Joseph Williams

I am a CHASE / AHRC-funded postgraduate researcher within the School of Literature, Drama, and Creative Writing.

I am writing a PhD thesis about the relationship between the university and literary culture in postwar Britain. I consider this by looking at the creative, critical, and educational work of Malcolm Bradbury, Lorna Sage, David Lodge and the literary journal Critical Quarterly, founded by C. B. Cox and A. E. Dyson in 1959. Working in British universities, these figures engaged variously with television, public-facing magazines, and secondary schools in an attempt to cultivate a plural and democratic literary culture. By foregrounding these figures, I hope to provide an alternative to previous Oxbridge-centred histories of the discipline, and in doing so bring to light a new narrative of postwar literary culture. 

My research interests include

• postwar British fiction, in particular the campus novel
• the fiction and criticism of Malcolm Bradbury
• modernism and its legacies
• contemporary British fiction
• the comic novel, humour, and the joke
• literary criticism and its history
• the history of university English studies, in particular Creative Writing
• the university's role as a literary tastemaker 
• the future of the university, in particular the Arts and Humanities
• F. R. Leavis and ideas about 'high' culture
• cultural studies
• journalism, book reviews, and the reading public
• Raymond Williams and the long revolution
• adult education, literacy, and the Workers' Education Association
• literary archives
• M. R. James, the ghost story, and non-mimetic writing
• contemporary poetry 
• sport and its symbolic resonance, particularly in relation to masculinity
• The lyrics of Michael Stipe

• In Autumn 2022 I taught on the first year undergraduate module Reading Now.
• In January 2023 I taught a four-week short course on 'M. R. James in East Anglia' for the Norwich W. E. A. 
• In Autumn 2023 I will teach a ten-week module for the Norwich W. E. A. titled 'Crime Through Time'
• In Spring 2024 I will teach a ten-week module for the Norwich W. E. A. titled 'Ulysses in ten weeks'