Milena Schwab-Graham

Profile

I received my AHRC-funded doctorate from the School of English at the University of Leeds in October 2022.

I previously taught part-time as an Adjunct 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

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 (Part-Time) 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

 

• “Sharp, queer, uncertain happiness”: walking as feminist “affective militancy” in May Sinclair’s Mary Olivier (1919) and The Three Sisters (1914). Isabelle Brasme, Leslie de Bont, and Florence Marie, eds. May Sinclair in her Time: Reappraising May Sinclair’s Role in Early 20th-Century Literature and Philosophy (Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerrannée, Montpellier 3 University) (in process)

• “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 (2018–2022)
• 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)

Qualifications

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