Dr Matthew Foley
Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader for BA English
My profile
Biography
My specialisms are in early-twentieth-century literature, particularly literary modernism and the Gothic of the period. I also have a penchant for literary theory, including, but not limited to, psychonalytic (Freud, Lacan, Kristeva) and Derridean thought.
Words of wisdom
Live and read in equal measure.
Academic and professional qualifications
- 1st Class BA (Hons.) in English (University of Strathclyde)
- MLitt (with distinction) in The Gothic Imagination (University of Stirling)
- PhD in English Studies (University of Stirling)
Other academic service (administration and management)
I am currently the administrator of the International Gothic Association’s Allan Lloyd Smith Memorial Prizes. At MMU, I sit on the Faculty Research Ethics and Governance Committee for Arts and Humanities.
Teaching
Office hours
My office hours for this year run on Thursdays 11am to 1pm in Bellhouse G.02 during teaching weeks. These office hours are particularly aimed at students on two units I teach this year: Postwar and Contemporary Literature and Culture and Nineteenth-Century Writing to Modernism.
Why do I teach?
I see the classroom as a potentially inspirational space: both for me, as I learn from the perspectives of my students, and hopefully for those whom I teach too. It’s rare to be in a room made-up purely of readers and the potential to have a great conversation — finding some critical insights along the way, of course — about literature is the main reason I stil love teaching.
How I’ll teach you
I’ll be enthusiastic and the work student-centred.
Why study…
If you read good books for long enough, you get to live a thousand lives, and learn from a thousand perspectives.
Subject areas
English Literature
Research outputs
Modernism; Gothic Literature; Critical Theory
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Books (authored/edited/special issues)
Lawrenson, S., Foley, M. Melmoth's Global Afterlives. Gothic Studies.
Foley, M. (2023) Gothic Voices: The Vococentric Soundworld of Gothic Writing. Cambridge University Press.
Foley, M., Duncan, R. (2019) Patrick McGrath and his Worlds Madness and the Transnational Gothic. Routledge.
Foley, M. (2017) Haunting Modernisms. Springer International Publishing.
Foley, M., McRobert, N., Stephanou, A. (2012) Transgression and Its Limits. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
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Chapters in books
Foley, M. (2021) 'Gothic, the Great War and the Rise of Modernism, 1910‒1936.' The Cambridge History of the Gothic: Volume 3, Gothic in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Cambridge University Press,
Foley, M. (2020) 'Dark Modernisms.' In Bloom, C. (ed.) The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1109-1120.
Foley, M. (2019) 'Tyranny as Demand: Lacan Reading the Dreams of the Gothic Romance.' Lacan and Romanticism. SUNY Press,
Foley, M. (2018) 'Towards an Acoustics of Literary Horror.' In Corstorphine, K.E., Kremmel, L. (ed.) The Palgrave Handbook to Horror. Palgrave,
Foley, M. (2017) 'The Ghosts of War.' In Brewster, S., Thurston, L. (ed.) The Routledge Handbook to the Ghost Story. Routledge, pp. 319-327.
Foley, M. (2015) 'Voices of Terror and Horror: Towards an Acoustics of Modern Gothic.' In Sacido-Romero, J., Mieszkowski, S. (ed.) Brill-Rodopi, pp. 215-242.
Foley, M. (2012) 'Gothic 1900-1950.' In Hughes, W., Punter, D., Smith, A. (ed.) The Wiley Encyclopedia of the Gothic. Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 287-294.
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Journal articles
Lawrenson, S., Foley, M. 'Introduction: Melmoth’s Global Afterlives.' Gothic Studies, 26(2)
Lawrenson, S., Foley, M. 'From Melmoth to Maqroll: the wanderer in Latin America.' Gothic Studies, 26(2)
Foley, M. (2016) '’My voice shall ring in your ears’: the acousmatic voice and the timbral sublime in the Gothic Romance.' Horror Studies, 7(2) pp. 173-188.
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Other
Foley, M. (2013) In Conversation with Alice Thompson.