Kaye Mitchell
Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature and Co-Director of the Centre
Kaye Mitchell is a literary and cultural critic with particular interests in modern and contemporary literature, literary theory, gender and sexuality studies, and experimental writing by women. She has published books on literary intention (Intention and Text, Continuum, 2008) and contemporary literature (A.L. Kennedy, Palgrave, 2007; Sarah Waters, ed. collection with Bloomsbury, 2013). Her work in progress includes a monograph on the politics and poetics of shame in contemporary literature, and a special issue on women's experimental writing for the OUP journal, Contemporary Women's Writing.
Kaye Mitchell's research is mainly in contemporary literature and culture, with a particular focus on gender and sexuality, critical theory and narratology.
Following a BA English Literature (QMUL) and MA Philosophy (Birkbeck), she completed a PhD at Birkbeck which examined diverse theories of intention, literary meaning and authorship. A book based on her thesis was published on Continuum in 2008. She then taught for several years at the University of Westminster, before joining The University of Manchester in 2007.
Kaye's current major project is a monograph which investigates the triangulation of shame, gender and writing in literature and theory since the 1990s, and considers the politics, aesthetics and erotics of negative affects such as shame and disgust in a range of texts and authors including re-published 1950s lesbian pulp titles, literary fiction, memoir and autofiction, by authors such as March Hastings, A.M. Homes, Mary Gaitskill, Chris Kraus, Martin Amis, Rupert Thomson and Karl Ove Knausgaard. She received a Humboldt Experienced Researcher Fellowship to help her work on the project, and from January 2014 - May 2015 was based at Humboldt University, Berlin.
