Faculty of Arts & Society
School of Cultural Studies
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Dr Ruth Robbins
Dr Ruth Robbins
BA (Hons), MA, PhD
School Responsibilities
Associate Dean and Head of School
As Head of School, Ruth has overall responsibility for the School's academic and administrative staff and the quality and design of the degree courses offered by the School. She is responsible to the Dean of the Faculty for the sound management of the School's resources and the implementation of University policies. In the School, Ruth works closely with the Course Leaders and the School Management Team. She also works with colleagues across the University and in the wider academic community.
Teaching Interests
Ruth teaches modules with a largely nineteenth-century focus. They include Reading Short Narratives (Level 1) in the English Literature and English and History programmes, the Sensation Novel (Level 2) in the BA (Hons) English Literature and the BA (Hons) English and History programmes.
Ruth is a member of the Higher Education Academy and has presented papers at English Subject Centre events on the teaching of poetry to undergraduate students. She has also helped to develop and deliver the School of Cultural Studies Personal Development Planning curriculum, which is aimed at helping students to plan for their futures beyond university. Ruth is also editor of CCUE News, the newsletter of the Council for College and University English.
Prior to her appointment as Associate Dean/Head of School, Ruth was the Undergraduate Co-ordinator and Principal Lecturer within the School of Cultural Studies.
Research Interests
Ruth’s research interests centre on the late-Victorian period in English literature, especially the literature of Decadence, and including the writings of Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons and Vernon Lee – her book Pater to Forster, 1873-1924 (2003) deals with literature written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century period. She also has research interests in literary theory, particularly post-structuralist theories and a wide range of feminist positions, and her first book, Literary Feminisms, was published on feminist theories in 2000. Her essay on ‘The Genders of Socialism: Eleanor Marx and Oscar Wilde’ was praised in reviews, and her essay on ‘Flirting’ in Glossalalia was singled out for mention in the Times Literary Supplement. Ruth also has interests in autobiographical writing.
Her monograph Subjectivity was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2005. She is currently working on an anthology of nineteenth-century writing about women and the medical profession entitled Medical Advice for Women, 1830-1914 for Routledge, and on a literary life of Oscar Wilde.
Ruth has experience of research supervision and is keen to work with students on any of the areas of her research interests, i.e. nineteenth-century literature; feminism and poststructuralism; autobiography; and women and the medical profession in the nineteenth-century.
Recent Publications
Robbins, R (2009) 'Medical Advice for Women, 1837-1915, a five volume reprint set in the History of Feminism Series', London: Routledge.
Robbins, R. (2005) Subjectivity, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Robbins, R. (2004) ‘Hidden Lives and Ladies’ Maids: Margaret Forster’s Elizabeth Barrett Browning’. Women: A Cultural Review 15:2, pp. 217-29.
Robbins, R. (2003) ‘How do I Look? Villette and Looking Different(ly)’. Brontë Studies 28, iii, pp. 215-24.
Robbins, R. (2003) Pater to Forster, 1873-1924. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Robbins, R. (2003) ‘Flirting’. In J. Wolfreys (ed.) Glossalalia: An Alphabet of Critical Keywords. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 91-104.
Robbins, R., Wolfreys J. and Womack K. (2001) Key Concepts in Literary Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Robbins R. (2001) ‘Will the Real Feminist Theory Please Stand Up? Notes towards Readings of Mrs Dalloway and Middlemarch’. In J. Wolfreys (ed.) Introducing Literary Theories. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 47-65.
Robbins, R. (2001) Villette – York Notes Advanced. London: Pearson Education.
Robbins, R. (2000) Literary Feminisms. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Robbins, R. (2000) ‘The Genders of Socialism: Eleanor Marx and Oscar Wilde’. In J. Stokes (ed.) Eleanor Marx: Life, Work, Contacts. London: Ashgate, pp. 99-112.
Robbins, R. and Wolfreys J. (eds) (2000) Victorian Gothic: Literary and Cultural Manifestations in the Nineteenth Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Robbins, R. (1999; second edition 2005)The Importance of Being Earnest – York Notes Advanced. London: Pearson Education.
Robbins R. with Wolfreys, Julian and Brannigan, John (eds) (1999) The French Connections of Jacques Derrida, New York: SUNY. Contains co-authored essay (with Julian Wolfreys), ‘In the wake of …: Baudelaire, Valéry, Derrida’, pp. 23-52.
Robbins, R. (1997) ‘Oscar Wilde: Before the Law’, New Formations, 32, Autumn Winter, pp. 99-108.
Robbins, R. with Wolfreys, J. and Brannigan, J. (eds) (1996), Applying: To Derrida. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Contains essay ‘“But one thing knows the flower …”: Whistler, Swinburne, Derrida’, pp. 41-54.
Robbins, R and Wolfreys J. (eds) (1995) Victorian Identities: Social and Cultural Formations in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Contains essay ‘“And Judas always writes the biography”: The Many Lives of Oscar Wilde.’
Robbins, R. (1995) ‘“A very curious construction”: Masculinity and the poetry o f A. E. Housman and Oscar Wilde’, in Ledger, Sally and McCracken, Scott (eds), Cultural Politics at the Fin de Siècle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 137-159.
Robbins, R. (1992) ‘Vernon Lee: Decadent Woman?’ in Stokes, John (ed.), Fin de Siècle: Fin du Globe, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Consultation Hours
Tuesday 14:00 – 15:30
For other appointments and details of Ruth's availability please contact Kenyetta Cohen on 0113 81 25976 or k.o.cohen@leedsmet.ac.uk
Contact Details
Room A216
School of Cultural Studies
Humanities Building
Broadcasting Place
Leeds Metropolitan University
Civic Quarter
Leeds LS2 9EN
Tel: 0113 812 3373
Fax: 0113 812 3112
Email: r.robbins@leedsmet.ac.uk
BA (Hons) English and History
This course focuses in particular on some of the exciting directions which the study of literature has taken over the past thirty years.
Academic Staff
Profiles and research interests of our staff.