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; narrative

Doctoral Research: My AHRC-funded DPhil research examines depictions of male and female virginities in early twentieth-century British novels. I am particularly interested in where the language of virginity recurs, and how it functions, in this period. How might virginity reframe modernist (anti)sentimentality, temporality, Englishness, and spirituality? Writers under consideration in this project include Wyndham Lewis, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, Dorothy Richardson, D.H. Lawrence, and Ford Madox Ford.

Other: I am a DPhil Representative for English Graduates Oxford (2022-23), and co-convene the faculty's Modern and Contemporary Graduate Forum.

Publications

'Growing Absurd: Sexuality, Development, and Virgin Time in Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage.' [Studies in the Novel, forthcoming in winter 2023]