Philip McGowan

Philip McGowan is AHSS Associate Dean of Internationalisation and Faculty Lead on the M Liberal Arts degree programme.

He is President (2016-2024) of the European Association for American Studies (eaas.eu; @eaas_eu) and has been a member of the Executive Board of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society (fscottfitzgeraldsociety.org; @FSFSociety) since 2005.

He served on the Royal Irish Academy Committee for Languages, Literature, Culture and Communications (2018-22), is an Outer Board Assessor on postgraduate and postdoctoral funding schemes for the Irish Research Council, and is a member of the Peer Review College for the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships.

He edited the Oxford University Press centenary edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise (2020) (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/this-side-of-paradise-9780198848110?q=this%20side%20of%20paradise&lang=en&cc=gb#). In addition, he is the series editor for OUP's new centenary editions of Fitzgerald's fictions. He also edited the new Penguin (US) edition of The Great Gatsby (with a foreword by Min Jin Lee, 2021). 

Further work on Fitzgerald's short stories from the 1930s will be appearing in The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review in 2021/22. In terms of my poetry interests, I will be working on articles on the poetry of Wallace Stevens, R.S. Thomas, and Mark Doty after REF2021. I am also developing a monograph-length study of Elizabeth Bishop.

Recent journal articles include:

'John Berryman's Last Prayers' in Literature and Theology  https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frz031

'Elizabeth Bishop's Work of Fire' in Mosaic 53.1 (March 2020)

Other publications include:

'The Bestseller and the Blockbuster Mentality' in Kirk Curnutt, ed. American Literature in Transition, 1970-1980 (Cambridge University Press, 2018);

'Anne Sexton's Transformations' in Harold Bloom, ed. Anne Sexton (Blooms Modern Critical Views, 2015);

 'A.A. and the Redeployment of Temperance Literature' in Journal of American Studies (2014) http://journals.cambridge.org/repo_A88Cqmob;

 'Berryman, Sexton and the limits of Poetic Language' in the English journal (Winter 2013)  http://english.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/eft038ijkey=iMUPSqttCqkv72u&keytype=ref);

Teaching

My office hours for 2021-22 are Tuesdays and Wednesdays 12-1, other times available by appointment.

At undergraduate level I convene the Liberal Arts modules LIB7001 Incorrigibly Plural and LIB7003 America's Aftermaths.

In terms of American literature, I convene the stage 2 module ENG2172 Inventing America, and a stage 3 module dedicated to the works of Wallace Stevens & Elizabeth Bishop (ENG3333 Stevens & Bishop). 

At Ph.D. level I am the critical supervisor on the following project:

'"And Past Them, the Snowy Fields": Reading Landscapes in Midwestern American Poetry'

I am the second supervisor on the following projects:

'Breaking the "rule of silence": Speaking about Trauma in Contemporary Irish Fiction'

 I recently supervised/co-supervised:

'Against 9/11: Counter-Narratives of Grief in Post-9/11 Literature' (primary supervisor)

'Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Mel Brooks, and Woody Allen's "New Cabaret": Underground Jewish Humor and the Evolution of the New Hollywood Aesthetic' (primary supervisor)

'The Influence of Dynamic Psychiatry on Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald' (primary supervisor)

'Dredging Day & A Trauma-Informed Reading of Whereas (Graywolf, 2017) by Layli Long Solider' (CW)

'Marilynne Robinson: Theologian' (primary supervisor)

'Heaney's America' (primary supervisor)

'John McGahern: Community, Influence and Historical Revisionism' (secondary)

'The First Thing That Happens/The Next Thing That Happens' (CW)

'Two Camps/The American Family Elegy After 1995' (CW)

'Toward a Supreme Poetry: The Ecstatic Self in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens and Sylvia Plath' (primary supervisor)

'Self-Reflexivity and Otherness in TS Eliot and Geoffrey Hill' (secondary)

1. Administrative Leadership

   Since 2016 I have been the AHSS Faculty lead on the M Liberal Arts degree programme (http://www.qub.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/mlba-um-liberal-arts-mlibarts-y300/).

   I am the Programme Co-ordinator of the Story summer school (https://www.qub.ac.uk/International/International-students/Studyabroad/Summer-Schools/Story/).

