Dr Becky Munford

(hi/ei)

BA (Oxford), MA, PhD (Exeter)

Cyhoeddiad

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Ymchwil

My research interests lie in the fields of gender studies and women's writing, with a particular focus on fashion and dress history, spectrality, European and erotic Gothic, experimentalism and feminist theory.

I am currently researching and writing a monograph, Making Strides: A Literary and Cultural History of Women in Trousers, which draws on a variety of examples (including literary texts, art and photography, fashion design and magazines, legislation, newspapers and ephemera, medical and psychoanalytic discourses, film and television) in order to illuminate and analyse the complex nexus of meanings assigned to and by women in trousers in the British Isles, France and America since the French Revolution. Also emerging from this project is Women in Trousers: A Visual Archive, a collection of digital images that together tell the story of women in trousers as a history of social, cultural and political protest and change. While trousers and other bifurcated garments provide its primary focus, the archive is also home to images that illuminate more generally the history of women and dress reform in Britain, Europe and America.

Related to this, I have recently completed an article on 'Medical Bloomerism' and the pathologisation of the trousered woman. I am also working on two essays that examine sartorial and aesthetic interconnections: the first explores the 'subject of trousers' in selected works by Virginia Woolf; the second considers fashion, femininity and experimentalism in Anaïs Nin's writing.

Angela Carter's work has provided a particular focus for my broader interest in theories of gender and sexuality, intertextuality, and the Gothic in its European and erotic modes. Decadent Daughters and Monstrous Mothers: Angela Carter and European Gothic (Manchester University Press, 2013 [paperback 2015]), which was short-listed for the Allan Lloyd Smith Memorial Prize, examines Carter's textual and intellectual engagements with a dirty lineage of European Gothic that can be mapped from the Marquis de Sade's obsession with desecration and defilement, through Baudelaire's perverse decompositions of the muse and decadent imaginings of infernal femininity, to surrealism's violent dreams of abjection. My recent research in Gothic studies includes an essay on spectral femininity for Women and the Gothic (Edinburgh University Press, 2016).

A concern with the Gothic and spectrality also underpins my interest in feminist history and theory. Feminism and Popular Culture: Investigating the Postfeminist Mystique (I.B. Tauris, 2013; Rutgers University Press, 2014), co-authored with Melanie Waters, takes as its focus a range of popular texts that have emerged in the wake of media speculations about the death of feminism and traces the movements of 'ghost feminism' in contemporary culture.

I welcome applications from potential postgraduate students planning research in any of these areas.

Addysgu

My teaching interests are in modern and contemporary literature and culture, especially women's writing, gender and sexuality, feminist theory and history, Gothic and spectrality, and fashion. At Cardiff, I have taught the following modules: Reading and Identity; The Victorian Novel; Critical Theory 1; Critical Approaches to Gender & Sexuality; Feminisms; Magical Realism; Contemporary Women's Writing; Gothic and Gender (MA); and Women’s Writing, 1970s to the present (MA).

In the academic session 2017-18 I am teaching:

• Girls (year 2)
• Interwar Experiments: Sex, Gender, Style (year 3)
• Spectral Femininities (MA)

I am currently supervising or have supervised the following PhD theses:

• Angela Carter’s Toyshop: A Materialist Investigation of Angela Carter’s Representation of Things (South, West and Wales AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership)
• Anaïs Nin’s ‘Versions’ of Self
• Spectral Guises: Ghost Reading/Writing in Shirley Jackson
• Gods and Goods: Transcendental Bodies, Psychoanalysis and Material Culture in Modernist Women’s Writing 1918-1958 (South, West and Wales AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership; co-supervisor with Prof. Laura Salisbury, University of Exeter)
• From Pen to Print: Virginia Woolf, The Hogarth Press, and the Art of Literary Composition
• Hidden Mothers and Poetic Pregnancy in Women's Writing (1818 to the present day) (AHRC funded)
• The Politics of Gender and the Visual in Angela Carter and Virginia Woolf (AHRC funded)
• Sapphic Spectres: Lesbian Literature of the Weimar Republic (MPhil in Modern Languages; consultant supervisor)
• The Daughters of Modron: Evangeline Walton’s Feminist Re-Visioning of the Mabinogi (co-supervisor)

Bywgraffiad

I joined Cardiff in 2007, having worked previously at the University of Exeter (2006-2007) and the University of Manchester (2004-2006). From 2011-14 I was a member of the Executive Committee of the Contemporary Women's Writing Association, and from 2012-15 acted as UK Reviews Editor of Contemporary Women's Writing (Oxford University Press); from 2003-2006 I was a member of the Executive Committee of the Feminist and Women’s Studies Association.

