Dr Monica Germana
Telephone: 020 7911 5000 ext 2361
Email: m.germana@westminster.ac.uk
Postal: University of Westminster, Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies,
32-38 Wells Street, London, W1T 3UW
Section: English Literature and Creative Writing
Monica Germanà is Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing. She read Modern Languages at the University of Viterbo (Italy) and then moved to Scotland to undertake her postgraduate studies (M.Phil in Scottish Studies and Ph.D in Scottish Literature) at the University of Glasgow. Her research interests include late 19th, 20th and 21st century British literature, with a specific emphasis on the Gothic tradition, representations of the city in literature and film and contemporary women’s writing. She is a member of the International Gothic Association and has been commissioned to edit a special issue of Gothic Studies focussing on Contemporary Scottish Gothic: the issue seeks to collect papers on interdisciplinary aspects of contemporary manifestation of Gothic (sub) cultures in Scotland. She has published articles and chapters on Emma Tennant, Ali Smith and Alasdair Gray. Currently working on a new research project (Dangerous Women: Body, Dress and Romance) exploring the sartorial appearance of dangerous women in twentieth-century text, fashion and film. As part of this project Monica has been awarded an Everett Helm fellowship from Indiana University to visit the Lilly Library, where the Ian Fleming papers are held.
Before joining Westminster in September 2008, Monica was a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Derby (2006-2008) and an associate lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing at Roehampton University (2004-2006). Whilst studying for her doctoral degree at the University of Glasgow (1999-2003), Monica also worked as tutor in several departments and was one of the founders and former editors of esharp, an established peer-reviewed postgraduate journal based at the University of Glasgow.
Monica is course leader for the MA Creative Writing: Writing the City and teaches on the BA modules ‘Reading Women’, ‘Writing London’, ‘Professional Writing’, ‘Postmodernism' and 'Representing the Body'.
Monica would welcome applications from students wishing to pursue graduate research on aspects of twentieth- and twenty-first century literature and material cultures, London writing, representations of gender and the Gothic.
RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS
Books
Scottish Women’s Gothic and Fantastic Writing: Fiction since 1978 (Edinburgh University Press, 2010)
Read Lesley McDowell’s review from the Scottish Review of Books
Edited Collections
Gothic Studies (edited) Special Issue on Contemporary Scottish Gothic (2011)
Journal Articles
‘Visualising Hyde: Excess, Pleasure and Cloning’, Gothic Studies (May 2011), ISSN 1362-7937.
‘Plagiarising the Ettrick Shepherd? A Note on the Manuscript of Charlotte Brontë’s Tales of the Islanders and Winifred Gérin’s Emily Brontë’, Notes and Queries (December 2008)
‘The Ghost and the Brownie: Scottish Influences on Emily Brontë’, Women’s Writing (May 2007)
Book Chapters
‘Brownies’, entry for Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary Monsters, edited by Jeffrey Weinstock (2012).
‘Being Human? Twenty-First Century Monsters’, PopGoth: The Gothic in Contemporary Popular Culture edited by Justin D. Edwards and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012).
‘The Awakening of Caledonias? Scottish Literature in the 1980s’, The Decades Project: The 1980s, edited by Nick Hubble and Leigh Wilson (London: Continuum, 2012).
‘The “Other” Story: The Spectral Self and the Monstrous Body in Meera Syal’s Anita and Me’, Re-genre-ations: mediating contemporary Gothic fictions, edited by Fred Botting and Catherine Spooner (Manchester: Manchester University Press: 2012).
‘Beyond the Gaps: Postmodernist Representations of the Metropolis’ (commissioned, for Land and Identity, edited by Christine Berberich, Robert Hudson and Neil Campbell (Rodopi: 2011).
‘Madness and the City: The Collapse of Reason and Sanity in Alan Moore’s From Hell’, Alan Moore and The Gothic Tradition, edited by Matt Green (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011).
‘Contemporary Writing', for Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Women’s Writing, edited by Glenda Norquay (Edinburgh University Press, 2011).
‘From Hijab to Sweatshops: Segregated Bodies and Contested Space in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane’, in Postcolonial Spaces: The Politics of Place in Contemporary Culture, edited byAndrew Teverson and Sara Upstone (London: Palgrave 2011).
Entry on Alice Thompson for Encyclopedia of the Gothic, edited by Andrew Smith, David Punter and William Hughes (Blackwell, 2010)
‘In and Outside Post-devolution Scotland: Scottish National Identity and Women Writers’, Revisioning Scotland: New Readings from the Cultural Canon, edited by Carla Sassi, Lyndsay Lunan and Kirsty Macdonald (Peter Lang, 2008)
Four entries for The Companion to British Short Story, edited by Andrew Maunder (Facts on File, 2007)
‘Eating Disorders: Cannibalism and the Issue of Happiness in Alasdair Gray’s Lanark’, in New Voices from Modern Scotland: Alasdair Gray and Janice Galloway, edited by Bernard Sellin (University of Nantes, 2007)
‘Re-writing Female Monstrosity: Schizoid Misogyny’ in Alison Fell’s The Mistress of Lilliput and Emma Tennant’s Two Women of London’, in Gender and Generation, edited by Rosalind Marsh and Adalgisa Giorgio (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007).
