Telephone: 020 7911 5000 ext 2359
Email: cunninda@wmin.ac.uk
Postal: University of Westminster, Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies,
32-38 Wells Street,
London, W1T 3UW
Section: English Literature

David Cunningham was educated at King's College, Cambridge (BA (hons) First Class in English 1991), the University of Sussex (MA in Critical Theory 1993), and the University of Westminster (PhD in English 2002). He is course leader for MA Cultural and Critical Studies, as well as Programme Co-ordinator for the Masters Suite in Cultural, Critical and Literary Studies at Westminster. He is also module leader for the MA modules: Re-Reading Modernism; Urban Cultures; and Capitalism and Culture; and the following BA English Literature modules: Marxist Criticism; Twentieth-Century Thought; Postmodernist Fiction; and Poetry and Poetics.

David also has a special interest in contemporary architecture and architectural theory, and was co-organiser of the international conference Fantasy Space: Surrealism and Architecture at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester in 2003. His major research interests are in the avant-garde, modernism, critical theory, aesthetics, and urban theory. He is currently working on a monograph on late modernism and abstraction, as well as on a co-authored text entitled Theory of the Metropolis. He would welcome applications from students wishing to pursue graduate research on the avant-garde, modernism, aesthetic and critical theory, or the relationship between urban and cultural form.

David is Deputy Director of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, the co-ordinator of the Westminster English Colloquia series, and a member of the editorial collective of the journal Radical Philosophy.

RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS:

Adorno and Literature, with Nigel Mapp, eds (Continuum, 2006)

Photography and Literature in the Twentieth Century, with Andrew Fisher & Sas Mays, eds (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2005)

Returns of the Avant-Garde, with Jon Goodbun & Karin Jaschke, eds, special issue of Journal of Architecture 6, 2 (Summer 2001)

‘Capitalism and Theory of the Novel’, in Timothy Bewes & Timothy Hall (eds), The Fundamental Dissonance of Existence: New Essays on the Social, Political and Aesthetic Theory of Georg Lukács

(Continuum, forthcoming 2010)

‘Kraftwerk and the Image of Modernity’, in Sean Albiez & David Pattie (eds), Kraftwerk: Music Non-Stop (Continuum, forthcoming 2010)

‘The Philosophical Novel’, in Peter Logan (ed.), The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of the Novel (Blackwell, forthcoming 2009)

‘“Very abstract and terribly concrete”: Capitalism and Theory of the Novel’, Novel: A Forum on Fiction (forthcoming 2009)

‘“We have our being in justice”: Formalism, Abstraction and Beckett’s “Ethics”’, in Russell Smith (ed.), Beckett and Ethics (Continuum, 2009)

‘El cuento de la modernidad: Poe, Benjamin y el relato de la metrópoli’, trans. David Cruz Acevedo, in Felix Duque (ed.), Poe: La Mala Conciencia de la Modernidad (Círculo de Bellas Artes, 2009)

‘Spacing Abstraction: Capital, Law and the Metropolis’, GriffithLaw Review 17, 2 (2008)

‘The Death of a Project’, with Stewart Martin, ‘Dissecting Documenta’ special review section, Journal of Visual Culture 7 (2008)

‘Architecture as Critical Knowledge’, in Mark Dorrian, Murray Fraser, Jonathan Hill and Jane Rendell (eds), Critical Architecture (Routledge, 2007)

‘Architecture in the Age of Global Modernity: Tafuri, Jameson and Enclave Theory’, in Matthew Beaumont, Andrew Hemingway, Esther Leslie and John Roberts (eds), As Radical as Reality Itself: Marxism and the Visual Arts (Peter Lang, 2007)

‘Slumming It: Mike Davis’s Grand Narrative of Urban Revolution’, Radical Philosophy 142 (March/April 2007)

Included among the library of theoretical documents collected by the South African Shackdwellers movement Abahlali base’Mjondolo at: http://www.abahlali.org/node/240

Translated into Persian, Kargozaaran (Iran), February 2008

‘Living in the Slashing Grounds: Jack the Ripper, Monopoly Rent and the New Heritage’, in Alex Warwick and Martin Willis (eds), Jack the Ripper: Media, Culture, History (Manchester University Press, 2007)

‘Re-Placing the Novel: Sinclair, Ballard and the Spaces of Literature’, in Jenny Bavidge and Robert Bond (eds), City Visions: The Work of Iain Sinclair (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007)

‘Answering the Question: What is to be Done? (Education)’, contribution to Documenta_12 Magazines Project, published in Radical Philosophy 141 (January/February 2007)

