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The University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NZ, T +44 (0)1227 764000
Dr Sarah Wood
(BA and PhD Oxon)
| Senior Lecturer | |
|---|---|
| Phone: 01227 (82)7485 | Office: NC 11 |
| Email: s.wood@kent.ac.uk |
Director of Graduate Studies
Director of MA in Critical Theory
Interests
I took my DPhil at Oxford where I was a Denise Skinner Senior Scholar and worked under the supervision of Daniel Karlin. I came to Kent in 2002 from a job at Mansfield College, Oxford. My first book was on Robert Browning, and thinking about poetry remains fundamental to my research. Recent essays draw on literature, philosophy and the arts, including readings of Hélène Cixous, Shakespeare, Derrida, Freud, Milton, Husserl, Wallace Stevens, Robert Browning, Louise Bourgeois, Kant, Paul de Man, Picasso, Raymond Carver, Plato, Elizabeth Bowen and Leo Bersani. I have edited Deconstruction and Poetry, Writing and Immortality, Hotel Psychoanalysis and Home and Family, and co-wrote Blue Guitar, a creative-critical book, with the poet Jonathan Tiplady. My guide to Derrida’s Writing and Difference came out with Continuum in 2009 and I am currently writing a book about literature, deconstruction and human weakness.
Research Supervision
I supervise PhDs in literature, theory and creative-critical writing. I am open to supervising PhDs on a range of modern literature and theory, including interdisciplinary work, and especially topics involving Derrida and deconstruction; Cixous; creative-critical writing; continental philosophy; psychoanalysis and literature; nineteenth-century literature, particularly Robert Browning.
Professional Activities
I helped found Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities and remain active on the journal’s executive board. I am also Managing Editor of Oxford Literary Review, Britain’s oldest journal of literary theory. OLR is concerned with deconstructive thinking in all areas of intellectual, cultural and political life.
I am a member of the Institute for Creative Reading and the Centre for Modern European Literature.
I have organized two colloquia on Literature and the Humanities and, with Dr Kaori Nagai, a two-day international conference on the theory and practice of Dream Writing. A special Dream Writing number of the Journal of European Studies came out in 2008, under the editorship of Dr Nagai.
Recent talks include ‘Writing General All Over,’ at JD11: Dissemination, University of Sussex; ‘The Unstoppable University,’ at Resistances: Whose University? Goldsmiths; ‘Nightshift,’ keynote at Freud after Derrida, 3rd International Mosaic Conference, University of Manitoba, Canada; ‘Contemporary Music and Art,’ Deal Festival 2010; ‘Some thing, some one, some ghost: about the fires of writing,’ keynote at Where Ghosts Live, University College, Cork, Ireland; ‘What becomes of rigour after deconstruction?’ The Humanities After Deconstruction, Jagiellonian University, Krakow; ‘Foreveries: Writing and Immortality,’ Leeds University; ‘Absolutely Impenetrable Forces,’ The Ear of the Other, Durham University.
Teaching:
Undergraduate
EN604 The Unknown: Reading and Writing (Stage 3)
EN640 Nineteenth Century Literature (Stage 3)
Postgraduate
EN837 Desire and Loss in Victorian Poetry and Prose
EN897 Advanced Critical Reading
Selected Publications
Books
• Derrida’s Writing and Difference: A Reader’s Guide, paperback and hardback, Continuum Press, 2009.
• Rules of Engagement: Blue Guitar, with Jonathan Tiplady, paperback, Artwords Press, 2007.
• Robert Browning: A Literary Life, paperback and hardback, Palgrave and St Martin's Press, 2001.
Special editions of learned journals
• Deconstruction and Poetry, OLR, 33.2, December 2011.
• Writing and Immortality, OLR, 31.1, July 2009.
• Hotel Psychoanalysis, Angelaki, 9.1, April 2004.
• Home and Family, Angelaki, 2.1, Autumn 1995.
Recent Essays
• ‘Good Writing,’ ‘The Constitution of Good and Bad Objects,’ and ‘The Point d’eau,’ in Reading Derrida’s Of Grammatology, ed. Sean Gaston and Ian Maclachlan, Continuum Press, 2011.
• [Untitled text], in Transmission Annual: Hospitality, ed. Michael Corris, Jaspar Joseph-Lester and Sharon Kivland (Artwords, 2010).
• ‘Centre-piece,’ Theory and Event 12.1 (e-journal 2009).
• ‘Foreveries,’ Oxford Literary Review 31.1 (2009) 65-78.
• ‘Some Scraps on Beauty-in-the-Ghost,’ Parallax 15.1 (2009) 80-89.
• ‘Dream-hole,’ Journal of European Studies 38.4 (2008) 373-82.
• ‘A New International, or What You Will,’ Oxford Literary Review 30.1 (2008) 124-36.
• ‘All the Way to Writing,’ Angelaki 12.2 (2007) 137-47
• ‘Beyond Me Nowhere But This World: Clio Barnard’s Dark Glass,’ in Clio Barnard, exhibition catalogue (Canterbury: University College for the Creative Arts, 2007) 1-15.
• ‘Edit,’ Mosaic 39.3 (2006) 47-58.
• ‘Beauty and Admiration in Learning: Louise Bourgeois and Paul de Man,’ Parallax 12.3 (2006) 51-64.