Peter Adkins
Lecturer in Modernist Literature
- English Literature
- School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
Contact details
- Email: peter.adkins@ed.ac.uk
Address
- Street
-
Room 3.04
21 Buccleuch PlaceCity
Edinburgh
Post code
EH8 9LD - City
- Post code
Availability
Office Hours for Semester 1, 2024-25: Mondays 3-4pm (please email for an appointment)
Background
I am Lecturer in Modernist Literature, having first joined the department in 2021 as an Early Career Teaching and Research Fellow. I completed my PhD at the University of Kent, where I later taught comparative literature and English literature.
My research explores how how literature (especially modernist literature) can help us imagine, understand and rethink environmental history, planetary change and resource use. I'm also very interested in the relationship between humans and other animals, particularly the animals we raise for food.
I am the author of The Modernist Anthropocene and editor of Virginia Woolf and the Anthropocene (2024). I am currently working on a project that is thinking about how British writers developed new narrative strategies to tell the story of oil, its ascendancy and its transformative effects, from the early 1900s to the present moment. My articles and reviews can be found in Textual Practice, Critical Comparative Studies, Humanities, Green Letters, Glasgow Review of Books, Review31 and elsewhere.
In 2022, I launched the Digestive Modernisms research network with Dr Marie Allitt, which aims to bring together researchers interested in food, eating and digestion within modernist culture.
I am treasurer for the Scottish Network of Modernist Studies.
Qualifications
PhD, English, University of Kent (2019)
Responsibilities & affiliations
British Association for Modernist Studies
Scottish Network of Modernist Studies
Digestive Modernisms
Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Network
Kent Animal Humanities Network
International Virginia Woolf Society
Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
Undergraduate teaching
2024/25:
Global Modernisms: Inter/National Responses to Modernity
Postgraduate teaching
2024/25:
Modernist Aesthetics (course organiser only)
Late Modernism and Beyond
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Areas of interest for supervision
I welcome PhD project proposals in the areas of modernism and modern literature, ecocriticism, animal studies, anthropocene studies, vegan studies and posthumanism.
Research summary
- Modernism
- Ecocriticism
- Anthropocene Studies
- Energy Humanities
- Animal Studies
I am particularly interested in the following writers:
- Djuna Barnes
- Virginia Woolf
- James Joyce
Invited speaker
‘Narrating Oil: Modernism, Petroleum and Ambivalence’, Teesside University, 4 June 2024.
‘Lawns, Books and Bombs: A Response to Claire Colebrook’, Virginia Woolf and Ecology: The 32nd Annual International Virginia Woolf Conference, Florida Gulf State University, 8 June 2023.
‘Reading the Modernist Anthropocene’, University of Tartu, 16 September 2022.
‘Djuna Barnes’s Beastly Anthropocene’, Writing Animals Symposium, University of Kent, 3 March 2017.
Organiser
Beastly Modernisms, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, September 2019
Virginia Woolf, Europe and Peace: The 28th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woof, University of Kent, Canterbury, June 2018
Papers delivered
‘Vita Sackville-West, British Modernism and the Anglo-Persian oilfields’, Petrocultures 2024, University of Southern California, 15-18 May 2024
‘Crude Yet Refined: Finding the Oil in Woolf's Essays’, Virginia Woolf and Ecology: 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Florida Gulf Coast University
‘An English Highway Straight Into Hell: The Oil in British Modernism’, The Subterranean Anthropocene: The British Society for Literature and Science Winter Symposium 2022, Kings College London and University of Bristol, 12 November 2022
'Tracing Modernism's Vegetarian Influencers', Hopeful Modernisms: British Association for Modernist Studies International Conference 2022, University of Bristol, 23-25 June 2022.
'Reading Woolf in the Anthropocene' Virginia Woolf and Ethics: 31st Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Lamar University, Texas, 9-12 June 2022.
‘Siberian Mammoths, Rice Pudding and Iraqi Oil Fields: ‘The London Scene’ and the Capitalocene’ 30th Annual International conference on Virginia Woolf, University of South Dakota, 10-13 June 2021.
‘Consciousness and Materiality: Reading Joyce in the Noosphere’ British Society for Science and Literature Annual Conference 2020, University of Sheffield, 15-17 April 2020.
‘Joyce, Molly and the Revenge of Gea-Tellus.’ British Association of Modernist Studies International Conference 2019, Kings College London, 20-22 June 2019.
‘Fourwalkers, Taildanglers, Headhangers: Labouring animals and animal labour in James Joyce’s Ulysses.’ Zurich James Joyce Centre Workshop 2018, Zurich James Joyce Center, 6-11 August 2018.
‘Writing the Anthropocene: Woolf, Braidotti and Posthumanist Feminism in the time of Climate Change’ at 28th Annual International conference on Virginia Woolf, University of Kent, 21-24 June 2018.
‘Modernist Anthropocene Aesthetics’ at Aesthetics in the Anthropocene, University of Sussex, 10-11 April 2018.
‘Unclean Beasts: Reading Djuna Barnes in the era of Anthropocene Studies’ at New Work in Modernist Studies 2017, University of Leeds, 15 December 2017.
‘Green, Queer, Entangled: The Use of “Nature” in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Vita Sackville-West’s The Land’ at 27th Annual International conference on Virginia Woolf, University of Reading, 29th June – 2nd July 2017.
‘The Eyes of Dead Animals: Nineteenth Century Meat Production in James Joyce’s Ulysses’ at Consuming Animals, University of York, 17-18th March 2017.
‘Nature’s Queer Tricks: Historicizing the Anthropocene with Virginia Woolf’ at MLA Convention 2017, Philadelphia, 5-8 January 2017.
‘The Ineluctable Thereness of the Anthropocene: Joyce, Modernism and Ecology’ at ASLE-UKI Postgraduate Conference 2016, University of Lincoln, 31st August – 2nd September 2016.
‘How Do Contemporary Posthuman Readings of Phenomenology Challenge Longstanding Ideas of a Recognisably “Human” Subject?’ at Cross-Disciplinary Phenomenology: A Readiness for the Questionable, University of Kent, 24th June 2016
‘Challenging Joyce: The Claim of the Nonhuman in Ulysses and Elizabeth Costello’ at XXV International James Joyce Symposium, University of London, 13-18 June 2016.