Faculty of Arts & Society

School of Cultural Studies

Dr Susan Watkins

Dr Susan Watkins
BA (Hons), PhD
 
School Responsibilities
Reader in Twentieth Century Women's Fiction,

Postgraduate Coordinator,
Research Awards Coordinator

Teaching Interests

Susan’s main teaching interests are in twentieth-century women’s fiction and feminist theory; she also teaches nineteenth-century fiction. On the BA (Hons) English Literature programme she teaches Critical Reading and Bildungsroman: Narrative and Identity (Level 1) and Twentieth-Century Women Novelists: Genre and Gender (Level 3 option). On the MA English: Twentieth-Century Literature, she contributes to the Researching Cultures and Scholarly Practice modules and teaches a module based on her own recent research into the writer Doris Lessing entitled Doris Lessing: Narrating Nation and Identity. On the BA (Hons) English and History she teaches Reading Historical Fictions (Level 3).  She also organises the Postgraduate Research Seminar for Postgraduate Research students.
 
Susan is the co-editor of Studying Literature: A Practical Introduction, which is a guide to the pleasures and pitfalls of studying English at degree level. It contains, amongst other things, chapters on essay writing, giving oral presentations and using literary theory, as well as her own chapter on reading prose fiction.

Susan is also Associate Editor for the new Oxford journal Contemporary Women's Writing.

Research Interests

Susan’s main research interests are in the field of twentieth-century women’s fiction and feminist theory. She is currently working on a new monograph on Doris Lessing for Manchester University Press’s Contemporary World Writers series, looking particularly at the treatment of race, nation, gender and genre in Lessing’s writing. This research relates to Susan’s recent conference activities; for example, in April 2004 she gave a paper at the First International Doris Lessing Conference in New Orleans on ‘Writing in a Minor Key: Doris Lessing’s Late Twentieth-Century Fiction’ and in September 2005 she spoke about Lessing’s recent fiction at a conference on the Twenty-First Century Novel at the University of Lancaster. She was also the Academic Coordinator of the Second International Doris Lessing conference, hosted by the School of Cultural Studies in July 2007, where she gave a paper on ‘The ‘Jane Somers’ Hoax:  Doris Lessing, Gender, Aging and the Cult of the (Young) Celebrity Woman Writer’.  Susan is also a founder member of the Contemporary Women’s Writing Network.
 
A second area of research considers fiction and notoriety. A collection of essays entitled Scandalous Fictions: The Twentieth-Century Novel in the Public Sphere, co-edited with Dr Jago Morrison (University of Chichester), was published by Palgrave Macmillan in November 2006. The book discusses texts from throughout the English-speaking world that were notorious or controversial at the time of publication and contains her own chapter on Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness.
 
Susan welcomes research students interested in all areas of women’s prose fiction and feminist theory.
 
Publications

Watkins, S. (2009) ‘The “Jane Somers” Hoax: Aging, Gender and the Literary Marketplace’, in Doris Lessing: Border Crossings, ed. Alice Ridout and Susan Watkins. Continuum.

Watkins, S. and Chambers, C. (eds) (2008) ‘A Symposium on Doris Lessing’. Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 43:2, pp. 99 – 166.

Watkins, S. (2007) ‘Remembering Home: Nation and Identity in the Recent Writing of Doris Lessing’, in Feminist Review, Volume 85, special issue on political histories, (joint editors Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewelyn), 97-115.
 
Watkins, S. (2006) ‘ “Grande Dame or New Woman?”: Doris Lessing and the Palimpsest”, LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory, 17.3-4, special double issue on revision and revelation in contemporary British fiction, 243-262..

Watkins, S. and J. Morrison (November 2006) (eds.) Scandalous Fictions: The Twentieth-Century Novel in the Public Sphere. Palgrave Macmillan.

Watkins, S. (2006) ‘ “The Aristocracy of Intellect”: Inversion and Inheritance in Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness’. In J. Morrison and S. Watkins (eds.) Scandalous Fictions: The Twentieth-Century Novel in the Public Sphere. Palgrave Macmillan.

Watkins, S. (Winter 2006) ‘Writing in a Minor Key: Doris Lessing’s Late Twentieth-Century Fiction’, Doris Lessing Studies 25, 2, pp. 6-10.

Watkins, S. (2006) ‘Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin’. In M. Moseley (ed.) Dictionary of Literary Biography 326: Booker Prize Novels 1969-2005. Detroit, Washington, D.C., and London: Thomson Gale, pp. 313-24.

Watkins, S. and M. Eagleton (July 2006) special issue of The Journal of Gender Studies on ‘The Future of Fiction: The Future of Feminism’ (Volume 15: 2).

Watkins, S. (2004) ‘“Women and wives mustn’t go near it”: Academia, Language and Gender in the Novels of Alison Lurie’. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 48, pp. 129-146.

Watkins, S. (2003) ‘Poststructuralist Feminism’. In J. Hunter (ed.) Contemporary Literary Criticism vol 180 Farmington Hills, Michigan: Thomson Gale (rpt of chapter 5 of my book Twentieth-Century Women Novelists: Feminist Theory into Practice)
 
Watkins, S. (2003) ‘Going “Home”: Exile and Nostalgia in the Writing of Doris Lessing’. In J. Dowson (ed.) Women’s Writing 1945-60: After the Deluge. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 191-204.

Watkins, S. (2001) Twentieth-Century Women Novelists: Feminist Theory into Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
 
Watkins, S. (1998) ‘Sex Change and Media Change: Woolf’s Orlando and Potter’s Film Version’. Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 31, pp. 41-59.
 
Watkins, S. (1997) ‘Versions of the Feminine Subject in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette’. In K. Simms (ed.) Ethics and The Subject. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 217-225.
 
Atkin, G., Walsh, C. and Watkins, S. (eds) (1995) Studying Literature: A Practical Introduction. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
 
Watkins, S. (1995) ‘Reading Fiction’. In G. Atkin, C. Walsh and S. Watkins (eds) Studying Literature: A Practical Introduction. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp. 150-175.
 
Watkins, S. (1991) ‘Epiphany and Subjectivity in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette’. In P. Shaw and P. Stockwell (eds) Subjectivity and Literature from the Romantics to the Present Day: Creating The Self. London: Pinter, pp. 49-57.
 
Consultation Hours
Monday 12:00 – 13:00

Tuesday 10:00 – 11:00

Contact Details
Room A214
School of Cultural Studies
Humanities Building
Broadcasting Place
Leeds Metropolitan University
Civic Quarter
Leeds LS2 9EN
Tel: 0113 812 3375
Fax: 0113 812 3112
Email: s.watkins@leedsmet.ac.uk

Q320 BA (Hons) English Literature
This course focuses in particular on some of the exciting directions which the study of literature has taken over the past thirty years.

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