Nola Merckel

After BA and MA degrees in Comparative Literature and French at UEA, I began teaching here as an Associate Tutor in 1998, while working on an AHRC-funded PhD (awarded in 2003) on Gustave Flaubert's drama and nineteenth-century theatrical culture entitled The Uses of Failure.  At the same time (1998 to 2009), I also taught part-time at Norwich University of the Arts where I was part of the course team for the BA in Cultural Studies and the BA in Creative Writing. I have been a Lecturer at UEA in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing since 2009.

Before going to university in 1991, I spent a number of years working in the legal profession, joining a law office straight out of school and gaining experience of different departments and working environments in the UK and France - criminal courts, land disputes, commercial and property law. After a few years of this work, I decided the law was not for me and embarked on a first degree in Comparative Literature and French which led to postgraduate study and an academic teaching career. I have also worked as a bookseller and maintain an ongoing involvement as a performer in a number of theatre companies and projects.  

My teaching and scholarly interests are interdisciplinary. I work across literature, drama, visual art and culture of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I have a particular interest in spaces, places, power and representation, as well as the ways in which words and images can work together - for example, in impressionism, surrealism and situationism. 

At UEA, in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, I have designed, organised and taught a range of undergraduate modules on cultural theory and analysis; nineteenth-century European drama; comedy and the absurd in literature, theory and and drama; fin-de-siècle literature and visual culture (painting and photography - Impressionism, Symbolism, Aestheticism and Decadence); twentieth/twenty-first-century European literature; and representations of 'the city' in literature and visual culture.

The common thread through everything I teach is a belief in the seminar as a vital and valuable space for encountering, discussing, debating and thinking through ideas. It's not passive, prepackaged or standardized and will be different every time depending on the unique mix of individuals in the room. 

Interdisciplinary/comparative approaches to 19th/20th/21st-century European literature, drama, visual arts and culture; Flaubert; Zola; comedy in literature, drama and performance; Oscar Wilde; fin-de-siecle culture; Impressionism; Aestheticism; Decadence; Surrealism; European modernism; space, place and representation. 

Past and present modules organised/taught/contributed to:

3rd Year/Level 6

Urban Visions: The City in Literature and Visual Culture

Post-1789 Literature dissertation supervision

2nd Year/Level 5

Comedy and the Absurd in Drama

Theatres of Revolt: Nineteenth-Century European Drama

European Literature

Cultural Theory and Analysis

Literature and Visual Culture: At the Fin de Siecle

Art and Writing

Modern English Fiction (James to Huxley)

Great Expectations and Lost Illusions: the European Bildungsroman 

Nineteenth-Century French Fiction: Self and Society

A Book of One’s Own: Diary Fiction

1st Year/Level 4

Reading Texts 1

Reading Texts 2

Literature in History 2

Introduction to World Dramatic Literatures

Theatre Theories and Spaces