Ms Emily Kate Timms

Profile

Postcolonial Literature and Film (especially indigenous and Caribbean); ageing studies and cultural gerontology; medical humanities; contemporary poetry and 'little' poetry magazine culture

Twitter handle: @EmilyKateTimms

Biography

Joint Honours English and History (BA University of Leeds); Modern and Contemporary Literature (MA University of Leeds)

Doctoral Research

Thesis Title: Postcolonial Representations of Age and Ageing in Caribbean and Aotearoa New Zealand Fiction and Film

My thesis will be the first extended study which examines representations of age and ageing in postcolonial literary and cinematographic contexts. My methodology is interdisciplinary in nature, pursuing a postcolonial reading of age and ageing using Caribbean and Aotearoa New Zealand fiction and film, and investigating how such representations can intervene in the discipline of gerontology and the newer field of ageing studies. This approach considers culturally situated ontologies of age and ageing and a perspective that draws on strands of current postcolonial scholarship that emphasises cross-cultural affinity over cultural incommensurability and critiques neoliberal structures of economic power. In particular my work investigates representations of the ‘elder’, ageing trickster and magical realist performativities, and how storying older selfhood might speak to the practice of narrative gerontology. By engaging in a postcolonial literary and cinematographic analysis I demonstrate how creative works from these cultures create dynamic, nuanced, and heterogeneous representations of age and ageing, which, collectively, can be mobilised as a means of critiquing the universalising iterations of age in gerontological and supranational ageing policy discourses. In addition, the thesis will contribute to a body of comparative Caribbean and Pacific Islands scholarship to present new vistas for comparison between Aotearoa New Zealand and the Caribbean via readings of age. My research is funded by the White Rose College of Arts and Humanities.

I am the co-Director for the New Voices in Postcolonial Studies PGR network, @NVPoco; https://newvoicespocostudies.wordpress.com/; newvoicespocostudies@gmail.com.

Teaching:

Prose: Reading and Interpretation; Foundations of English Studies

Other Research Interests

My other research interests include:
Indigenous literatures and cultures - Canadian First Nations, Native American, Polynesian
Caribbean and Black British writing
Medical Humanities - particularly narrative therapy practices
Contemporary British poetry
'Little' poetry magazine networks
The poetry of Leeds 1950-present

Editorial Assistant Work

Editorial Assistant at Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings, ed. by Prof Shirley Chew and Prof Stuart Murray (2014; 2016-present) http://www.movingworlds.net/
Editorial Assistant at Stand Magazine, ed. by Prof John Glover, Ms Elaine Glover, and Prof John Whale (2012-present) http://www.standmagazine.org/index.shtml

Professional Memberships and Research Networks

New Voices in Postcolonial Studies; White Rose College of Arts and Humanities; Postcolonial Studies Association; British Society of Gerontology; Northern Postcolonial Network; Northern Network for Medical Humanities.

Publications

Article: "“‘Our stories could kill you’”: Storytelling, healthcare, and the legacy of the “talking cure” in Patricia Grace’s Baby No-Eyes (1998) and Georgia Kaapuni McMillen’s School for Hawaiian Girls (2005)", Journal of Postcolonial Writing (in press December 2018)
Review: 'Vahni Capildeo Venus as a Bear and Shivanee Ramlochan Everyone Knows I'm a Haunting', Stand (16.3), 2018.
Interview, 'An Interview with Vahni Capildeo', in Women Write Now: Reading the Contemporary, Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings, ed. by Lucy Arnold and Shirley Chew, (18.1), 2018.
Review: 'Further Familial Conversations: Caryl Phillips, The Lost Child', in Postcolonial Arctic, Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings, ed. by Graham Huggan and Roger Norum, (15.2), 2015.
Review: 'Simon Jenner, Wrong Evenings', Stand (12.3), 2014.
Review: 'Two from Smokestack Books: Gerda Stevenson; Peter Blackman', Stand (12.2), 2014.
Review: 'Red Spectres [trans Mulrean Maguire] (London: Angel Classics, 2012)', Stand (11.4), 2013.

