What we do in Literature
Joanna Britton, Universiteit Gent
I am a teaching assistant in English linguistics and spoken English at UGent, and am researching 19th-century German women writers and composers.
Katharine Burkitt, Université de Liège
I am currently a Lecteur in the English Department at University of Liège, where I teach on the British Culture and Civilisation module and on first year literature courses.
My Ph.D was awarded in November 2007 from University of Salford, UK. It is a study of the correlation between epic form and the contemporary verse-novel: Epic Proportions: Post-Epic Verse-Novels and Postcolonial Critique. In line with this, I have continued my research into the verse-novel form, as well as other abstract formal engagements like the long poem and the poetic novel. I have recently published on texts by Derek Walcott, Les Murray, Anne Carson, Bernardine Evaristo and Michael Ondaatje.
My current research focuses primarily on the work of Bernardine Evaristo: her conceptualisation of black British identity and the politics of her engagement with both form and comedy. I am also preparing my Ph.D thesis for publication and beginning a project which explores the postcolonial nature of the seaside town in British literature and popular culture.
Line Henriksen
My background is in English and Italian language and literature. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Copenhagen in June 2001. In July 2007 I received the International Comparative Literature Association's first Anna Balakian Award for my book Ambition and Anxiety: Ezra Pound’s Cantos and Derek Walcott’s Omeros as Twentieth Century Epics (Rodopi 2006). The book, like my Ph.D., is on the modern epic, with a focus on Ezra Pound and Derek Walcott, metonymy and metaphor, and the epic lineage that goes back to Dante, Virgil and Homer. I hold an MA in modernist literature from the University of York, UK, and studied Dante, Petrarch and modern Italian literature at Florence University, Italy, during my undergraduate years.
While the core of my research falls within literary studies (with both a comparative and a philological approach), and especially epic and long narrative poems, I have also worked within non-literary interpreting and translation studies, mainly during my time as an assistant professor at Copenhagen Business School (2005-08). These days I work as a simultaneous interpreter with the European Parliament (I have an MA in conference interpreting), interpreting English, French and Italian into Danish, and reading whatever I feel like when I am off work. FARB keeps me in touch with the best of that world of academic research that I have, at least for now, left behind in my professional life: the meeting with others who are curious to learn more about just about anything and who are happy to share what they know.
Other passions: playing the piano, writing, cinema, The New Yorker, good espresso coffee (with some hot steamed milk), walking and running in Brussels' beautiful Forêt de Soignes.
Kedrun Laurie
Kedrun has a background in museums history and curatorship, and a special interest in the writing of Edward Thomas.
Kate Macdonald, Universiteit Gent
I’m a lecturer at the Department of English, University of Ghent, Belgium, where I teach British literature and culture. I also run the student creative writing group, and am the producer of the annual department play.
Research interests include book history and print culture, 1880-1950; readership and reception studies; middlebrow literature, 1880-1950; John Buchan, Dornford Yates, Angela Thirkell, Una L Silberrad
Barbara Zimbalist
I am based at the University of California-Davis, and in 2010-2011 I will be working in Belgium at Universiteit Antwerpen and Universite de Liege. My research concentrates primarily on the religious literatures of England and the Low Countries from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries. My dissertation explores Christ's speech in women’s visionary literature, vernacular lives of Christ, and late-medieval lyrics. More broadly, my research interests include medieval rhetoric and theories of the vernacular, manuscript studies, and issues of gender within high- and late-medieval religious culture. My webpage can be accessed here.
I am a teaching assistant in English linguistics and spoken English at UGent, and am researching 19th-century German women writers and composers.
Katharine Burkitt, Université de Liège
I am currently a Lecteur in the English Department at University of Liège, where I teach on the British Culture and Civilisation module and on first year literature courses.
My Ph.D was awarded in November 2007 from University of Salford, UK. It is a study of the correlation between epic form and the contemporary verse-novel: Epic Proportions: Post-Epic Verse-Novels and Postcolonial Critique. In line with this, I have continued my research into the verse-novel form, as well as other abstract formal engagements like the long poem and the poetic novel. I have recently published on texts by Derek Walcott, Les Murray, Anne Carson, Bernardine Evaristo and Michael Ondaatje.
My current research focuses primarily on the work of Bernardine Evaristo: her conceptualisation of black British identity and the politics of her engagement with both form and comedy. I am also preparing my Ph.D thesis for publication and beginning a project which explores the postcolonial nature of the seaside town in British literature and popular culture.
Line Henriksen
My background is in English and Italian language and literature. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Copenhagen in June 2001. In July 2007 I received the International Comparative Literature Association's first Anna Balakian Award for my book Ambition and Anxiety: Ezra Pound’s Cantos and Derek Walcott’s Omeros as Twentieth Century Epics (Rodopi 2006). The book, like my Ph.D., is on the modern epic, with a focus on Ezra Pound and Derek Walcott, metonymy and metaphor, and the epic lineage that goes back to Dante, Virgil and Homer. I hold an MA in modernist literature from the University of York, UK, and studied Dante, Petrarch and modern Italian literature at Florence University, Italy, during my undergraduate years.
While the core of my research falls within literary studies (with both a comparative and a philological approach), and especially epic and long narrative poems, I have also worked within non-literary interpreting and translation studies, mainly during my time as an assistant professor at Copenhagen Business School (2005-08). These days I work as a simultaneous interpreter with the European Parliament (I have an MA in conference interpreting), interpreting English, French and Italian into Danish, and reading whatever I feel like when I am off work. FARB keeps me in touch with the best of that world of academic research that I have, at least for now, left behind in my professional life: the meeting with others who are curious to learn more about just about anything and who are happy to share what they know.
Other passions: playing the piano, writing, cinema, The New Yorker, good espresso coffee (with some hot steamed milk), walking and running in Brussels' beautiful Forêt de Soignes.
Kedrun Laurie
Kedrun has a background in museums history and curatorship, and a special interest in the writing of Edward Thomas.
Kate Macdonald, Universiteit Gent
I’m a lecturer at the Department of English, University of Ghent, Belgium, where I teach British literature and culture. I also run the student creative writing group, and am the producer of the annual department play.
Research interests include book history and print culture, 1880-1950; readership and reception studies; middlebrow literature, 1880-1950; John Buchan, Dornford Yates, Angela Thirkell, Una L Silberrad
Barbara Zimbalist
I am based at the University of California-Davis, and in 2010-2011 I will be working in Belgium at Universiteit Antwerpen and Universite de Liege. My research concentrates primarily on the religious literatures of England and the Low Countries from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries. My dissertation explores Christ's speech in women’s visionary literature, vernacular lives of Christ, and late-medieval lyrics. More broadly, my research interests include medieval rhetoric and theories of the vernacular, manuscript studies, and issues of gender within high- and late-medieval religious culture. My webpage can be accessed here.
