Rachael McLennan

I am a Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Culture in the School of Art, Media and American Studies. In broad terms, my research and teaching activities focus on a wide range of interdisciplinary postwar and contemporary texts, from texts published in the 1950s to texts published in the twenty-first century. My Ph.D study at the University of Glasgow examined first-person narratives of female adolescence in American fiction published after 1950. I have published several articles on this area, and my monograph, Developing Figures: Adolescence, America and Postwar Fiction, was published by Palgrave in 2009. I have also published American Autobiography (Edinburgh University Press, 2012) and In Different Rooms: Representations of Anne Frank in American Literature (Routledge, 2016).

I have published three books, on female adolescence in American literature, American Autobiography, and representations of Anne Frank in American literature.  

My research and teaching interests therefore focus on the following areas: representations of adolescence, youth and ageing, with a special focus on gender; American autobiography; narrative voice; the Holocaust in American literature and culture; contemporary American fiction. In future research and teaching I plan to extend my focus on the relationship between age and identity by working on representations of ageing in America, examining middle and old age.