   I served as Head of English in the School of Arts, English and Languages (July 2018-June 2019). I was previously Head of English in 2016 in the lead-up to the formation of Arts, English & Languages.

   I am a recruitment ambassador for North America for the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. As part of this role, I attended the 2017 (Los Angeles), 2018 (Philadelphia) and the 2019 (Washington, D.C.) NAFSA conferences on behalf of the University.

   I am a member of the University's North America Strategy Group, chaired by the PVC for Internationalisation and Engagement.

   I am a founding member of the University's Centre for the Americas research network.

   I am a member of the University's Periodic School Review panel.

   I am a member of the AHSS Cross-Faculty and Joint Degrees Subgroup.

   I am a member of the University's Joint Empowerment Group.

   I serve on the AHSS Faculty Student Appeal Committee (FSAC) and the Central Student Appeal Committee (CSAC).

   I am the Staff Forum representative for the School of Arts, English and Languages.

   I have been an appraiser and a PDR reviewer for colleagues in both the former School of English and in the School of Arts, English and Languages since 2014.

   I have served on Institutional Disciplinary Panels as required by Academic Council.

   I have served as a member of the University's Collaborative Provision Group.

   I was Director of Internationalisation for the School of Arts, English and Languages from October 2018 to December 2019.

   I was a member of the AHSS Study Abroad and International Exchanges Subgroup (2018-19).

   I was the Director of Education in the School of English (2014-16), a member of the University's Courses and Regulations Committee and the AHSS Faculty DE on the Higher Education Review Group that prepared Queen's institutional audit in November 2015.

   For RAE 2008 I collated the School of English documentation and drafted the RA5 narrative (scored at 100% 4*) for an overall subject profile of 35 30 25 10.

   As Postgraduate Director of Education for the School, I authored English's submission as part of the University's successful bid to the AHRC for BGP1.

Other

Selected other publications:

'After Thirty Falls': New Essays on John Berryman, ed. with Philip Coleman (Rodopi, 2007);

'Reading Fitzgerald Reading Keats' in William Blazek and Laura Rattray, eds. Twenty-First Century Readings of Tender is The Night (University of Chicago Press, 2007);

Anne Sexton & Middle Generation Poetry: The Geography of Grief (Praeger, 2004);

Formerly the Chair (2011-2016) of the Irish Association for American Studies (iaas.ie; @theIAAS) he is Professor in American Literature with research and teaching interests in twentieth-century American poetry, contemporary American fiction, as well as in film (e.g. American Hitchcock). He also has wider interests in revolutionary America, the American nineteenth century, westerns, and American narratives of addiction and alcohol control. In the field of poetry, his teaching and research focuses on Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, the Middle Generation poets, and Mark Doty.

I currently serve as the EAAS representative for the Irish Association for American Studies and am a member of the British Association for American Studies (BAAS; baas.ac.uk). I am also a member of Modernist Studies Association, the MLA (Modern Languages Association), the SCMS (Society for Cinema and Media Studies) and PAMLA (Pacific and Ancient Modern Language Association).

I edited the Oxford University Press centenary edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise (2020) (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/this-side-of-paradise-9780198848110?q=this%20side%20of%20paradise&lang=en&cc=gb#). In addition, I am the series editor for OUP's new centenary editions of Fitzgerald's fictions. I also edited the new Penguin (US) edition of The Great Gatsby (with a foreword by Min Jin Lee, 2021). Beyond this core research interest in Fitzgerald, I have recently completed articles on the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop and John Berryman ahead of REF2021.

Further work on Fitzgerald's short stories from the 1930s will be appearing in The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review in 2021/22. In terms of my poetry interests, I will be working on articles on the poetry of Wallace Stevens, R.S. Thomas, and Mark Doty after REF2021. I am also developing a monograph-length study of Elizabeth Bishop.

Longer term, I am compiling an illustrated biography of Dorothy Parker and I foresee other related, more academically focused pieces coming out of this research.

