Milena Schwab-Graham

Profile

I have been a full-time, Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded doctoral student in the School of English at the University of Leeds since October 2018.

I previously taught as an Assistant Lecturer in British Literature and Culture in the Department of Anglophone Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany for several years. I taught across a broad literary and cultural spectrum, devising and delivering courses on nineteenth and twentieth century poetry, prose and cultural studies. 

I hold a BA (Hons) in English Language and Literature and an MA by Directed Research in English from the University of Liverpool.

From March–August 2021 I worked on the archival project ‘Anthony Burgess on Tape’ with the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, exploring the Foundation’s extensive audio archive to produce an item-level catalogue, draw connections across Burgess’ wide-ranging oeuvre, and further public engagement with Burgess’ work. I took part in an interview on the Burgess Foundation Podcast about the project. 

Research interests

My research interests include:

• Victorian literature 
• Modernist and inter-war literature 
• feminism 
• walking & authorship
• spatiality
• theories of embodiment and affect

My thesis is grounded in cultural historian Rebecca Solnit’s radical proposition that “walking has sometimes been, at least since the late eighteenth century, an act of resistance to the mainstream” (Solnit, 2002). It explores how the women writers George Eliot, May Sinclair and Sylvia Townsend Warner’s own walking experiences (ranging across Britain and Europe, and urban and rural contexts) were integral to the development of their intellectual and political consciousness. A central concern of the project is how to articulate the interconnection between walking and writing, and how this translates into increased political consciousness and political action. The physical act of walking is therefore shown to be a catalyst for feminist subjectivity, revealing the political in the personal. 

Teaching

Postgraduate Teaching Assistant, School of English, University of Leeds:

• Modern Fictions in English: Conflict, Liminality, Translation
• Victorian Literature 
• Prose: Reading and Interpretation

Adjunct Lecturer in British Literature and Culture, Department of Anglophone Studies, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany (2015–2018):

• The Urban Wanderer in Literature
• Postmodern Rewritings of Victorian Fiction
• Gothic Women Writers
• The North of England: Radical Perspectives
• Multicultural Britain
• The Social Problem Novel

Publications

• “In isolation human power is limited, in combination it is infinite”: Tracing Ludwig Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity through Daniel Deronda. The George Eliot Review, No.45 (2014): 8–15. Winner of the George Eliot Fellowship Essay Prize 2014.

Awards

• White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities Doctoral Training Partnership (Arts and Humanities Research Council): Doctoral Studentship (2018–Present)
• George Eliot Fellowship Essay Prize (2014)

Selected Conference Papers

• “Sharp, queer, uncertain happiness”: Walking as feminist “affective militancy” in May Sinclair’s Mary Olivier. Networking May Sinclair, Université de Nantes, Nantes, France, 2021.
• “She would fight for freedom, but not in their way and not at their bidding”: Demonstration as feminist walking practice in May Sinclair’s The Tree of Heaven. A New Poetics of Space: Literary Walks in Times of Pandemics and Climate Change, Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden, 2020.
• “Objectless wandering”? Mapping morality onto peripatetic practice in Adam Bede. George Eliot 2019: An International Bicentenary Conference, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom, 2019.
•  “What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?” Middlemarch as a re-visioning of Spinoza’s Ethics. George Eliot and Her Circle Conference, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2017.

Additional Activities

• Researcher, ‘Anthony Burgess on Tape’: a Research Exchange Project in partnership with the International Anthony Burgess Foundation and WRoCAH (2021). I wrote three blog posts, ‘Exporing the recordings of the ‘showman’ Anthony Burgess’ , ‘The Anthony Burgess tapes: from Larry King to Nordic myths’, and ‘Chest of curiosities: exploring Anthony Burgess archive recordings’ as part of the project.
• Co-Chair, Victorian Research Seminar and Victorian Reading Group, School of English, University of Leeds (2020–21)
• WRoCAH Mentor (2020–21)
• School of English Postgraduate Research Student Representative (2019–20)
• Co-Organiser, Annual White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities Conference (AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership) (2019)

Twitter: @mschwabgraham

Qualifications

• University of Liverpool - MA by Directed Research in English (Distinction)
• University of Liverpool - BA English Language and Literature (First Class Honours)