Dr Alexandra Peat

M.A., Ph.D.

 
researcher
 

Biography

I teach and research modern and contemporary literature, with a particular interest in travel, material culture, craft, and collaboration. I joined the School of English, Media and Creative Arts at the University of Galway in 2023. Before then, I studied and taught at the University of Toronto, Franklin University Switzerland, and Uppsala University in Sweden.  

Research Interests

I work primarily in the fields of twentieth-century and contemporary literature and culture, with special interest in transnational and transcultural aspects of modernism, material culture, and artistic practices of collaboration and craft.

My first monograph, Travel and Modernist Literature: Sacred and Ethical Journeys, was published by Routledge in 2011, and explores the complex motivations for and figurations of modern travel, particularly in the context of colonial legacies. My second monograph (co-authored with Professor Melba Cuddy-Keane and Dr Adam Hammond) is entitled Modernism: Keywords (Wiley Blackwell 2014). Shortlisted for the 2015 Modernist Studies Association annual book prize for edition, anthology, or collection, Modernism: Keywords traces the character and thought of the modern era through its most salient debates, spotlighting the words at the heart of modernism.

I am now working on two book-length projects that expand my interest in travelling cultures. The first considers the popular culture of empire exhibitions between the two world wars and its legacies. Discussing a range of writers, artists, and poets including, Vahni Capildeo, E. M. Forster, Claude McKay, Louis MacNiece, Andrea Levy, and Virginia Woolf, this project brings to light a wealth of previously little-studied cultural ephemera and elucidates exhibition culture's influence on the production of modern and contemporary literature. The second project turns to literary representations of migration through a focus on ephemera, such as postcards, diaries, craft objects, photographs and letters. I am investigating how ephemera (real and fictional) appear in modern and contemporary literature and influence aesthetic form in relation to three migratory moments: the interwar European refugee crisis (1918-1945), the post-war so-called Windrush generation of immigrants from the Caribbean to the United Kingdom (1945-1960) and the ongoing displacement of people from North Africa and the Middle East (2011 to present). 

My research has been published in journals such as Modern Fiction Studies (2020), Women: A Cultural Review (2023/21), The Open Library of the Humanities Journal (2020), Literature & History (2019), and Journeys: The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing (2015). With Dr Claire Battershill, I co-edited a special issue of Literature & History on the topic of 'Modernism and Collaboration' (2019). I am also co-editor (with Dr Alison Vogelaar and Dr Brack Hale) of an edited volume entitled Discourses of Environmental Collapse: Imagining the End (Routledge 2018). I recently co-edited (with my colleague at Galway, Dr Emily Ridge ) a double special issue of Women: A Cultural Review on 'Discourses of Emotional Labour' (2023).

