Julyan Oldham

Thesis title: Deflowering Modernism: Virginity in Early Twentieth-Century British Writing

Supervisor: Rebecca Beasley

Research interests: twentieth-century literature and culture; literary modernism; queerness; compulsory sexuality and the history of (a)sexuality; modernist temporalities; nationalism

Doctoral Research: My DPhil research examines depictions of male and female virginities in early twentieth-century British literature. I am particularly interested in where the language of virginity recurs, and how it functions, in this period. How does virginity feed into modernist discussions of (anti)sentimentality, temporality, and Englishness? Writers under consideration in this project include Mina Loy, Wyndham Lewis, Havelock Ellis, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley and Dorothy Richardson. 

My pronouns are they/them. I am happy to answer prospective students' questions about Oxford and the DPhil application process.