Aelodaethau proffesiynol

• Cymdeithas Angela Carter
• Cymdeithas Ysgrifennu Menywod Cyfoes (Aelod o'r Pwyllgor Gwaith, 2011-14) 
• Cymdeithas Astudiaethau Ffeminyddol a Merched (Aelod o'r Pwyllgor Gwaith, 2003-06)
• Cymrawd yr Academi Addysg Uwch (ers 2008)
• Rhwydwaith Modernaidd Cymru

Safleoedd academaidd blaenorol

• 2006-07: Darlithydd mewn Llenyddiaeth yr ugeinfed Ganrif, Prifysgol Exeter
• 2004-06: Darlithydd mewn Llenyddiaeth, Diwylliant a Theori, 1850 i Gyflwyno, Prifysgol Manceinion (tymor penodol)
• 2003-04: Cymrawd Dysgu Saesneg, Prifysgol Exeter
• 2003-04: Darlithydd Rhan-amser mewn Saesneg, Prifysgol Plymouth
• 2002-03: Athro cydnabyddedig yn Saesneg, Prifysgol Exeter

Pwyllgorau ac adolygu

• Golygydd Cyswllt, Ysgrifennu Menywod Cyfoes (ers 2017)
• Aelod o'r Bwrdd Cynghori Rhyngwladol, Cymdeithas Angela Carter (ers 2018)
• Bwrdd Golygyddol Rhyngwladol, Assuming Gender (ers 2010)
• Golygydd Adolygiadau (DU), Ysgrifennu Menywod Cyfoes (2012-15)
• Pwyllgor Gwaith, Cymdeithas Ysgrifennu Menywod Cyfoes (2011-14)
• Pwyllgor Gwaith, Cymdeithas Astudiaethau Ffeministaidd a Merched (2003-06)
• Adolygydd Ashgate (UDA), Gwasg Prifysgol Caeredin, I.B. Tauris, Gwasg Prifysgol Manceinion, Palgrave, Gwasg Prifysgol Rhydychen (UDA), Routledge (UDA); ac addasu, gan dybio rhywedd, ysgrifennu menywod cyfoes, theori ffeministaidd, cyfnodolyn astudiaethau rhywedd, theori dehongli llenyddiaeth, PMLA, trawsnewidiadau ac astudiaethau Tulsa mewn llenyddiaeth menywod.

Meysydd goruchwyliaeth

Rwy'n croesawu ceisiadau neu ymholiadau anffurfiol sy'n ymwneud â goruchwyliaeth PhD yn y meysydd canlynol:

• Llenyddiaeth a diwylliant modern a chyfoes
• diwylliannau llenyddol a gweledol ffasiwn, gwisg a'r corff
• merched a merched
• ffeministiaeth a diwylliant poblogaidd
• Astudiaethau Ffeminyddol a Rhyw
• gothig a phrydferthedd (yn enwedig yn ei ddulliau Ewropeaidd ac erotig)

Ar hyn o bryd, rwy'n goruchwylio'r ymchwilwyr ôl-raddedig canlynol:

• Josie Cray, '"Ewch ymlaen o'r Dref Allan": Arbrofion Swrrealaidd yng ngwaith Anaïs Nin'
• Nerida Brand, 'Mary Coleridge and Aestheticism at the Fin de Siècle' (AHRC SWW DTP; cyd-oruchwyliwr gyda'r Athro Angelique Richardson)
• Philippa Fincher, '"Cyfeillgarwch yw Sail Ffeministiaeth": Creadigrwydd Diwylliannol Cyfeillgarwch a'u Rhyngweithio â Disgwrs Ffeministaidd Gyfoes' (cyd-oruchwyliwr gyda Dr Carrie Smith)

Goruchwyliaeth gyfredol

Josie Cray

Philippa Fincher

Myfyriwr Cyswllt Addysgu a PhD

Nerida Brand

Prosiectau'r gorffennol

• Rosie Couch, 'Merched "Pragmatically Gwael": Edrych ar y Femme Fatale Cyfoes' (AHRC SWW DTP; cyd-oruchwyliwr gyda'r Athro Helen Hanson, Prifysgol Caerwysg) – gwobrwywyd 2023
• Furette Morol. 'Angela Carter and the Politics of Authorship' (AHRC SWW DTP; cyd-oruchwyliwr gyda'r Athro Daisy Hay, Prifysgol Caerwysg) – gwobrwywyd 2022
• Robert Lloyd, 'Merched Braidd yn Haunted: Ffigurations of Spectrality yn Shirley Jackson Writing – a ddyfarnwyd 2021
• Ana Tomcic, 'Duwiau a Nwyddau – Cyrff Trawsgynnol, Seicoddadansoddiad a Diwylliant Materol yn Ysgrifennu Menywod Modernaidd 1918-1958' (AHRC SWW DTP; cyd-oruchwyliwr gyda'r Athro Laura Salisbury, Prifysgol Caerwysg) – gwobrwywyd 2019
• Amber Jenkins, 'O Ben i Brint: Virginia Woolf, Gwasg Hogarth, a'r Gelfyddyd o Gyfansoddi Llenyddol' – dyfarnwyd 2018
• Caleb Sivyer, 'Theorising the Politics of Gender and Visuality in Modernist and Postmodernist Fiction' (a ariennir gan AHRC) – a ddyfarnwyd 2016
• Emily Blewitt, 'Mamau Cudd a Beichiogrwydd Barddonol yn Ysgrifennu Menywod, 1818 hyd heddiw' (a ariennir gan AHRC) – gwobrwywyd 2016
• Hannah O'Connor, 'Sapphic Spectres: Lesbian Literature of the Weimar Republic' (goruchwyliwr ymgynghorol ar gyfer MPhil yn yr Ysgol Ieithoedd Modern) – gwobrwywyd 2014 
• Nicole Thomas, 'The Daughters of Modron: Evangeline Walton's Feminist Re-Visioning of the Mabinogi' (cyd-oruchwyliwr gyda'r Athro Stephen Knight/Carl Phelpstead) – gwobrwywyd 2012