Welcome

Name: Hannah Spruce

Department: English, University of Leicester

Research Area: Contemporary Women's Writing

PhD Thesis: Destabilising the Psychopath Narrative through US and Canadian Women's Writing

Supervisors: 

• Professor Martin Halliwell (University of Leicester)
• Dr Zalfa Feghali (University of Leicester)

Publications:

• 'The Revolutionary Chora in Seamus Heaney's Kite Poetry', Estudios Irlandeses, 11, 2016, 213-219.

Book Reviews:

• 'Book Review: Posthuman Urbanism: Mapping Bodies in Contemporary Space by Debra Benita Shaw', LSE: Review of Books. May 15, 2018. 
• 'Book Review: TransCanadian Feminist Fictions: New Cross-Border Ethics by Libe García Zarranz', LSE: Review of Books, August 17, 2018.

Conference Papers: 

• 'Intersectionality as our Shared Future: Responses to Patricia Hill Collins’ Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory (2019), Conference Panel, chaired by Dr. Zalfa Feghali, English: Shared Futures 2020, Manchester, June 26-28, 2020 (postponed due to covid-19).

• 'Myriam Gurba's Feminist Revisioning of True Crime', PG Contemporary Women's Writing Network, University of Hull, September 9, 2019.
• 'Existentialism and Evil in Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin', Evil Children: Children and Evil, Verona, Italy, July 14-16, 2019. 
• 'Disrupting the Conflation of Autism and Psychopathy in Margaret Atwood's Speculative Fiction', Current Research in Speculative Fiction, Conference Paper, University of Liverpool, June 29, 2018.

Teaching Experience:

• Associate Lecturer, Sheffield Hallam University (March 16, 2020–). 
  • Led online writing development tutorials for students across English Literature and Creative Writing undergraduate courses to develop academic writing style, expression, and structure for assessment purposes (March-April, 2020).

Public Engagement:

• Workshop on contemporary Indigenous poetry: Katherena Vermette’s North End Love Songs (2012), Leeds, March 2020.
• Fortnightly nonfiction book club (Bookish), Leeds, January 2019 to present.

Scholarly Activities:

• Managing Editor at the Journal of Language, Texts, and Society, a postgraduate journal based at the University of Nottingham (2018–2019)
• Conference coordinator: 'New Perspectives on Politics, Freedom, and Democracy' held at Stamford Court, Leicester, May 10, 2019. Funded by Midlands3Cities
• Coordinating team: 'Human Rights in the 21st Century: Developing Rights in a Developing World', University of Birmingham, July 20, 2018. Funded by Midlands3Cities and Rights Lab, Nottingham.

Professional Memberships: 

• Member of the British Association for American Studies (BAAS). 
• Member of the Modern Language Association (MLA).
• Member of the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies (BACLS)

Research Interests:

• Contemporary women's writing
• Canadian and US literature
• Genre fictions (speculative fiction, crime fictions, memoir/autofiction)
• Medical humanities (women and ageing, representations of autism, representations of psychopathy)
• Sexual violence and portrayals of criminal justice
• Race, class, and gender