The study of World Literatures in English—comprising not just the literatures of former British colonies, but the entire range of literatures written in English from the non-Anglophone world—is a burgeoning area of teaching and research in the English Department. Beyond the strictly literary, we work at the intersection of disciplines, and have particular strengths in the history of the colonial/post-colonial world. Research interests include, but are not restricted to, African literary history, embodied orientalism, colonial whiteness, hybrid approaches to Shakespeare, and the intersection between postcolonial and queer theories.
Members of the Group
Dr Christie Carson is Reader in Shakespeare and Performance in the Department of English at Royal Holloway University of London. She is the co-editor of The Cambridge King Lear CD-ROM: Text and Performance Archive (Cambridge, 2000) with Jacky Bratton, Shakespeare’s Globe: A Theatrical Experiment with Farah Karim-Cooper (Cambridge, 2008) and Shakespeare in Stages: New Theatre Histories with Christine Dymkowski (Cambridge, 2010). Over the past ten years she has developed a hybrid approach to criticism which combines the detail and specificity of an English close reading of performance with the desire to situate that close study politically, historically and socially, in line with the methods of theatre history research. The two most recent collections of essays she has co-edited (Shakespeare Beyond English with Susan Bennett (Cambridge, 2013), and Shakespeare and the Digital World with Peter Kirwan (Cambridge, 2014)), are designed to be the culmination of that work. She is currently working on an extended study of Henry V and Richard III in the UK, US and Canada and is consulting editor for a special edition of RiDE (Research in Drama Education) on International Digital Resources for the study of Shakespeare.
Dr Terri Ochiagha is Lecturer in World Literatures in English at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is the author of Achebe and Friends at Umuahia: The Making of a Literary Elite (2015), which won the African Studies Association UK’s Fage & Oliver Prize in 2016, and A Short History of Things Fall Apart (2018). She is now in the process of writing her third book, E.H. Duckworth’s Experiments: A Study on Colonial Ex-centricity in Nigeria, and has recently started tentative research on embodied orientalism, haute aesthetics, and the culture of taste in Marrakesh.
Dr Ochiagha has a particular interest in life-writing, first-generation Nigerian literature, colonial whiteness, the history and representations of elite British colonial education, and the psychocultural tensions inherent in the configuration and performance of colonial/postcolonial identities.
She held one of the prestigious British Academy Newton International Fellowships (2014-2015) and is happy to mentor British Academy-funded postdoctoral fellowships in her areas of interest.
Prospective PhD Students
Prospective PhD students and postdoctoral researchers are invited to make contact with the member of staff most closely aligned to their areas of interest for informal discussion of developing research proposals. The Department of English has a strong record of providing AHRC funding and other scholarships for suitably qualified students. Training and support is offered at our aesthetically acclaimed Egham campus. The proximity to London offers exceptional resources for research students: apart from Senate House Library, students are encouraged to visit the British Library. Recommended seminar series in London include the Imperial and World History Seminar Colonial/Postcolonial New Researchers’ Workshop (King’s College London), Postcolonial Studies Network (King’s College London), Centre for Cultural, Literary, and Postcolonial Studies Seminars (SOAS), and the Queen Mary Postcolonial Seminar.
