Nick Bentley

Biography

Biography

I studied English and History at undergraduate level at Keele University in the UK and stayed on to complete an MA in Twentieth-Century British Fiction. After completing my doctorate on 1950s British fiction in 2001, I taught at a number of Universities including University of Birmingham, Staffordshire University, and the Open University before taking up the post of lecturer in English Literature at Keele in January 2005. I was promoted to senior lecturer in 2010.

Research and scholarship

Research and scholarship

My main research interests are in twentieth and twenty-first century literature and literary and cultural theory, and more specifically in:

• the connections between (post-)postmodernism, postcolonialism and contemporary fiction and culture
• fiction that addresses youth subcultures
• contemporary working-class writing
• Ethnic minority fiction (in a British context) of the postwar and contemporary period
• the expression of marginalized and intersectional voices in postwar and contemporary literature

I would welcome PhD and MPhil applications for projects in any of these areas. I particularly welcome proposals that address issues of marginalized voices and identities in literature. I also co-supervise creative writing PhDs, particularly in the critical components of the work.

Current Projects and Membership of Subject Associations

I am currently working on a monograph on youth subcultures in fiction from the postwar period to the first decade of the twenty-first century. I am also developing research interests and funding bids in contemporary working-class writing, and the representation and construction of neurological conditions and mental illness in contemporary fiction.

I am on the executive committees of The British Association of Contemporary Literary Studies and the Literary London Society. I am a member of the British Association of Modernist Studies, American Comparative Literature Association, the European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, and the Doris Lessing Society.

Teaching

Teaching

Undergraduate

ENG-10028: Telling Tales: An Introduction to Narrative Fiction

ENG-10034: Texts and Contexts

ENG-20033: Romanticisms

ENG-20056: Twentieth-Century British Fiction and Poetry

ENG-30053: Postmodernism: Fiction, Film and Theory

Postgraduate

ENG-40050: Working in Contemporary Literature and Film

ENG-40049: Studying Contemporary Literature and Film

ENG-40007: Criticism, Analysis, Theory in Literary Studies

MDS-40018: Globalisation, Culture and Media

Research

I would welcome PhD and MPhil applications for projects in any of the following areas:

• the connections between (post-)postmodernism, postcolonialism and contemporary fiction and culture
• fiction that addresses youth subcultures
• contemporary working-class writing
• Ethnic minority fiction (in a British context) of the postwar and contemporary period
• the expression of marginalized and intersectional voices in postwar and contemporary literature.

I particularly welcome proposals that address issues of marginalized voices and identities in literature.

I also co-supervise creative writing PhDs, particularly in the critical components of the work.

Publications

Publications

During my time at Keele, I have completed three monographs, the first of which, Radical Fictions: The English Novel in the 1950s (Peter Lang, 2007), re-assesses the work of selected writers of the decade with respect to postwar reconfigurations of culture and politics and to changing attitudes to class, race, youth, gender and literary form. Contemporary British Fiction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), offers introductions to, and new readings of a range of well-known and less well-known contemporary writers. My third book, Martin Amis (Liverpool UP, 2015) offers a critical introduction of the writer’s work. My most recent book Contemporary British Fiction: A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism (Palgrave Macmillan) offers an introductory guide to the major critical approaches in contemporary literary studies.

I have also edited and co-edited a number of collections. I am editor of British Fiction of the 1990s (Routledge, 2005) and have co-edited three collections: The 2000s: A Decade of Contemporary Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2015) (edited with Nick Hubble and Leigh Wilson); The 1950s: A Decade of Modern Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2018) (edited with Alice Ferrebe and Nick Hubble); and Teenage Dreams: Youth Subcultures in Fiction, Film and Other Media (Palgrave, 2018) (edited with Beth Johnson and Andrzej Zieleniec). I have also had several journal articles and book chapters published on post-Second World War literature and culture.