Dominic Head

Contact

• workRoom A50 Trent
  University Park
  Nottingham
  NG7 2RD
  UK
• work0115 951 4647
• fax0115 951 5924
• dominic.head@nottingham.ac.uk

Expertise Summary

BA (Ulster) MA, PhD (Warwick) Areas of expertise - modern English literature; twentieth-century and contemporary fiction.

I have research interests in twentieth century and contemporary fiction. Over the past few years I have been working on British fiction since 1950, and my most recently published book is a study of Ian McEwan. (The publications link lists my published books and some other selected outputs.) I have two books in press: The Cambridge Introduction to J. M. Coetzee, and a Blackwell Manifesto entitled The State of the Novel: Britain and Beyond. This is an attempt to assess the literary culture by identifying some of the recurring preoccupations of contemporary fiction, especially where these tally with the concerns of cultural critics, within and without academia. The idea is to try and evaluate the current state of 'serious literary fiction', the broader culture that surrounds and constructs our understanding of that 'seriousness', and the academic criticism about the novels that emerge from it. It is a plea for a more responsive and engaged mode of criticism that, nevertheless, remains conscious of its own contextual constraints.

In addtion to my work on twentieth- and twenty-first centruy fiction, and the novel in South Africa, I have written some essays on, or tangentially related to, the field of literary ecocriticism, often in a spirit of (I hope) healthy agnosticism. This is an area of study that remains of interest to me, especially as it has the potential to offer a corrective to the pull of insular professionalism in academic work.

Selected Publications

• HEAD, DOMINIC, 2008. The State of the Novel: Britain and Beyond Blackwell (forthcoming).
• HEAD, DOMINIC, 2007. Ian McEwan Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• HEAD, DOMINIC, ed., 2006. The Cambridge guide to literature in English 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• HEAD, D.J., 2002. The Cambridge introduction to modern British fiction, 1950-2000 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• View all publications

• HEAD, DOMINIC, 2009. The Cambridge Introduction to J. M. Coetzee Cambridge University Press (forthcoming).
• HEAD, DOMINIC, 2008. The State of the Novel: Britain and Beyond Blackwell (forthcoming).
• HEAD, DOMINIC, 2007. Ian McEwan Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• HEAD, DOMINIC, 2007. 'Forster and the Short Story'. In: BRADSHAW, DAVID, ed., The Cambridge Companion to E. M. Forster Cambridge University Press. 77-91
• HEAD, DOMINIC, ed., 2006. The Cambridge guide to literature in English 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• HEAD, D.J., 2006. A belief in frogs: J. M. Coetzee's enduring faith in fiction. In: POYNER, J., ed., J. M. Coetzee and the idea of the public intellectual Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. 100-117
• HEAD, DOMINIC, 2006. 'The Demise of Class Fiction'. In: ENGLISH, JAMES F., ed., A Concise Companion to Contemporary British Fiction Blackwell. 229-47
• HEAD, DOMINIC, 2006. 'Julian Barnes and a Case of English Identity'. In: TEW, PHILIP and MENGHAM, ROD, eds., British Fiction Today Continuum. 15-27
• HEAD, DOMINIC, 2003. 'Stephen Blanchard'. In: MOLINO, MICHAEL R., ed., Dictionary of Literary Biography: Twenty-first Century British Novelists 267. Gale. 22-25
• HEAD, DOMINIC, 2003. 'Zadie Smith's WHITE TEETH: Multiculturalism for the Millennium'. In: LANE, RICHARD, MENGHAM, ROD, AND TEW, PHILIP, ed., Contemporary British Fiction Polity. 106-19
• HEAD, DOMINIC, 2003. 'Coetzee and the Animals: the Quest for Postcolonial Grace'. In: SMITH, ANDREW and HUGHES, WILLIAM, eds., Empire and the Gothic: The Politics of Genre Palgrave. 229-44
• HEAD, D.J., 2002. The Cambridge introduction to modern British fiction, 1950-2000 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• HEAD, DOMINIC, 2002. 'Beyond 2000: Raymond Williams and the Ecocritic's Task'. In: PARHAM, JOHN, ed., The Environmental Tradition in English Literature Ashgate. 24-36
• HEAD, DOMINIC, 2000. 'Ecocriticism and the Novel'. In: COUPE, LAURENCE, ed., The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism Routledge. 235-41
• HEAD, DOMINIC, 2000. 'Poisoned Minds: Suburbanites in Postwar British Fiction'. In: WEBSTER, ROGER, ed., Expanding Suburbia: Reviewing Suburban Narratives Berghahn. 71-89
• HEAD, DOMINIC, 1998. 'Problems in Ecocriticism and the Novel' Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism. 1, 60-73
• HEAD, DOMINIC, 1998. 'The (Im)Possibility of Ecocriticism'. In: KERRIDGE, RICHARD AND SAMMELLS, NEIL, ed., Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature Zed Books. 27-39
• HEAD, D.J., 1997. J. M. Coetzee Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
• HEAD, DOMINIC, 1995. 'Ecocriticism: A New Critical Aesthetic?'. In: WYLIE, VIVIAN, ed., Taking Responsibility: Humanities and Social Sciences Pluto. 14-17
• HEAD, DOMINIC, 1995. 'Gordimer's NONE TO ACCOMPANY ME: Revisionism and Interregnum' Research in African Literatures. 26(4), 46-57
• HEAD, D.J., 1994. Nadine Gordimer Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
• HEAD, D.J., 1992. The Modernist Short Story: A Study in Theory and Practice Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
• HEAD, DOMINIC, 1990. 'Positive Isolation and Productive Ambiguity in Nadine Gordimer's Short Stories' Journal of the Short Story in English. 15, 17-30
• HEAD, DOMINIC, 1989. 'Expanding Circles: Inductive Composition in HEAR US O LORD FROM HEAVEN THY DWELLING PLACE'. In: VICE, SUE, ed., Malcolm Lowry: Eighty Years On Macmillan. 70-91