‘Crossing Dream Boundaries: Decoding Nonsense and Fantastic Ambiguities in Naomi Mitchison’s Beyond this Limit’, in Sub-versions: Cultural Status, Genre and Critique edited by Christopher Murray (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007).
Journalism and Creative Writing
Four entries, Gothic Imagination Blog (University of Stirling)
‘Red Stiletto’ (short story), in Cold Turkey (Inkermen Press, 2009)
‘Lost and Found’ (short story), in Loss (Inkermen Press, 2009)
‘Bad Sisters: Dangerous Women in Contemporary Scottish Literature’, The Drouth, 8 (Summer 2003), pp. 23-27, ISSN 1474 6190.
Reviews
Maria Beville, Gothic Postmodernism (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009), (review) Gothic Studies(commissioned, May 2010)
Michael Gardiner, Modern Scottish Culture (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2005), esharp, 8 (Autumn 2006)
Barbara Fuchs, Romance (London: Routledge, 2004), esharp, 5 (Autumn 2005)
David Ketterer, ed., Flashes of the fantastic: selected essays from The War of the Worlds Centennial, International Fantastic in the Arts Journal, 15:4 (Winter 2005)
Conference Organisation
Co-organiser of The Apocalypse and Its Discontents: A Westminster Colloquium, University of Westminster, 11-12 December 2010.
Organiser of 21st-Century Writing London: A Series of Talks with leading London writers, including Iain Sinclair, Toby Litt and Rachel Lichtenstein (University of Westminster: March-May 2010).
Co-organiser of Fashioning Postmodern/Postcolonial Bodies, Westminster University, 5-6 September 2008.
Co-organiser of Magic 2002: The Conference, the first annual GSAH conference at the University of Glasgow (June 2002).
Selected Conference Papers
‘Creative Interfaces: Academia, Institutions and Environments’, Great Writing Conference, Imperial College, 11-12 June 2011: (Panel organiser and presenter)
‘Mastering the Others:Muriel Spark’s Scottish Demons’, NEMLA 2011 Convention, Rutgers University, New Brunswick (NJ),7-10 April 2011.
‘Madness and the City’, Urban Gothic Conference, Liverpool John Moore University, May 2010.
‘Visualising Hyde: Pleasure, Cloning and Excess’, Scottish Gothic Conference, University of Stirling, 24 October 2009.
‘The ‘Other’ Story: The Spectral Self and the Monstrous Body in Meera Syal’s Anita and Me', International Gothic Association Conference, Lancaster University, 21-24 July 2009.
‘Beyond the Gaps: Postmodernist Representations of the Metropolis’, Land and Identity Symposium, University of Derby, 16 May 2009.
‘Re-writing Jekyll: Mediated Reality, Artificial Beauty and the Other Woman in Emma Tennant's The Two Women of London: The Strange Case of Ms Jekyll and Mrs Hyde’, St. Mary’s University, 24 January 2009.
‘Made in Bangladesh: The Fashion Subtext of Monica Ali's Brick Lane’, Fashioning Postmodern/Postcolonial Bodies, University of Westminster, September 2008.
‘‘Something beyond Matter’: Ghostliness and Magical Realism in A. L. Kennedy’s So I am Glad and Ali Smith’s Hotel World’, Millennial Fictions, Brunel university, London, July 2007
‘Re-Visiting Sade: Gender- and Ghost-Writing in Alice Thompson’s Justine’, Gothic N.E.W.S: International Gothic Association Conference, Aix en Provence, June 2007
‘From Waste Land to the Tarot: The Significance of Madness in Margaret Elphinstone’s A Sparrow’s Flight’, Folly: BCLA (British Association for Comparative Literature Conference), Goldsmith College, July 2007
‘Women and the sea’: Subliminal Fears and Unutterable Secrets in Iain Banks’s Post-Gothic Novel The Wasp Factory’, Iain Banks Conference, Westminster University, September 2006
‘From ‘Party Consciousness’ to ‘Jazz Age’: Dressing up the Dream in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby´, Fashioning Fiction, University of Stirling, May 2006
‘Out of this word’: Exploring the Void in Ali Smith’s Hotel World, Twenty-first century Novel Conference, Lancaster University, September 2005
Collaborative Projects
Apocalyptic Narratives: Following the 16th Westminster Colloquium (11-12 December 2010), this collection of essays explore contemporary issues of self-destruction, terrorism and redemption.
Postmodern/Postcolonial Bodies: conference held at Westminster University in September 2008. Selected papers will be published in a collection of essays edited with Alex Warwick and Catherine Spooner (Lancaster University).
Work in Progress
Dangerous Women: Body, Dress and Romance: book-length monograph looking at the representation of subversive female characters in twentieth-century fantastic and dystopian fiction. Whilst focussing on the body, the book will also explore the use of fashion imagery and establish links between text, costume history and gender theory. Edinburgh University Press has invited me to submit a proposal for this project.
Other Work
Monica is a member of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture. She is an Academic Member of the International Gothic Association (IGA) and is on the reader panel of Gothic Studies; she is also an associate member of the Centre for Research in Modern Literature and Culture at Roehampton University.
