Research Menu:

Publications

Research clusters:

Centres and Programmes:

Literature and Popular Culture

Why do women read Romance fiction?

What does the way a fictional detective solves a crime tell us about the wider culture they belong to?

How are the festive celebrations of Jews at Purim linked to the Biblical Book of Esther?

What is the relationship between Gothic literature and Goths?

Research into the complex interchange between literature and popular culture is thriving at Lancaster. The Department of English and Creative Writing has historically had strong links with the Institute for Cultural Research, and together they run a joint MA in Literary and Cultural Studies, as well as co-supervising Ph.D students working on interdisciplinary topics.

Much of the Department's research in this area takes the form of study of popular literary genres, often investigating what happens when they travel beyond the page into wider cultural discourses. Individual staff have strengths in Romance (Professor Lynne Pearce); Detective and Crime Fiction (Dr Lee Horsley); women's Fantasy narratives (Dr Alison Easton) and Gothic (Dr Catherine Spooner).

Further strengths in the study of popular culture are added by Dr Tess Cosslett, who currently specialises in Children's Literature, and is particularly interested in the representation of animals. Dr Jo Carruthers is writing a cultural history of the Jewish festival of Purim, looking at the way both the festival itself and its textual representations contribute to the construction of Jewish identities. Dr Catherine Spooner researches fashion discourses and the way they affect notions of identity and the body, and is currently working on the representation of youth subcultures within fiction.

The Department also has a strong related interest in Literature and Film, details of which can be found on a separate page.

Medieval & Renaissance

Nineteenth Century

Twentieth Century

Contemporary