On-line: http://magazines.documenta.de/frontend/article.php?IdLanguage=1&NrArticle=1491

‘A Seam With the Economic: Art, Architecture, Metropolis’, in Marta Kuzma and Peter Osborne (eds), ISMs 1: Constructing the Political in Contemporary Art (Office for Contemporary Art Norway, 2006)

‘Marx, Architecture and Modernity’, with Jon Goodbun, Journal of Architecture 11, 3 (2006)

'Making an Example of Duchamp', in Dafydd Jones (ed.), Dada Culture (Rodopi, 2006)

‘After Adorno: The Narrator of the Contemporary European Novel’, in Cunningham and Mapp (eds), Adorno and Literature (Continuum, 2006)

'The Futures of Surrealism: Hegelianism, Romanticism and the Avant-Garde', SubStance 107 (34, 2) (2005)

'The Concept of Metropolis: Philosophy and Urban Form', Radical Philosophy 133 (September/October 2005) http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/1734/01/Cunningham_2005_pub_version_final.pdf

'Asceticism Against Colour, or Modernism, Abstraction and the Lateness of Beckett', New Formations 55 (Spring 2005)

‘Photography and the Literary Conditions of Surrealism’, in Cunningham, Fisher and Mays (eds), Photography and Literature in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2005)

'Jacques Derrida 1930-2004', Obituary Symposium w/ Judith Butler, Simon Critchley, David Macey, Gayatri Spivak, David Wood, Radical Philosophy 129 (January/February 2005)

'On Surrealism and Architecture', with Jon Goodbun, in Samantha Hardingham (ed.), The 1970s Is Here and Now (Wiley/Architectural Design, 2005)

'How the Sublime Became Now: Time, Modernity and Aesthetics in Lyotard's Rewriting of Kant', Symposium 8, 3 (Fall 2004)

 http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/3683/01/Cunningham_2004_final.pdf

'Notes on Nuance: Rethinking a Philosophy of Modern Music', Radical Philosophy 125 (May/June 2004)

'The Phenomenology of Non-Dwelling: Massimo Cacciari, Modernism and the Philosophy of the Metropolis', Crossings 7 (Fall 2004)

'Ex Minimis: Greenberg, Modernism and Beckett's Three Dialogues', Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui 13 (2003)  

'A Time for Dissonance and Noise: On Adorno, Music and the Concept of Modernism', Angelaki 8, 1 (April 2003)

'A Question of Tomorrow: Blanchot, Surrealism and the Time of the Fragment', Papers of Surrealism 1 (Winter 2003)

On-line: www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/publications/papers/journal1/index.htm

'Trying (Not) to Understand: Adorno and the Work of Beckett', in Richard Lane (ed.), Beckett and Philosophy (Palgrave, 2002)

‘Architecture, Utopia and the Futures of the Avant-Garde’, Journal of Architecture, 6, 2 (Summer 2001)

OTHER WORK

‘J.G. Ballard 1930-2009’, Obituary, Radical Philosophy 156 (July/August 2009)

‘Propaganda Architecture’, Interview with Rem Koolhaas and Reinier de Graaf, and introduction, Radical Philosophy 154 (March/April 2009)

'Architecture and the Rain' Interview with David Greene of Archigram (with Jon Goodbun), Journal of Architecture, 6, 2 (Summer 2001) 

Entries for Iain Sinclair (general entry & major poems and novels), Futurism, Dada and Surrealism in 'The Literary Encyclopaedia' at http://www.litencyc.com/.

Text for WaG Architecture installation, 'The Refractory', at Any Colour You Like... exhibition, The Building Centre, London, January-March 2003: http://www.wag-architecture.co.uk/ 

Regular book reviewer for Radical Philosophy, New Formations, and Building Design

INVITED PAPERS (selected)

Various invited papers, including at:

Edgar Allen Poe: La Mala Conciencia de la Modernidad, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid (2008)

Theories of the Novel Now, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island (2007)

Media Architecture, Central School of Saint Martins (2007)

Whitechapel Art Gallery Salon: ‘The Avant-Garde’ (2007)

Examining Jane Jacobs, Royal Academy Urban Forum (2006)

National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC (2006)

School of Science, Medicine and Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore (2006)

ISMs1, Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Oslo (2006)

Faculty of English, University of Tampere, Finland (2006)

Centre for Art, Design, Research and Education, University of Wolverhampton (2006)

School of Architecture, University of Edinburgh (2005)

School of Music, University of East Anglia (2005)

Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture Seminar, Senate House, London (2004)

NoiseTheoryNoise, Centre for Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University (2004)