frances is currently examining the legacies of history and public memory in literature during the period after the Civil War, with a focus on the creation and implementation of the myth of the Lost Cause and coinciding racial politics in a post-war society, reaching into the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries.

Frances founded the University of Edinburgh's American Literature Reading Group, and is Co-Editor of United States Studies Online (USSO), part of the British Association for American Studies (BAAS). Frances previous served a two-year term for the Society of Young Publishers Scotland, as Conference Lead and Student Liaison Officer, organising the Society's annual conference in 2022.

Forthcoming publication: ‘Teaching Faulkner and the American Essay', a book chapter within 'Teaching the American Essay,' in the MLA Options for Teaching series.

In July 2022, Frances was awarded the Faulkner Society's Hunt Scholarship, and has successfully obtained various funding and travel grants.

 

'The Importance of Connections'; https://phdwomenscot.wordpress.com/2021/11/04/the-importance-of-connections/

Qualifications

BA in English Literature, Durham University (2016 - 2019) 

MSc in English Literature: United States Literature – Cultural Values from Revolution to Empire (2019 - 2020)

Current PhD Candidate in American Literature, University of Edinburgh (2020 - Present)

 

Undergraduate teaching

Literary Studies 2A and 2B

 

The Literary Studies 2A course covers works of literature in four centuries, from 1380 - 1788. Students have produced work on Chaucer, Shakespeare, Behn, Donne, Milton, and others.

 

Literary Studies 2B continues from 1789 into the present day, addressing a range of authors from Victorian Poetry to contemporary African literature.

Research summary

The legacies of the Civil War on literature and histories, with a particular focus on the works of Wiliam Faulkner.

Current research interests

The Civil War, The Lost Cause, Race Tensions in America, African American Histories

Past research interests

African and Caribbean Fictions, World War One Literature, Vietnam War Literature, PTSD and Representation in Literature

Past project grants

Modern Language Association Travel Grant: funded presentation of two conference papers in Philadelphia, PA (2024)
University of Edinburgh Travel Grant: funded the presentation of a conference paper in San Francisco, CA (2023)
University of Edinburgh Travel Grant: funded the presentation of a conference paper in Oxford, MS (2022)
The Faulkner Society's John W. Hunt Memorial Scholarship: funded the presentation of a conference paper in Oxford, MS (2022)
University of Edinburgh Travel Grant: funded the presentation of a conference paper in Atlanta, GA (2022)

Conference details

I presented my research on the legacies of the American Civil War in a panel at the biennial Society for the Study of Southern Literature (SSSL) Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, in June 2022. This panel was in collaboration with Michael LeMahieu (Associate Dean at Clemson University, South Carolina) and Cody Marrs (University of Georgia).

This paper was entitled 'The South’s Cultural Memory of the Civil War in the Twentieth- and Twenty-First Centuries,’ and addressed how cultural memory was transformed from a heritage of living veneration to a modern-day denigration of the Civil War’s interpretation, by historical events in the mid-twentieth century. Participating in this highly-regarded conference offers the prospect of expansion and publication.

I presented my current PhD research in a panel paper at the annual ‘Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference’ at the University of Mississippi, held in July 2022. This paper expanded upon ‘William Faulkner’s Narrative Time in Relation to a Regional Scale of Modernism’. In this paper (in association with influential critic Peter Lurie) I discussed William Faulkner within the framework of time and narrative technique, in relation to the influence of aspects of modernity and modernisms, with particular reference to Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury.

I  represented the Society for the Study of Southern Literature at the Modern Language Association's 2023 Conference,  held in San Francisco in January 2023. In collaboration with Davis A. Davis, this panel addressed the 2023 Presidential Theme of 'Labor Conditions', in the legacies of slavery across the region of the South. ‘Labor Legacies of the Slaveholding South’ focused on the histories of sharecropping in the South, as a continuation of slavery and oppression for working-class farmers across the Cotton Belt.

In October 2023 I presented my research at the Midwest Popular Culture Association's Annual Conference in Chicago, IL. This paper considered the role of racial 'passing' in Faulkner's Light in August.'

In January 2024, I gave two separate papers on my ongoing research at the Modern Language Association's 2024 Conference, held in Philadelphia. These two panels assessed the Presidential Theme of 'Joy and Sorrow.' I presented on behalf of the Faulkner Society, to assess Faulkner's ideas of racial 'passing' in Light in  August. Furthermore, I represented the DH Lawrence Society of North America, demonstrating my ongoing research into Lawrence's use of the bodily and emotion in 'Women in Love' and 'Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani.'

Organiser

Society of Young Publishers Scotland Annual Conference, 2022

Participant

Society for the Study of Southern Literature (2022)

Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha (2022)

Midwest Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association

Modern Language Association (2023 and 2024)

 

Papers delivered

'The South’s Cultural Memory of the Civil War in the Twentieth- and Twenty-First Centuries’ (SSSL 2022)

‘William Faulkner’s Narrative Time in Relation to a Regional Scale of Modernism’ (Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha 2022)

‘Labor Legacies of the Slaveholding South' (MLA 2023)

'William Faulkner’s Presentation of the Non-White ‘Other’ in Light in August (MPCA/ACA 2023)

'Breaking out of the Ring: Blackness in Light in August' (MLA 2024)

'“This Strange, Sharp Inoculation”: Love and Emotion in D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love and ‘Eloi, Eloi Lama Sabachthani?’' (MLA 2024)