Selected Conferences, Lectures and Papers

'Indigenous Ageing and the Future of Intergenerational Health and Wellbeing in Maori Fiction', Northern Network for Medical Humanities, University of Leeds, 20th-21st September 2018 
'"We Wouldn't be a People": Postcolonial Representations of Elders and Intergenerational Wellbeing in Maori Fiction and Television', Living a Good Life in Older Age Symposium, Norwegian Research Council/University of Warwick, 5th-6th July 2018
'"My Husband was Always a Mystery to Me": Excavating Patricia Grace's Literary Archives', The J.C. Beaglehole Room, University of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, 4th June 2018
'Literary Kaumatuatanga: Postcolonial Perspectives on Age and Ageing in Patricia Grace's Chappy (2015), School of English, Film, Theatre, and Media Studies, University of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, 15th March 2018
Beyond the Eskimo Floe: Postcolonial Perspectives on Global Ageing', Postcolonial Studies Association Convention, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 18th-20th September 2017
‘Like an Earthquake in Motion’: Older People and Carnival Cultures in Pauline Melville’s The Migration of Ghosts', Power, Performance and Play: An International Conference on Caribbean Carnival Cultures, Leeds Beckett University, 18th-21st May 2017
‘Might it Consume Her Anyhow!’: Pain and Phenomenology in Mina Loy’s Lost Lunar Baedeker and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway', Sensory Modernism(s) 2 International Conference, University of Leeds, 11th-12th December 2015
'Our Stories Could Kill You': Indigenous Storytelling, Healthcare, and the Legacy of the 'Talking Cure' in Contemporary Maori and Hawaiian Literature', Pacific Waves: Reverberations from Oceania International Conference, University of Sussex, 6th-7th November 2015
'The Truth About Stories': Assessing Storytelling as a Mode of Healthcare in Contemporary Indigenous Literature', Postcolonial Studies Association International Convention, University of Leicester, 7th-9th September 2015
''Knowing the Dead’: Responding to Atrocity in Poetry and Audience, Stand, and Delta magazines, 1950-1970’, University of Leeds Department of English MA Student Conference, University of Leeds, 5th June 2014
'Leeds Poetry and the Holocaust' public lecture, Leeds Town Hall Talk Series, Leeds Town Hall and Brotherton Library Special Collections, 17th January 2014 and 22nd January 2014
'Navigating Leeds Poetry, 1950-1980: The Aberrant Individual?, Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce Edward Boyle Prize Inaugural Lecture, The Bar Convent, York, 30th January 2013

Other Events

New Voices in Postcolonial Studies Network events 24th October, University of Sheffield and 21st November, University of Leicester
Women Write Now Launch Events 14 October 2018, Ilkley Literature Festival
Co-Organiser and exhibition curator of 60 Years of Poetry and Audience, 15th-18th October 2014, School of English and Workshop Theatre, University of Leeds
Stand@50 Event Assistant, 4th-5th September 2012, Workshop Theatre, University of Leeds

Awards

2018 WRoCAH Student Led Forum Award and M4C Funding Award for New Voices in Postcolonial Studies Network
2018 WRoCAH large award and School of English funding for a primary research trip to Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand.
2016-2019 Arts and Humanities Research Council White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities (WRoCAH) Doctoral Studentship
2013-14 Arts and Humanities Research Council Block Grant Partnership Research Preparation Studentship 2013/14 for MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature 2014 University of Leeds/Leeds University Union Partnership Award for Research Innovation
2010-13 - University of Leeds Undergraduate Research and Leadership Scholar (English Literature) 2013 - Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce Edward Boyle Award (For Outstanding Achievement in Undergraduate Research and Professional Development) 2013 - School of History Outstanding Achievement Award (Best Overall Performance by a Student Parented by the School of History) 2013 - Alice M Cooke Prize (Finalist Award for Best Female Scholar) 2012 - John Taylor Northern History Award (Best Second Year Performance) 2012 - Leeds Association of Graduate Women History Award (Best Female Scholar) 2011 - Joint Honours Award (Best First Year Performance in Joint Honours Degrees parented by the School of History)
 

Research groups and institutes

• Graduate School
• Medical Humanities Research Group
• Institute for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies
• Poetry Centre