About
I have been teaching at the University of Birmingham since 1993. Prior to that I worked for three years at the University of East Anglia. I did my doctoral work in Canada at McGill University, where I held a Commonwealth Scholarship for five years. I took a BA in English (in the School of Cultural and Community Studies) at Sussex University.
Qualifications
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BA (Sussex University)
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PhD (McGill University)
Teaching
I have taught in a number of areas over the years: Victorian literature; Modernism; the Avant-gardes; Postmodern literature and theory; post-war British fiction; literary theory; and courses on specific writers (Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Henry James). I currently teach a range of undergraduate modules and co-teach on the MA in English Literature and the MPhil in Literature and Modernity.
Most of my teaching is in the area of modernist studies.
Postgraduate supervision
I have supervised MA, MPhil and PhD students in all areas on late 19th and early 20th century literature and culture, and I welcome research proposals in this area from prospective students.
Research
My doctoral work focused on developments in the British novel after the Second World War, and this led to my first book, Postwar British Fiction (1995), which concentrated on the various responses to the legacy of Modernism and to the challenges posed by postmodernism. Since 1995 I have been working primarily on Modernist literature, although I have maintained my interest in contemporary writing, producing a book on J. G. Ballard (2005). Wyndham Lewis’s writing and painting is an ongoing source of interest; my book Wyndham Lewis and Modernism (2004) discusses Lewis’s contribution to Modernism.
I have co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Modernisms (2010) and volume 4 of The Oxford History of the Novel in English: The Reinvention of the British and Irish Novel, 1880-1940. I am currently writing a History of Modernist Literature (to be published by Blackwell). I am also co-editor (with Deborah Longworth and Michael Valdez-Moses of the journal Modernist Cultures and I am the editor of the Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies. I am a co-founder of the British Association of Modernist Studies, and I currently sit on its executive board.
Other activities
Conferences
I regularly contribute to conferences in England and abroad. Recent conferences that I have organised include:
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Literary Transactions (June 2000, Birmingham) explored the intersections between late nineteenth-century writing and early Modernism.
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Modernist Cultures (September 2003) was the annual Modernist Studies Association conference, which took place in Birmingham and was co-organised with Laura Marcus, Peter Nicholls, and Deborah Parsons.
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Ford Madox Ford: Literary Networks and Cultural Transitions (September 2006) was the biennial Ford Madox Ford Society conference.
Publications
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Postwar British Fiction: Realism and After (London: Edward Arnold, 1995).
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Wyndham Lewis (Northcote House/British Council, 2004).
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J. G. Ballard (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).
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T. E. Hulme and the Question of Modernism eds. Andrzej Gasiorek and Edward J. Comentale (Ashgate, 2006).
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The Oxford Handbook of Modernisms eds Peter Brooker, Andrzej Gasiorek, Deborah Longworth, and Andrew Thacker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)
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The Reinvention of the British and Irish Novel, 1880-1940 eds Andrzej Gasiorek and Patrick Parrinder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)