Peer Reviewed Journals

  Year Publication
(2024) 'Care in the Time of COVID-19: Accounting for Academic Care Labor'
Dasgupta, Poulomi; Peat, Alexandra; Vogelaar, Alison E. (2024) 'Care in the Time of COVID-19: Accounting for Academic Care Labor'. Journal Of Economic Issues, 58 (1):170-195 [DOI] [Details]
(2023) 'Introduction: Imagining and Reimagining Emotional Labour'
Peat, Alexandra; Ridge, Emily (2023) 'Introduction: Imagining and Reimagining Emotional Labour'. Women: A Cultural Review, 34 (4) [DOI] [Details]
(2023) 'Its a Good Thing to Take an Interest: Care and University Women in Dorothy L. Sayers's Gaudy Night and Barbara Pym's s No Fond Return of Love'
Peat, Alexandra (2023) 'Its a Good Thing to Take an Interest: Care and University Women in Dorothy L. Sayers's Gaudy Night and Barbara Pym's s No Fond Return of Love'. Women: A Cultural Review, 34 (4) [DOI] [Details]
(2021) '`A Word to Start an Argument with': Virginia Woolf's Craftsmanship'
Peat, Alexandra (2021) '`A Word to Start an Argument with': Virginia Woolf's Craftsmanship'. Women: A Cultural Review, 32 (1):32-51 [DOI] [Details]
(2020) 'Scottish Internationalisms at the 1938 Empire Exhibition: Between Britain, Europe, and Empire'
Peat, Alexandra (2020) 'Scottish Internationalisms at the 1938 Empire Exhibition: Between Britain, Europe, and Empire'. Open Library of Humanities Journal, 6 (1) [DOI] [Details]
(2020) 'Traveling Homes in Interwar Modernism: New Forms of Living in Cold Comfort Farm'
Peat, Alexandra (2020) 'Traveling Homes in Interwar Modernism: New Forms of Living in Cold Comfort Farm'. Mfs-Modern Fiction Studies, 66 (3):450-473 [DOI] [Details]
(2019) 'Modernism and Collaboration'
Battershill, Claire; Peat, Alexandra (2019) 'Modernism and Collaboration'. Literature & History, 8 (1) [DOI] [Details]
(2016) 'Mending Walls and Making Neighbors'
Alexandra Peat and Alexandra Peat and Sarah Copland (2016) 'Mending Walls and Making Neighbors'. Intervalla: Platform for Intellectual Exchange, [Details]
(2015) 'Traveling to Modernism's Other Worlds: Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four'
Peat, Alexandra (2015) 'Traveling to Modernism's Other Worlds: Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four'. Journeys, 16 (2) [DOI] [Details]
(2003) 'Modern Pilgrimage and the Authority of Space in E. M. Forster¿s A Room with A View and Virginia Woolf¿s The Voyage Out'
Peat, Alexandra (2003) 'Modern Pilgrimage and the Authority of Space in E. M. Forster¿s A Room with A View and Virginia Woolf¿s The Voyage Out'. Mosaic-A Journal For The Interdisciplinary Study Of Literature, 36 (2) [Details]

Books

  Year Publication
(2014) Modernism: Keywords.
Cuddy-Keane, Melba; Hammond, Adam; Peat, Alexandra (2014) Modernism: Keywords. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. [DOI] [Details]
(2011) Travel and Modernist Literature: Sacred and Ethical Journeys.
Peat, Alexandra (2011) Travel and Modernist Literature: Sacred and Ethical Journeys. London and New York: Routledge. [DOI] [Details]

Book Chapters

  Year Publication
(2018) 'Salvaging the Fragments: Metaphors for collapse in Virginia Woolf and Station Eleven'
Peat, Alexandra (2018) 'Salvaging the Fragments: Metaphors for collapse in Virginia Woolf and Station Eleven' In: Discourses of Environmental Collapse: Imagining the End. London: Routledge. [DOI] [Details]
(2018) 'Introducing the End'
Vogelaar, Alison; Peat, Alexandra; Hale, Brack (2018) 'Introducing the End' In: Discourses of Environmental Collapse: Imagining the End. London: Routledge. [Details]
(2018) 'Virginia Woolf's Art and Craftsmanship'
Peat, Alexandra (2018) 'Virginia Woolf's Art and Craftsmanship' In: Virginia Woolf and the World of Books. :62-69 Liverpool: Clemson UP and Liverpool UP. [Details]

Edited Books

  Year Publication
(2018) The Discourses of Environmental Collapse: Imagining the End.
Vogelaar, Alison; Hale, Brack; Peat, Alexandra (Ed.). (2018) The Discourses of Environmental Collapse: Imagining the End The Discourses of Environmental Collapse: Imagining the End. London: Routledge. [DOI] [Details]

Magazine Article

  Year Publication
(2023) Remembrance Day: five beautiful novels about war commemoration.
Einhaus, Ann-Marie; Peat, Alexandra (2023) Remembrance Day: five beautiful novels about war commemoration. The Conversation Magazine Article [Details]

Modules Taught

  Term/Year Module Title Module Code Subject / Desc
2024 Special Topic: Literature of Migration and Displacement ENG243.II
2024 Special Theme: Printing Dissent ENG233.II
2024 Literature in the Digital Age EN3138