Lily Middleton-Mansell

Thesis Title: Furnishing Disaster: The Domestication of Mass Experience in Mid-Twentieth-Century Literature

Supervisor: Professor Peter Boxall

Doctoral Research: I research the relationship between mass culture and disaster in mid-twentieth-century American literature. My project explores how mid-twentieth-century literature intertwines the parallel growth of mass culture and the increasing sense of international disaster as something domestic, close to home. From citizen bombing, to nuclear weapons, to environmental destruction, I examine literature’s response to the ways mass culture (cultural products that are mass-produced for mass audiences) makes disaster negotiable—parallels its immediacy and scale and integrates it as a too-easily acceptable part of daily life. The authors that I focus on include H.D., Langston Hughes and Edwin Denby (alongside other New York School associates), who I read in the context of their publication in periodicals. My DPhil research is funded by the Wolfson Scholarship in the Humanities.

Research interests:

Mass media and popular culture, technology, war, American literature, mid-twentieth-century literature, visual art, cinema, periodical studies, material cultures, ecocritical thought, modernism and postmodernism.

Outside of my academic research, I am committed to improving access to university. I have worked for the St John’s College Access and Outreach office for several years, assisting on outreach events and creating a range of resources for the Inspire Virtual Summer School and the Critical Thinking Workshop. I have also worked as a graduate tutor for Balliol, St John's and Pembroke outreach programmes, as well as Oxford's UNIQ summer school.