Keywords
Cinema, Contemporary literary studies, Contemporary literature, Detective fiction, Film adaptation, Film studies, Genre fiction, Literature, Literature and gender, Literature and science, London in fiction and film, Masculinities, Popular culture, Science and literature, Science and literature, Science fiction, Science fiction, Science fiction cinema, The graphic novel, Theories of modernity, Twentieth-century culture, Twentieth-century literature, Twentieth-century popular culture, Utopia
Research Areas
English Literature and Creative Writing
Dr Brian Baker
Lecturer
County College
Lancaster University
Bailrigg
Lancaster
United Kingdom
LA1 4YD
Email: Email Hidden
Tel: +44 1524 592225
I am currently researching in masculinities and contemporary film towards a monograph with Bloomsbury Academic. In 2014 I will also be writing a book on the history of science fiction in the 1960s, which will extend work already completed on New Wave science fiction and literary experimentation. I am also pursuing new developments in critical/creative practice.
PhD Supervision Interests
20th century American literature,Science fiction, particularly post-World War 2, Masculinity in fiction and film, The city in fiction and film, especially London fictions, Popular and genre fiction.
Career Details
Brian studied for his undergraduate degree in English and American Literature at the University of Warwick, took an MA in American Studies at the University of East Anglia, and completed his PhD at the University of Liverpool, in postwar American dystopian science fiction. He taught literature and film at NEWI in Wrexham and at the University of Chester before moving to Lancaster in September 2006.
He has published, with John H. Cartwright, Literature and Science: Social Impact and Interaction (Santa Barbara and Oxford: ABC-Clio, 2005), which offers a broad overview of the relationship between literature and science from the early modern period to contemporary literature and culture; and Masculinity in Fiction and Film: Representing Men in Popular Genres 1945-2000 (London and New York: Continuum, 2006), which encompasses the genres of science fiction, spy fictions, film noir and detective fictions, and the Western, to investigate constructions of masculinity in the post-war period. A monograph on the contemporary London writer Iain Sinclair was published as part of Manchester University Press's Contemporary British Novelists series in 2007. Brian has also edited a collection of essays on screen adaptations of literature, Textual Revisions, which was published by the Chester Academic Press in 2009.
Brian has supervised research students in the areas of visuality and the subject in the fin-de-siecle Gothic, and fantasy fictions, films and fan-fictions, and currently supervises in the fields of graphic novels and spatiality, the post-war American short story, epic fantasy and bi-technological science fiction. He would welcome applications for research projects on twentieth-century American fiction and film in general, but in particular science fiction, gender (especially masculinity) in film, city fictions (especially London fictions), and the relationship between cinema and literature.
Current Teaching
Brian currently teaches on ENGL204 American Literature before 1900, ENGL208 Literature and Film, and his specilaist unit ENGL365 Science Fiction. He also lectures on the 20th-century American literature, Contemporary Literature, Criticism and Theory and first-year courses.
Current Research
Brian researches and publishes in several fields, including contemporary British fiction, science fiction, London fictions, masculinities, and film studies. Recent and current work includes seminar and conference papers, and published articles and book chapters, on the fiction of J.G. Ballard and Michael Moorcock; masculinity, mobility and spy fiction; teaching masculinities; tape technology and Gothic film; and time travel as pathological symptom.
He has several book projects ongoing. He is writing the Reader's Guide to Essential Critisism of Science Fiction for Palgrave Macmillan; writing Fuzzy Revolutions: Science Fiction in the 1960s with Liverpool University Press (2014); Contemporary Masculinities in Fiction and Film for Bloomsbury Academic (2014).
Web Links
Brian's blog, (SF) 365, can be found here.
2013
Apollo roulette
Baker, B. 2013 In: Essays and Studies.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article
2012
Tape Spectra
Baker, B. 06/2012 In: Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies . 11
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article
The assassination report
Baker, B. 2012 In: Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction. 40, 112, p. 40-74, 35 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article
On the beach: British nuclear fiction and the spaces of empire's end
Baker, B. 06/2012 Future wars: the anticipations and the fears. Seed, D. (ed.). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, p. 144-160 17 p.
Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings › Chapter (peer-reviewed)
Do We Need Any More Books About Men?: Teaching Masculinity
Baker, B. 6/01/2012 Teaching Gender. Ferrebe, A. & Tolan, F. (eds.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 63-82 20 p. (Teaching the New English).
Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings › Chapter (peer-reviewed)
“You’re quite a gourmet, aren’t you, Palmer?”: masculinity and food in the spy fiction of Len Deighton
Baker, B. 1/07/2012 In: Yearbook of English Studies. 42, n/a, p. 30-48, 19 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article
2010
'Gallivanting around the world': Bond, the gaze and mobility.
Baker, B. 2010 Revisioning 007: James Bond and Casino Royale. Lindner, C. (ed.). London and New York: Wallflower Press, p. 144-158 15 p.
Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings › Chapter
2009
A Man of Wealth and Taste: The Strange Career of Hannibal Lecter
Baker, B. 2009 The Lure of the Dark Side: Satan and Western Demonology in Popular Culture. Partridge, C. & Christianson, E. (eds.). London: Equinox Publishing, p. 122-135 13 p.
Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings › Chapter (peer-reviewed)
Textual revisions: reading literature and film.
Baker, B. & Baker, B. (ed.) 2009 Chester: Chester Academic Press. 261 p.
Research output: Book/Report/Proceedings › Book
2008
The geometry of the space age: J.G. Ballard’s short fiction and science fiction of the 1960s
Baker, B. 1/03/2008 J.G. Ballard: contemporary critical perspectives. Baxter, J. (ed.). London: Continuum, p. 11-22 12 p. (Contemporary Critical Perspectives).
Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings › Chapter (peer-reviewed)
Evolution, Literary Theory and Science Fiction
Baker, B. 1/06/2008 In: Essays and Studies. 61, p. 131-150, 20 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article
Iterative architecture: a Ballardian text.
Brian, B. 2008 In: 21: Journal of Contemporary and Innovative Fiction. 1, 1, p. 8-30, 23 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article
2007
Sinclair's Poetics: From Lud Heat and Suicide Bridge to Saddling the Rabbit
Baker, B. 2007 City Visions: The Work of Iain Sinclair. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, p. 120-133 14 p.
Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings › Chapter (peer-reviewed)
Gothic Masculinities
Baker, B. 2007 The Routledge companion to Gothic. Spooner, C. & McEvoy, E. (eds.). London: Routledge, p. 164-173 10 p.
Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings › Chapter (peer-reviewed)
Iain Sinclair.
Baker, B. 2007 Manchester University Press.
Research output: Book/Report/Proceedings › Book
2006
Masculinity in Fiction and Film: Representing Men in Popular Genres 1945-2000.
Baker, B. 2006 Continuum.
Research output: Book/Report/Proceedings › Book
2005
Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451
Baker, B. 2005 A Companion to Science Fiction. Seed, D. (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell, p. 489-499 10 p.
Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings › Chapter (peer-reviewed)
Witness to the End of the World: colonialism, the scientific romance and Michael Moorcock's Nomad of the Time Streams trilogy
Baker, B. 2005 In: Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction. 34, 1, p. 40-48, 9 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article
Constructing the Normative: Male Subjects and Others in the Dystopias of Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth
Baker, B. 2005 In: Extrapolation. 46, 4, p. 439-452, 14 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451.
Baker, B. 2005 Blackwell's Companion to Science Fiction. Blackwell, 489 p.
Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings › Chapter
Literature and Science: Social Impact and Interaction.
Baker, B. & Cartwright, J. H. 2005 ABC-CLIO.
Research output: Book/Report/Proceedings › Book
2004
The Nelson Mandala
Baker, B. 08/2004 In: Vector: the Magazine of the British Science Fiction Association. p. 16, 19 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article
2000
The Resurrection of Desire: JG Ballard's Crash as a Transgressive Text
Baker, B. 11/2000 In: Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction. 29, 80, p. 84-96, 12 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article
The chronotope in the age of cinema
01/11/2007 →
The chronotope is a theoretical term used by Mikhail Bakhtin to identify the means by which the cultural and ideological organisation of concepts of space and time are encoded into literary works. Whi ... Read more»
British Film 2000-2010: Crossing Boundaries, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz
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Activity: Editorial activity
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Activity: Publication peer-review
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