TEACHING

I teach mainly eighteenth-century literature, and more specifically the uses of the eighteenth century in cinema. During the course of my masters seminar, we look at theories of adaptation, at discourse on cinema, as well as at transpositions of historical periods. We analyse parallel scenes from films and novels to understand different modes of representation (we are not interested in ideas of the “authentic”…).

In 2014-5, we watched and studied:

Peter Greenaway’s The Draughtman’s Contract (1982), which is set at the end of the seventeenth century and is not an adaptation of anything;
Luis Bunuel’s Robinson Crusoe (1954), which is more an adventure film than a classic Bunuel film;
Michael Winterbottom’s A Cock and Bull Story (2005), which is a cinematic translation of Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and of the complexities of telling a story in a straight line;
Stephen Frear’s Dangerous Liaisons (1988), one of many adaptations of Laclos’s novel, which we also compared with Vadim’s and with Forman’s versions;
Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975), an adaptation of Thackeray’s novel published in the nineteenth but set in the eighteenth century.

It was understood that everyone had read the novels on which these films were based, so as to allow discussion.

In 2015-6, we will study:

Adaptations of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (we will look at various adaptations, in particular the Fleischers’ animated film of 1939);
Tony Richardson’s Tom Jones (1963);
And the BBC TV series of Clarissa (1991).

This will give us an insight both into “canonical” novels of the eighteenth century, and their possible uses in different visual genres.

I also teach postcolonial literature, in particular Indian literature in English. I convene a postgraduate seminar in postcolonial theory.

Over the years I have taught, and still supervise, on theories of fiction, linguistic analysis of literary discourse, contemporary British fiction and on a variety of authors ranging from Shakespeare from Burney Conrad to Kureishi, etc.