Dr Chris Mourant BA, MA, PhD

Photograph of Dr Chris Mourant

Department of English Literature
Lecturer in Early Twentieth-Century English Literature

Contact details

Telephone
+44 (0)121 415 8682
Email
c.mourant@bham.ac.uk
Address
Room G41, Arts Building
黑料吃瓜网
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

I research twentieth-century literature and culture, with particular focus on modernism and networks of transnational connection, communication, and exchange.

Qualifications

  • Fellow, Higher Education Academy (2019)
  • PhD, King’s College London (2015)
  • BA and MA, University of Warwick (2009 and 2010)

Biography

I studied English Literature at the University of Warwick before completing my PhD at King鈥檚 College London (with a year abroad studying at the University of Stuttgart and Universit茅 Sorbonne Nouvelle). After working as a Lecturer in English at Nottingham Trent University, I joined the 黑料吃瓜网 in 2016.聽

Teaching

I enjoy introducing students to works of prose fiction, especially modernist literature.

In years gone by, I have designed and delivered the following specialist option modules:

  • Modernism in the Magazines
  • The Modern Short Story
  • Single Author: Virginia Woolf.

Postgraduate supervision

I welcome enquires from prospective MRes and PhD students with research proposals relating to my areas of specialism.

Find out more - our PhD English Literature  page has information about doctoral research at the 黑料吃瓜网.

Research

I research twentieth-century literature and culture, with particular focus on modernism and networks of transnational connection, communication, and exchange.

Broadly, my work sits at the intersection between literary/media histories. I am especially interested in how writers responded to and shaped cultures of periodical publishing, and my most recent research pays close attention to what I term 'literatures of telecommunication'. This has resulted in published outputs on telephony and letter writing, and articles in preparation on telegraphy and wireless broadcasting.

I have published extensively on the life and work of New Zealand-born writer (1888-1923), the subject of my first monograph.聽Katherine Mansfield and Periodical Culture (2019) examines the various ways in which Mansfield used her contributions to literary journals and modernist 'little magazines' to forge transnational identities and writing styles, as well as pose challenging questions about the nationalist and imperialist foundations of modernity. Examining her ambivalent, precarious position as a colonial woman working both within and against the London literary establishment, the book provides a new perspective on Mansfield as a 'colonial-metropolitan modernist' and proto-postcolonial writer. It also puts her work in dialogue with that of other contributors to these periodicals, such as Beatrice Hastings, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, and reveals the many different literary forms and modes of writing that Mansfield experimented with across her career.

The novels of (1879-1970) are also a continuing research priority for me. For Cambridge University Press, I am producing a new edition of Forster鈥檚 final novel, A Passage to India (1924).

Other activities

I am president of the international .

Previously, I have served as co-director of the Centre for Modernist Cultures at the 黑料吃瓜网 (2017–23), co-editor of the journal  (2020–23), contributor of the section ‘Fiction 1900–30’ to (2021–23), and executive committee member of the (2013–15, 2017–19).

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Mourant, C & D'hoker, E (eds) 2021, . Edinburgh University Press. <>

Article

Mourant, C 2023, '', Journal of European Periodical Studies, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 40-59.

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Mourant, C 2020, . in T Martin (ed.), The Bloomsbury Handbook to Katherine Mansfield. Bloomsbury, London, pp. 199-213.

Chapter

Mourant, C 2024, . in G Kimber & A Gasston (eds), Katherine Mansfield's Women. Katherine Mansfield Studies, vol. 17, Edinburgh University Press.

Mourant, C 2024, . in G Kimber & A Gasston (eds), Katherine Mansfield and London. Katherine Mansfield Studies, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 39-60.

Mourant, C 2022, . in C Davison & G Kimber (eds), The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 2: Letters to Correspondents K 鈥� Z. The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, vol. 2, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 395-400.

Mourant, C 2022, . in C Davison & G Kimber (eds), The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 2: Letters to Correspondents K 鈥� Z. The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, vol. 2, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 437-444.

Mourant, C 2022, . in C Davison & G Kimber (eds), The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 2: Letters to Correspondents K 鈥� Z. The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, vol. 2, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 445鈥�465.

Mourant, C 2022, . in C Davison & G Kimber (eds), The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 2: Letters to Correspondents K 鈥� Z. The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, vol. 2, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 544-560.

Mourant, C 2022, . in C Davison & G Kimber (eds), The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Letters to Correspondents K 鈥� Z. vol. 2, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 376鈥�379.

D'hoker, E & Mourant, C 2021, . in E D'hoker & C Mourant (eds), The Modern Short Story and Magazine Culture, 1880鈥�1950. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 1-24.

Mourant, C 2020, . in A Gasston, G Kimber & J Wilson (eds), Katherine Mansfield: New Directions. 1 edn, Historicising Modernism, Bloomsbury, London, pp. 92-109. <>

Mourant, C 2020, . in C Davison & G Kimber (eds), The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Letters to Correspondents A 鈥� J. vol. 1, Edinburgh University Press, pp. 594-7.

Review article

Mourant, C 2023, '', The Year's Work in English Studies, vol. 102, no. 1, pp. 961-1070.

Ross, S, Mourant, C, Fischer, TM, Phillips, J, Parsons, K, Stringfellow, S, Rodr脥guez Mart脥n, GA, Saunders, G, Richards, J, Quin, J & Roach, R (ed.) 2022, '', The Year's Work in English Studies, vol. 101, no. 1, pp. 971-1083.