Research Profile

Marie-Luise (Mel) Kohlke is a contemporary literature specialist, whose research focuses on the neo-Victorian novel and trauma literature, exploring the intersection of the historical imagination and cultural discourses on gender, sexuality, and violence. She is the General and Founding Editor of the peer-reviewed, inter-disciplinary Neo-Victorian Studies e-Journal, of which the inaugural issue was launched in October 2008, and the joint editor of a new series on neo-Victorianism by Rodopi, with the first volume planned for early 2010. Other current projects include the development of the Neo-Victorian Bibliography On-Line, the first comprehensive generic overview of neo-Victorian literature with an associated searchable database, designed as a dedicated research and teaching support tool for the academic community, the pilot version of which is due to launch shortly. She is also in the process of setting up an associated Neo-Victorian Network to promote international collaboration in this field of critical enquiry.

Supervisory Research Areas

Mel’s current Phd and MPhil supervision includes projects on ‘The Adaptation of Victorian Novels for the Nineteenth-Century Stage’ and ‘Gender in the Victorian Sensation Novel and Neo-Victorian Re-Writings’. Mel would welcome applications for postgraduate research in any areas relating to her own interests and expertise, including neo-Victorian topics, trauma literature, nineteenth-century and contemporary fiction.

Teaching Profile

Since gaining her PhD on the short stories of Anaïs Nin, Angela Carter, and Margaret Atwood in 2000, Mel has taught English Literature across a range of periods and subjects from early Gothic and Victorian women’s writing to the twentieth/twenty-first century novel and literary theory. Mel lectures on the Transforming Fictions and Tragic Drama courses at Level One, and on Debating Texts: Theory in Literature at Level Two, as well as contributing individual sessions to other lecture courses. She offers the optional second year seminar Neo-Victorian Fictions and the third year seminar Reading/Writing Trauma. (Please note: the latter is not a Creative Writing course.) At M.A. level, she teaches the GENCAS seminar The Great Pretender: Masculinity in Contemporary Women’s Fiction, covering novels by Margaret Atwood, Pat Barker, and Angela Carter. Mel also teaches extensively on the English Part-Time Degree for the Adult Continuing Education programme and delivers a biennial session on literature and trauma for the Medical Humanities M.A. in the School of Health Science.

Books:

• 2011. (co-ed. and intro. with Christian Gutleben). Neo-Victorian Families; Gender, Sexuality and Cultural Politics (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi).
• 2010 (co-ed. and intro. with Christian Gutleben). Neo-Victorian Tropes of Trauma: The Politics of Bearing After-Witness to Nineteenth-Century Suffering (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi).
• 2008 (co-ed. and intro. with Luisa Orza). Negotiating Sexual Idioms: Image, Text, Performance (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi).

2008. (co-ed. with Luisa Orza). Probing the Problematics: Sex and Sexuality (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press), http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing-files/idp/eBooks/ptp%202.2.pdf

