Research

Contemporary Fiction

This cluster has expertise in literary and genre fiction from around the world, in contemporary theory and in diasporic writing.

Staff

Publications

2026

McFarlane, A. (2026) Genre bleed, reproduction, and the climate crisis in Louisa Hall’s Reproduction (2023) Medical Humanities, (doi: 10.1136/medhum-2025-013621)

Burn, S. (2026) On late form. Transatlantica,

Ivry, H. (2026) The Jim Crow railroad bildungsroman. Textual Practice, (doi: 10.1080/0950236X.2025.2608848)

Willie, M. (2026) Carrying shame. Common Ground Networks

Willie, M. (2026) Colonialism, Exile and the Caribbean Psyche: the novels of Garth St. Omer. Liverpool University Press

2025

Ivry, H. (2025) Listening to infrastructure: acoustic circulation and Black resistance. Errant Bodies Press

Willie, M. S. (2025) Matrilineal inheritance. Caribbean Writer, 39,

Willie, M. S. (2025) Hostage. sx salon, 50,

Dick, M.-D. (2025) Joycean Minimalism, Derridean Maximalism. Edinburgh University Press

McFarlane, A. (2025) Scottish science fiction and fantasy. Scottish Literature International

Pitt Scott, H. (2025) The promise of electrification. Energy Humanities,

Burn, S. J. (2025) Transatlantic fictions. Cambridge University Press

Friedman, G., Ivry, H., Stilley, H. (2025) “Introduction: Insurgent infrastructures and infrastructures of insurgency” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 66, pp. 197-204. (doi: 10.1080/00111619.2024.2427035)

(2025) English and Boys: why are young men turning away from our subject? English Association Newsletter,

Ivry, H. (2025) Forms of death and the death of form in contemporary Black fiction. Studies in the Novel, 57, pp. 102-118. (doi: 10.1353/sdn.2025.a952393)

Miller, G., Mcfarlane, A. (2025) Science fiction studies and the medical humanities: interdisciplinary futures. Edinburgh University Press

(2025) The Edinburgh Companion to Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities.

Pitt Scott, H. (2025) Financial Petroleum Cultures: Narrating Volatile Futures, 1973–2050. Palgrave Macmillan

2024

Ivry, H., Karpinski, M. (2024) Alien rhythms: sounding black futures from the ocean floor. Palgrave Macmillan

McFarlane, A. (2024) Abortion, child loss and science fiction. Studies in the Maternal, 14, pp. 1-15. (doi: 10.16995/sim.10951)

McFarlane, A. (2024) Special Issue: Cyberpunk: Beyond Fiction 2000. Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, 53,

Duprat, A., Currie, M., During, E., Vlacos, S., Carrard, P. (2024) Chance, causality, temporality. Routledge

Stoddart, H. (2024) Realism, postmodernism and authenticity in the contemporary circus novel. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, (doi: 10.1080/00111619.2024.2371960)

Pitt Scott, H. (2024) Figures of separation: cognitive mapping and oil’s declining slope. Representations, 166, pp. 62-85. (doi: 10.1525/rep.2024.166.3.62)

Ivry, H. (2024) How to listen otherwise: Black sounds, Black ecologies. English Language Notes, 62, pp. 13-29. (doi: 10.1215/00138282-11096323)

Ivry, H. (2024) Insurgency, history, and infrastructure in Namwali Serpell's The Old Drift and Imbole Mbue's How Beautiful We Were. Contemporary Literature, 64, pp. 149-181. (doi: 10.3368/cl.64.2.149)

Willie, M. S. (2024) Blue shoes. sx salon, 45,

McFarlane, A. (2024) Speculative fiction of the 2010s. Bloomsbury Publishing

Kovesi, S. (2024) John Clare out of Copyright.

Stoddart, H. (2024) Circus, the aesthetics of authenticity, animals and literary representation. Theater Institute Zbigniew Raszewskiego

McFarlane, A., Miller, G. (2024) Medical humanities. Routledge

2023

Kovesi, S. (2023) Poets THEN and NOW: The 1910-1911 Encyclopædia Britannica Romantic Poetry Project: CLARE, John (1793-1864)

Ivry, H. (2023) Ecologies from the cargo: Zora Neale Hurston and the long Anthropocene. Modern Fiction Studies, 69, pp. 444-465. (doi: 10.1353/mfs.2023.a905745)

Kovesi, S. (2023) Iain Sinclair's Edge of the Orison. Haggerston Hound Printworks

