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:
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