Journal Articles

• (forthcoming). ‘Pathologised Masculinity in Pat Barker’s Double Vision: Stephen Sharkey’s Monstrous Others’, in Patricia Wheeler (ed.), Re-Reading Pat Barker. (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing).
• 2011. ‘Neo-Victorian Childhoods: Re-Imagining the Worst of Times’, in Marie-Luise Kohlke & Christian Gutleben (eds.), Neo-Victorian Families: Gender, Sexuality and Cultural Politics (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi): 119-147.
• 2011. ‘Sublime Violations: Trauma Literature and the Search for Transcendence through Violence’, in Nancy Billias and Leonhard Praeg (eds.), Creating Destruction: Constructing Images of Violence and Genocide (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi): 139-158.
• 2010. (with Celia Wallhead). ‘The Neo-Victorian Frame of Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas: Temporal and Traumatic Reverberations’, in Marie-Luise Kohlke & Christian Gutleben (eds.), Neo-Victorian Tropes of Trauma: The Politics of Bearing After-Witness to Nineteenth-Century Suffering. (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi): 217-252.
• ‘Introduction: Speculations in and on the Neo-Victorian Encounter’, Neo-Victorian Studies, 1:1 (Autumn 2008), 1-18, http://www.neovictorianstudies.com/. [ISSN: 1757-9481].
• ‘Blood and Tears in the Mirror of Memory: Liana Badr’s The Eye of the Mirror’, The Feminist Review, Special Issue: Political Hystories, 85:1 (March 2007), 40-58. ISSN 0141-7789, Online ISSN: 1466-4380
• ‘Into History through the Backdoor: The “Past Historic” in Nights at the Circus and Affinity’, Women: A Cultural Review, Special Issue: Hystorical Fictions, Metahistory, Metafiction, 15:2 (July 2004), 153-166. ISSN: 0957-4042, Online ISSN: 1470-1367
• ‘“Seller and commodity in one, a whore is her own investment in the world”: The Female Body as Capital and Currency in Angela Carter’s Short Stories “Black Venus” and “The Loves of Lady Purple”’, New Comparison (British Comparative Literature Association), 35-36 (Spring/Autumn 2003), 341-355. (no direct link to article)
• The Politics of Bearing After-Witness to Nineteenth-Century Suffering. (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi): 367-397.
• 2009. ‘Nostalgic Violence? Neo-Victorian (Re-)Visions of Historical Conflict’, in Marika Guggisberg & David Weir (eds.), Understanding Violence: Contexts and Portrayals. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press: 25-37 , http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/vchue15e.pdf.
• 2008. ‘Introduction: Speculations in and on the Neo-Victorian Encounter’, Neo-Victorian Studies, 1:1 (Autumn 2008), 1-18.
• 2008. ‘ Sexsation and the Neo-Victorian Novel: Orientalising the Nineteenth Century in Contemporary Fiction’, in Marie-Luise Kohlke & Luia Orza (eds.). Negotiating Sexual Idioms: Image, Text, Performance (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi): 53-77.
• 2008. ‘The Neo-Victorian Sexsation: Literary Excursions into the Nineteenth Century Erotic’, in Marie-Luise Kohlke and Luisa Orza (eds.), Probing the Problematics: Sex and Sexuality (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press): 345-356, http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing-files/idp/eBooks/ptp%202.2.pdf.
• 2007. ‘Blood and Tears in the Mirror of Memory: Liana Badr’s The Eye of the Mirror’, The Feminist Review, Special Issue: Political Hystories, 85:1 (March), 40-58. 
• 2007. ‘Sexuality in Extremity: Trauma, Violence, and Counter-Erotics’, in Nick Rumens and Alejandro Cervantes-Carson (eds.), Sexual Politics of Desire and Belonging (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi): 229-247.
• 2004. ‘Into History through the Backdoor: The “Past Historic” in Nights at the Circus and Affinity’, Women: A Cultural Review, Special Issue: Hystorical Fictions

Book Chapters & Conference Proceedings

• ‘Sexsation and the Neo-Victorian Novel: Orientalising the Nineteenth Century in Contemporary Fiction’, in Negotiating Sexual Idioms: Image, Text, Performance, eds. Marie-Luise Kohlke and Luisa Orza (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi Press, 2008), 53-77. [ISBN:978-90-420-2491-5]
• with Luisa Orza. ‘Introduction: The Intricacies of Sexual Idioms’ in Negotiating Sexual Idioms: Image, Text, Performance, eds. Marie-Luise Kohlke and Luisa Orza (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi Press, 2008), ix-xxxi. [ISBN:978-90-420-2491-5] 
• ‘The Neo-Victorian Sexsation: Literary Excursions into the Nineteenth Century Erotic’, in Probing the Problematics: Sex and Sexuality, eds. Marie-Luise Kohlke and Luisa Orza (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2008), 345-356 • http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/idp/eBooks/ptp%202.2.pdf. [ISBN: 978-1-904710-43-1]
• ‘Sexuality in Extremity: Trauma, Violence, and Counter-Erotics’, in Sexual Politics of Desire and Belonging, eds. Nick Rumens and Alejandro Cervantes-Carson (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2007), 229-247. [ISBN: 978-90-420-2239-3]
• An earlier version of the conference paper from the 3rd Global Conference on Sex and Sexuality: Exploring Critical Issues, Krakow, 29 November - 2 December 2006, Inter-Disciplinary.Net, can be accessed at: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ci/sexuality/s3/Kohlke%20paper.pdf.
• An earlier version of the original conference paper from the 2nd Global Conference on Sex and Sexuality: Exploring Critical Issues, Vienna, 30 November - 3 December 2005, Inter-Disciplinary.Net, can be accessed at: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ci/sexuality/s2/Kohlke%20paper.pdf .