Recent journal articles include:

'John Berryman's Last Prayers' in Literature and Theology  https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frz031

'Elizabeth Bishop's Work of Fire' in Mosaic 53.1 (March 2020)

Other publications include:

'The Bestseller and the Blockbuster Mentality' in Kirk Curnutt, ed. American Literature in Transition, 1970-1980 (Cambridge University Press, 2018);

'Anne Sexton's Transformations' in Harold Bloom, ed. Anne Sexton (Blooms Modern Critical Views, 2015);

 'A.A. and the Redeployment of Temperance Literature' in Journal of American Studies (2014) http://journals.cambridge.org/repo_A88Cqmob;

 'Berryman, Sexton and the limits of Poetic Language' in the English journal (Winter 2013)  http://english.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/eft038ijkey=iMUPSqttCqkv72u&keytype=ref);

'After Thirty Falls': New Essays on John Berryman, ed. with Philip Coleman (Rodopi, 2007);

'Reading Fitzgerald Reading Keats' in William Blazek and Laura Rattray, eds. Twenty-First Century Readings of Tender is The Night (University of Chicago Press, 2007);

Anne Sexton & Middle Generation Poetry: The Geography of Grief (Praeger, 2004);

Teaching

My office hours for Spring semester 2023 are Mondays 12-1 and Fridays 10-11, other times available by appointment.

At undergraduate level I convene the Liberal Arts modules LIB7001 Incorrigibly Plural and LIB7003 America's Aftermaths.

In terms of American literature, I convene the stage 2 module ENG2172 Inventing America , and a stage 3 module dedicated to the works of Wallace Stevens & Elizabeth Bishop (ENG3333 Stevens & Bishop).  

I am interested in supervising projects in the following areas: Elizabeth Bishop, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Anne Sexton, Wallace Stevens, twentieth- and twenty-first-century American poetry, nineteenth- and twentieth-century American fiction, contemporary American cultural studies, film, literatures of addiction, Temperance literature, Transcendentalism, the American West, literature and suicide, literature and theology, and related fields of American Studies, broadly defined.

Administrative Leadership

Since 2016 I have been the AHSS Faculty lead on the M Liberal Arts degree programme (http://www.qub.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/mlba-um-liberal-arts-mlibarts-y300/).

I am the Programme Co-ordinator of the Story summer school (https://www.qub.ac.uk/International/International-students/Studyabroad/Summer-Schools/Story/) that will launch in June 2022.

I am a recruitment ambassador for North America for the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. As part of this role, I attended the 2017 (Los Angeles), 2018 (Philadelphia) and the 2019 (Washington, D.C.) NAFSA conferences on behalf of the University.

I am a member of the University's USA Strategy Group, chaired by the PVC for Internationalisation and Engagement.

I am a founding member of the University's Centre for the Americas research network.

I am a member of the University's Periodic School Review panel.

I am a member of the AHSS Cross-Faculty and Joint Degrees Subgroup.

I serve on the AHSS Faculty Student Appeal Committee (FSAC) and the Central Student Appeal Committee (CSAC).

I am the Staff Forum representative for the School of Arts, English and Languages.

I have been an appraiser and a PDR reviewer for colleagues in both the former School of English and in the School of Arts, English and Languages since 2014.

I have served on Institutional Disciplinary Panels as required by Academic Council.

I was Director of Internationalisation for the School of Arts, English and Languages from October 2018 to December 2019.

I was a member of the AHSS Study Abroad and International Exchanges Subgroup (2018-19).

I served as Head of English in the School of Arts, English and Languages (July 2018-June 2019). I was previously Head of English in 2016 in the lead-up to the formation of Arts, English & Languages.

I was the Director of Education in the School of English (2014-16), a member of the University's Courses and Regulations Committee and the AHSS Faculty DE on the Higher Education Review Group that prepared Queen's institutional audit in November 2015.

For RAE 2008 I collated the School of English documentation and drafted the RA5 narrative (scored at 100% 4*) for an overall subject profile of 35 30 25 10.

As Postgraduate Director of Education for the School, I authored English's submission as part of the University's successful bid to the AHRC for BGP1.

Management  & Administration

2006-2008: I collated and wrote the School of English RAE 2008 submission.

2006-2010: Postgraduate Director of Education, Chair School Postgraduate Committee, Chair MA Examination Board, Member Postgraduate Advisory Board, Member School Management Board, Member University Academic Board

2010-2012: Chair School of English Examination Board