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)
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
2017
Burn, S. J. (2017) Encyclopedic fictions. Cambridge University Press
(2017) American Literature in Transition: 1990-2000. (doi: 10.1017/9781316477069)
Mcfarlane, A. (2017) Cyberpunk and “Science Fiction Realism” in Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days and Zero Dark Thirty. Routledge
Kövesi, S. (2017) John Clare: Nature, Criticism and History. Palgrave Macmillan
Vlacos, S. (2017) Critique and Complexity: Some Challenges to Contemporary Literary Theory.
Vlacos, S. (2017) The Hermeneutics of Suspicion; Ricoeur's Ideology and Utopia [Guest Lecture, Fonds Ricoeur, Paris]
Dick, M.-D. (2017) James Joyce section 2c XV Modern Literature. Year's Work in English Studies, 96, pp. 1021-1037. (doi: 10.1093/ywes/max016)
Vlacos, S. (2017) The Problem of Other Minds in Doctorow's Homer and Langley.
McFarlane, A. (2017) The poetry of civic nationalism: Jackie Kay’s ‘bronze head from Ife’ C21 Literature, 5, (doi: 10.16995/c21.23)
(2017) A Practical Guide to the Resurrected: 21 Short Stories of Science Fiction and Medicine.
Vlacos, S. (2017) British fiction 1930-1945. Year's Work in English Studies, 96, pp. 944-952. (doi: 10.1093/ywes/max016)
Dick, M.-D. (2017) James Joyce, minimalist. Dublin James Joyce Journal, 10, pp. 65-85. (doi: 10.1353/djj.2017.0004)
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.