Leo Kadokura

Thesis title: Rewriting Englishness Across the Long Twentieth Century

Supervisor: Peter D. McDonald

Research Interests: Modern Literature, World Literature, Postcolonial Studies, the ethics and epistemology of identity

Leo Kadokura is currently a DPhil candidate at the University of Oxford. His thesis examines how the always contested idea of Englishness has shifted as writers have developed new, or different, modes of writing across the long twentieth century. The project considers in particular the work of John Galsworthy, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, V.S. Naipaul, W.G. Sebald and Kirsty Gunn. The vital but often neglected two-way interaction between intellectual history and literary form is central to this project. He completed his MSt in World Literatures in English and BA in English Language and Literature at Oxford.

He has worked extensively on Olive Schreiner, John Galsworthy, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Henri Bergson, Henry Green, Paul Ricoeur, V.S. Naipaul, Charles Taylor, Kwame Anthony Appiah, J.M. Coetzee, W.G. Sebald, Kazuo Ishiguro and Kirsty Gunn.

He currently supervises dissertations (FHS Paper 7) on twentieth and twenty-first century literature at St Hugh's College, teaches on Prelims Paper 4 (modern literature since 1910) at the Queen's College, and is an admissions tutor at St John's College. He has previously taught on the B Course (Book History, Bibliography and Palaeography) for the MSt in World Literatures in English. 

He will be chairing a two-part panel at the 55th NeMLA Convention in March 2024 examining philosophical difficulty and literary surplus. The Call for Papers is now closed but available to read here: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/20672

Conference Panel Chair:

- 'Half Knowledge: Identity, Philosophical Difficulty and the Remains of Value', 55th NeMLA Convention, MLA, Boston, USA (March 2024)

Conference Papers:

- 'What One is Worth: Leftovers of Identity and Value in V.S. Naipaul's Late Fiction', 55th NeMLA Convention, MLA, Boston, USA (March 2024)

- 'Distant Chimeras: The After-Effects of John Galsworthy and the Edwardian Novel', Afterlives of Empire in the Public Imagination, University of Sapienza, Rome, Italy (September 2023)

- 'Writing Doubtfully: Joseph Conrad's Nostromo', OEGC, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK (June 2023)