Stubbs, Dr Tara

Job Title: Stipendiary Lecturer 
College: St Peter's
Period/ Subject: 1832-present, Introduction to Literary Studies, American literature

Email address: tara.stubbs@spc.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests:

My current research focuses on my monograph, American Literature and Irish Culture, 1910–1955 (MUP, 2012), and associated projects. The monograph discusses how modernist American writers (including Fitzgerald, Moore, O’Neill, Steinbeck and Stevens) engaged with Irish culture, and underlines the importance of Ireland as a locus of inspiration for American modernism. Chapters discuss: the American-Irish cultural inheritance, American modernism and the Celtic ideal, the Irish landscape in transatlantic translation, Irish politics and the American literary conscience, and the influence of W.B. Yeats on American modernist poetry and fiction.

Associated projects include an ongoing, collaborative project on ‘The idea of influence in American literature’, which began with a conference at Oxford (March 2010); this led to a ‘special issue’ of Comparative American Studies (June 2011). I am now working with Philip Coleman of TCD on a two-volume book project on the same theme, and plan to send panels to the BAAS conference (April 2012). Another project discusses the modernist Irish poet and art critic Thomas MacGreevy. The chapter, ‘“So kind you are, to bring me this gift”: Thomas MacGreevy, American modernists and the gift of “Irishness”’, will be published in The Life and Work of Thomas MacGreevy: A Critical Reappraisal, ed. Susan Schreibman (Continuum, 2012). I have also written a chapter, ‘W.B. Yeats and the Ghost Club’, on Yeats’s involvement in the esoteric London society; this be published in Irish Writing London, ed. Tom Herron (Continuum, 2012).

My planned research is a long-term project based at the Macmillan Archive of the British Library. Entitled ‘Macmillan and his authors: a reassessment of the publishing career of Harold Macmillan’, it will use Macmillan’s correspondence with a range of high-profile authors to illustrate his importance to early twentieth century letters. Biographers have tended to dismiss Macmillan’s years in publishing (my research will focus mainly on 1921–38) as a dull preamble to his political career, but letters reveal that he was a shrewd publisher, helping shape the way we read writers like Hardy, Kipling, O’Casey and Yeats.

Teaching Areas:

Victorian and 20th century period papers; Introduction to Literary Studies; American literature; Poetry in English; Irish literature (for Special Author and Special Topic papers). I currently teach the following Special Authors: Conrad, Friel, Heaney, Walcott, Wilde, Woolf, and Yeats.

Forthcoming Publications:

American Literature and Irish Culture, 1910-1955 (Manchester: MUP, 2012)

'"So kind you are, to bring me this gift": Thomas MacGreevy, American modernists, and the ‘gift’ of Irishness', Thomas MacGreevy: A Collection of Critical Essays (title tbc), ed. Susan Schreibman (NY and London: Continuum, 2012): part of the 'Historicizing Modernism' series. 

'W.B. Yeats and the Ghost Club', The Other Capital: Irish Writing London, ed. Tom Herron (New York and London: Continuum, 2012)

In press: 'One title, three works? Marianne Moore, Maria Edgeworth and The Absentee', Romantic Ireland from Tone to Gonne: Fresh Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Ireland, Vol. 1: Literature, ed. Paddy Lyons, Willy Maley, John Miller (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011)

Recent Publications:

'Introduction: the idea of influence in American literature', Comparative American Studies, Vol. 9.2 (June 2011), pp.87-90.

'"Writing was resilience. Resilience was an adventure." Marianne Moore, Bernard Shaw and the Art of Writing', SHAW 29 (The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies; Nov/Dec 2009), pp.66-78.

'Irish by descent? Marianne Moore's American-Irish Inheritance', Irish Journal of American Studies (Spring 2009): http://www.ijasonline.com/TARA-STUBBS.html

'New Readings of Marianne Moore's "Spenser's Ireland" (1941)', Peer English 2 (December 2007), pp.32-44.

Other Information:

My D.Phil, which I completed at the end of 2007, was entitled 'Irish by descent': Marianne Moore, Irish writers and the American-Irish inheritance. This has generated several articles and book chapters. For more information, see: http://ora.ouls.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:bf87b5ea-4baa-4a46-9509-2c59e738e2a1

As part of the research work for my monograph, I have visited the Beinecke Library at Yale University, and this April (2011) I spent a month as a Visiting Fellow at Trinity College Dublin Long Room Hub (http://www.tcd.ie/longroomhub/).

I also organised a conference, 'The idea of influence in American literature', held at the English Faculty at Oxford on 31 March 2010. A special issue of the Comparative American Studies (June 2011), which I have guest edited, is devoted to the conference topic.

I also have an academic blog, which gives further details of my research activities and writing projects.

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