McFarlane, A. (2023) Reproductive loss in the anthropocene: Paul McAuley's Austral. Science Fiction Studies, 50, pp. 233-250. (doi: 10.1353/sfs.2023.a900282)

Willie, M. S. (2023) A genealogy of the recognition of blackness in Caryl Phillips’s Cambridge and Foreigners: Three English Lives. Brill

McFarlane, A. (2023) Maternity and motherlessness. Science Fiction Studies, 50, pp. 105-110. (doi: 10.1353/sfs.2023.0005)

Pitt Scott, H. (2023) Leveraged futurity: markets and militants in the transition. Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism, (doi: 10.1080/14688417.2023.2215791)

Ivry, H. (2023) Transscalar Critique: Climate, Blackness, Crisis. Edinburgh University Press

Ivry, H., Karpinski, M. (2023) Blackness after the end of the world: Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s dub ecologies. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, 30, pp. 77-101. (doi: 10.1093/isle/isaa174)

2022

Stoddart, H. (2022) A history of the Scottish P.E.N. organization, Part 1: 1927-1949. Studies in Scottish Literature, 48, pp. 148-167. (doi: 10.51221/suc.ssl.2023.48.2.12)

McFarlane, A. (2022) Medical humanities. Palgrave Macmillan

McFarlane, A. (2022) Posthumanism before posthumanism. Science Fiction Studies, 49, pp. 558-562.

(2022) The Meeting: Reading and Writing through John Clare. (doi: 10.24384/qna8-yq33)

Ivry, H. (2022) Kathryn Yusoff, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. American Literary History, (doi: 10.1093/alh/ajac046)

Ivry, H. (2022) Ecology in the Wake: Black Studies, Literary Method, and the Nonhuman. Minnesota Review, 2022, pp. 611-72. (doi: 10.1215/00265667-9563877)

McFarlane, A. (2022) Ectogenesis on the NHS: reproduction and privatization in twenty-first century British science fiction. Palgrave Macmillan

(2022) Fifty Key Figures in Cyberpunk Culture.

Jones, T., Philips, J., Romano, K., Kovesi, S. (2022) Melodys of Earth and Sky.

Stoddart, H. (2022) Muriel Spark and the ‘Hired Grammarians’ Association for Scottish Literary Studies

Vlacos, S. (2022) Paul Ricoeur and the limits of critique. Kritika & Kontext

(2022) The Crooked Dividend: Essays on Muriel Spark.

(2022) Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction: 1980-2020. (doi: 10.1002/9781119431732)

2021

Willie, M. S. (2021) Journey to Zion. Lolwe, 4,

McFarlane, A. (2021) Cyberpunk Culture and Psychology: Seeing Through the Mirrorshades. Routledge

Kövesi, S., Hamberger, R. (2021) A Length of Road: Interview with Robert Hamberger. John Clare Society Journal, pp. 87-96.

Kovesi, S. (2021) “Lord Byron, poh! the man wot writes the werses?”: John Clare, Byron and Class. Cambridge University Press

Ivry, H. (2021) ‘Improbable metaphor’: Jesmyn Ward’s asymmetrical Anthropocene. European Review, 29, pp. 383-396. (doi: 10.1017/S1062798720000708)

Willie, M. S. (2021) Musing history. Caribbean Writer, 35,

Kovesi, S., Philips, J., Jones, T., Romano, K., Searle, W. (2021) John Clare: The Meeting. Poetry and Song.

Ivry, H. (2021) Writing in the “second person plural”: Ben Lerner, ambient esthetics, and problems of scale. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 62, pp. 123-136. (doi: 10.1080/00111619.2020.1787321)

Ivry, H. (2021) The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies by Tiffany Lethabo King. University of Toronto Quarterly, 90, pp. 406-408. (doi: 10.3138/utq.90.3.hr.18)

Burn, S. J. (2021) The gender of the neuronovel: Joyce Carol Oates and the double brain. European Journal of American Studies, 16, (doi: 10.4000/ejas.17459)

2020

Stoddart, H. (2020) Contemporary Circus Literature: Authenticity and Illusion in Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants and Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus. transcript Verlag

Ivry, H. (2020) Unmitigated Blackness: Paul Beatty's transscalar critique. English Literary History, 87, pp. 1133-1162. (doi: 10.1353/elh.2020.0040)

(2020) Palgrave Advances in John Clare Studies. (doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-43374-1)

Dick, M.-D. (2020) We have never been theoretical: Scottish literature, in theory. Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies, 9, pp. 65-83.