Critical Introductions

• (forthcoming) Introduction to Negotiating Sexualities: Image, Text, Performance, eds. Marie-Luise Kohlke and Luisa Orza (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi Press, 2008).

• (forthcoming) Introduction to eBook Sex and Sexuality 3 (Proceedings of the 3rd Global Conference on Sex and Sexuality: Exploring Critical Issues, Krakow, 29^t November - 2 December 2006), eds. Marie-Luise Kohlke and Luisa Orza (Inter-Disciplinary.Net: 2007-2008).

Reviews

• 2011. ‘[Review of] Accounts of Innocence: Sexual Abuse, Trauma, and the Self: By Joseph E. Davis’, Archives of Sexual Behavior 40:5 (Oct.): 1071-1073 .
• 2010. ‘A Neo-Victorian Smorgasbord: Review of Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn’s Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century, 1990-2009’, Neo-Victorian Studies 3:2: 206-217.
• 2010. ‘Slumming Fantasies: Review of Marina Julia Neary’s Wynfield’s Kingdom’, Neo-Victorian Studies 3:2: 206-217.
• 2010. ‘Re-Imagined Memory: Review of Kate Mitchell, History and Cultural Memory in Neo-Victorian Fiction: Victorian Afterimages ’, Neo-Victorian Studies 3:1, Special Issue: Steampunk, Science, and (Neo)Victorian Technologies: 220-230.
• 2010. ‘Steampunk Show Time: Review of Robert Rankin’s The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions: A Novel’, Neo-Victorian Studies 3:1, Special Issue: Steampunk, Science, and (Neo)Victorian Technologies: 244-251.
• 2009/2010. ‘Ghosts of Many Shades and Shadings: Review of Mariadele Boccardi, The Contemporary British Historical Novel; Tatiana Kontou, Spiritualism and Women’s Writing; and Rosario Arias and Patricia Pulham (eds.), Haunting and Spectrality in Neo-Victorian Fiction’, Neo-Victorian Studies 2:2 (Winter), Special Issue: Adapting the Nineteenth Century: Revisiting, Revising and Rewriting the Past: 237-256.
• 2009/2010. ‘Familial Complications: Review of A.S. Byatt, The Children’s Book’, Neo-Victorian Studies 2:2 (Winter), Special Issue: Adapting the Nineteenth Century: Revisiting, Revising and Rewriting the Past: 264-271.

Conference Papers

• 2008. ‘ Reading for Defilement: Eroto-Politics and Pornographic Legacies in the Neo-Victorian Novel’, presented at the Inter-Disciplinary.Net 4th Global Conference on ‘The Erotic: Exploring Critical Issues’ (31 Oct.-2 Nov.), Salzburg, Austria
• 2008. ‘Romancing the Whore in the Neo-Victorian Novel’, presented at the Inter-Disciplinary.Net  5th Global Conference on ‘Persons and Sexuality: Probing the Boundaries’ (3-5 Nov.), Salzburg, Austria.
• 2008. ‘The Three R’s of the Neo-Victorian Novel: Reticence, Residual Taboo, and the Limits of Representability’ , presented at the ‘Adapting the Nineteenth Century: Revisiting, Revising and Rewriting the Past’ conference (22-24 Aug.), University of Wales Lampeter, UK.
• 2008. ‘Nostalgic Violence: Neo-Victorian (Re-)Visions of Historical Conflict’, presented at the Inter-Disciplinary.Net 7th Global Conference on ‘Violence, Contexts and the Construction of Enemies: Probing the Boundaries’ (5-7 May), Budapest, Hungary.
• 2007. ‘“Abominable Pictures”: Ironic Inversions of Race in the Neo-Victorian Novel’, presented at the ‘Neo-Victorianism: The Politics and Aesthetics of Appropriation’ conference (10-12 Sep.), University of Exeter, UK.
• 2007. ‘The Great Destroyer: Mad and Murderous Father-Gods in Angela Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club and Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake’, presented at the ‘Men and Madness: Representing Male Psychopathology and Mental Disorder in Modern and Contemporary Culture’ conference (28-30 Jun.), Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.
• 2007. ‘Sublime Violations: Trauma Literature’s Search for Transcendence through Violence’, presented at the Inter-Disciplinary.Net 6th Global Conference on ‘Probing the Boundaries: Violence, Contexts and the Construction of Enemies’ (2-5 May), Budapest, Hungary.