Professor Jennifer Cooke

Academic Career

• Professor of Contemporary Literature and Theory, 含羞草视频, 2024
• Reader in Contemporary Literature and Theory, 含羞草视频, 2021.
• Head of English, 含羞草视频, Aug 2020 – July 2024.
• Senior Lecturer in English, 含羞草视频, 2014.
• Lecturer in English, 含羞草视频, 2007.

Fellowships and Visiting Scholar Positions

• Leverhulme Research Fellowship, 1^st September 2024 – 30^th June 2025.
• 含羞草视频 Fellowship, 1^st August 2019 – 31^st July 2020.
• Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Life-writing, Wolfson College, Oxford University, 2015-2016.

Prizes

• British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies’ Best Monograph Prize for Contemporary Feminist Life-Writing: The New Audacity (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
• British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies’ Best Edited Collection Prize for The New Feminist Literary Studies (CUP, 2020).
• Choice Outstanding Academic Title award for The New Feminist Literary Studies (CUP, 2020).

Editorial and Research Review Roles

• Co-editor, Elements in Feminism and Contemporary Critical Theory series for Cambridge University Press.
• Editorial Board, Prose Journal.
• External Review Board, European Journal of Life-Writing.
• Editorial Board for the Glyphi Contemporary Writers: Critical Essays Series.
• Associate Editor for the journal Contemporary Women’s Writing, 2018-2021. 
• Member of the AHRC Peer Review College, 2017 – present. 

Association Membership and Roles

• Modern Languages Association
• British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies
• Feminist and Women’s Studies Association
• Fellow of the HEA
• Treasurer on the BACLS Executive Committee, 2016 – 2019.

Jennifer’s research focuses on contemporary literature and theories of feminism, sexuality and gender, queer and trans theory, and theories of intimacy, affect, and the emotions. She analyses the representation and politics of social and relational organisation and is interested in how we deliver and distribute care for others.

Her current monograph project is titled Help: Gender, Care and Outsourcing in Contemporary Literature and examines the figures of the surrogate, the nanny, the cleaner, the nurse, and the carer. Jennifer currently holds a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for this project.

Jennifer is also a poet and regularly gives readings across the UK and beyond.

Jennifer’s teaching areas of expertise are literary and critical theory, especially feminism, queer and gender theory, affect theory, and theories of intimacy and kinship. She teaches literature from the twentieth to twenty-first century and contributes to the MA in Contemporary Literature and Culture and the MA in Creative Writing and the Writing Industries. 

Current

• Abigail Mills, ‘Weird Waterscapes and Aquaphobia’.
• Megan Constable, ‘Writing as Other: Investigating the Right to Write in Fictional Representation of Disability with a Creative Response’.
• Kate Mulhern, ‘Feminism is Praxis: Reading and Theorising Acts of Making and Unmaking in Twenty-First Century Feminist Fiction’.

Recent

• Demi Wilton (2024), ‘Environmental Displacement and World Literature’.
• Charlotte Hazell (2022), ‘Swallowing Feelings: Examining Disclosure in Contemporary Food-centric Fiction’.
• Hazel McMichael (2022), ‘The Art of Being Spoken Through: Ventriloquism as Feminism after Conceptualism’.
• Oliver Haslam (2022), ‘Minimalism in American Literature, 1970-2020’.
• Lauren Whitehouse (2021), Genderqueer in the Sporting Sphere: An Oral History Project of Non-Binary Sporting Lives’.

Monographs

• Contemporary Feminist Life-writing: The New Audacity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).
• Legacies of Plague in Literature, Theory, and Film (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

Edited Collections

• Intersectional Feminist Research Methodologies: Applications in the Social Sciences and Humanities, co-edited with Line Nyhagen (Routledge, 2024). Open access.
• The New Feminist Literary Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
• Scenes of Intimacy: Reading, Writing, and Theorising Contemporary Literature (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013).

Poetry Chapbooks

• Apocalypse Dreams (Bristol: Sad Press, 2015).
• *Not Suitable for Domestic Sublimation (London: Contraband Press, 2012).