Research
The Department of English and American Literature at Reading is renowned for its excellence in teaching and research. In the most recent RAE (2008), 90% of the work submitted by the Department was judged to be of international standard.
We have seven main collaborative research areas: American Studies, Beckett Studies, Book History, Children's Literature, Early Modern Studies and Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Literature, although our individual research engages with all the major periods and genres of English and American literature.
The Department supports the work of a number of research centres:
- Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies (GCMS),
- Early Modern Research Centre (EMRC),
- Centre for Research into Childhood: Literature, Culture, Media (CIRCL),
- Centre for the History of Authorship, Writing and Publishing (CHAWP)
- Modern Studies Centre (MSC)
The Department of English and American Literature is also closely linked to the Beckett International Foundation, with its internationally renowned archive of the manuscripts of Samuel Beckett (based in the Special Collections of Reading University Library). There are Beckett specialists in the Schools of English and Modern Languages, Film, Television & Theatre and Philosophy. See the latest copy of Beckett_Matters
The Department is now adding a Modern and Contemporary Centre for Graduate Studies in Literature (MCC), spanning both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This centre will bring together two substantial research clusters, and will creatively inter-react with our existing research centres (CIRCL and BIF). It will utilise the library's extensive archival holdings in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature for both graduate teaching and to attract new research projects. It will also allow the Department to develop its research expertise in Transatlanticism and Minority and Diasporic literatures.
Members of the Department have recently received funding from the AHRC to pursue an exciting research project entitled The Impact of Distribution and Reading Patterns on the Novel in Britain, 1880-1940.
The Department of English also contributes significantly to the University research theme the Material Text.
Various research events, from seminars to major international conferences, are organised by the Department of American Literature. Details of past and forthcoming events can be viewed in our News section.