McFarlane, A. (2020) AI and cyberpunk networks. Oxford University Press

Dick, M.-D., McLaughlan, R. (2020) (Psycho)Social media. Palgrave Macmillan

Dick, M.-D., McLaughlan, R. (2020) A politics of Freud. Palgrave Macmillan

Dick, M.-D., McLaughlan, R. (2020) Bodily economies. Palgrave Macmillan

Dick, M.-D., McLaughlan, R. (2020) Conclusion: Death drive ecologies. Palgrave Macmillan

Dick, M.-D., McLaughlan, R. (2020) Culture in the age of death drive. Palgrave Macmillan

Dick, M.-D., McLaughlan, R. (2020) Introduction. Palgrave Macmillan

Dick, M.-D., McLaughlan, R. (2020) Late Capitalist Freud in Literary, Cultural, and Political Theory. Palgrave Macmillan

Pitt Scott, H. (2020) Offshore mysteries, narrative infrastructure: oil, noir, and the world-ocean. Humanities, 9, (doi: 10.3390/h9030071)

(2020) The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture.

2019

McFarlane, A. (2019) “Becoming acquainted with all that pain”: nursing as activism in Naomi Mitchison’s science fiction. Literature and Medicine, 37, pp. 278-297. (doi: 10.1353/lm.2019.0013)

(2019) Approaches to Teaching the Works of David Foster Wallace.

Burn, S. J. (2019) Last words: teaching The Pale King. Modern Languages Association

Mcfarlane, A. (2019) Time and affect after 9/11: Lavie Tidhar's Osama: a novel. Liverpool University Press

Kovesi, S. (2019) Clare, Kelman, and Working-Class Art - an interview with Brian Hammond. The Common Breath,

Vlacos, S. (2019) Symbiosis: a Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations [Co-editor] Symbiosis: A Journal of Transatlantic Literary and Cultural Relations,

Vlacos, S. (2019) Responsible individualism and mauvaise foi in middlemarch and freedom. Symbiosis: A Journal of Transatlantic Literary and Cultural Relations, 22, pp. 171-195.

Gair, C., Vlacos, S. (2019) From Poe to Post-Postmodernism: Symbiosis, 1997–2018. Symbiosis: A Journal of Transatlantic Literary and Cultural Relations, 22, pp. 125-145.

Dick, M.-D., Lusk, K., Maley, W. (2019) "The Agitator’s Wife" (1894): the story behind James Connolly’s lost play? Irish Studies Review, 27, pp. 1-21. (doi: 10.1080/09670882.2018.1558473)

Burn, S. J. (2019) Family. Routledge

Vlacos, S. (2019) Realisms. Routledge

2018

McFarlane, A. (2018) Coded networks: literature and the information technology revolution. Cambridge University Press

Kövesi, S. (2018) ‘Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod? / Or Love in a golden bowl?’ On not defending the humanities. D. S. Brewer

Dick, M.-D. (2018) James Joyce section 2c XV Modern Literature. Year's Work in English Studies, 97, pp. 1020-1036. (doi: 10.1093/ywes/may015)

Kovesi, S. (2018) Five Questions: Simon Kövesi on John Clare: Nature, Criticism and History (interview with Matthew Sangster) BARS website,

Burn, S. J. (2018) The neuronovel. Cambridge University Press

Vlacos, S. (2018) Habit. Edinburgh University Press

Vlacos, S. (2018) Late modernism. Edinburgh University Press

Vlacos, S. (2018) New criticism. Edinburgh University Press

Vlacos, S. (2018) Realism. Edinburgh University Press

Dick, M.-D. (2018) Ephiphany. Edinburgh University Press

Dick, M.-D. (2018) Exile. Edinburgh University Press

Dick, M.-D. (2018) Interior monologue. Edinburgh University Press

Dick, M.-D. (2018) Modern Literature. James Joyce’ section 2c XV. Year's Work in English Studies, 97, pp. 889-1030. (doi: 10.1093/ywes/may015)

Dick, M.-D. (2018) Stream of consciousness. Edinburgh University Press

Dick, M.-D. (2018) Uncanny. Edinburgh University Press

Dick, M.-D. (2018) flâneur. Edinburgh University Press

Dick, M.-D. (2018) madeleine. Edinburgh University Press

Postgraduate research students

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The Contemporary Fiction Research Cluster meets 2-3 times per semester, primarily to peer review each other’s work. Typically members of the group submit an article, book chapter, or monograph proposal which they are preparing for publication and the group meets the following week to offer feedback to support the development of the work. In addition, members of the group nominate examples of influential scholarship on contemporary fiction which they introduce for wider consideration and critique among the group.