I am currently working on science fiction of the 1960s, especially on New Wave science fiction and literary experimentation. I am also pursuing new developments in critical/creative practice, as well as developing a collaborative projects in film, and in the relation between image and text.
I am happy to supervise students in twentieth-century American fiction and film, and in particular science fiction, gender (especially masculinity) in film, city fictions, and critical/creative and creative writing projects.
Brian studied for his undergraduate degree in English and American Literature at the University of Warwick, took an MA in American Studies at the University of East Anglia, and completed his PhD at the University of Liverpool, in postwar American dystopian science fiction. He taught literature and film at NEWI in Wrexham and at the University of Chester before moving to Lancaster in September 2006.
He has published, with John H. Cartwright, Literature and Science: Social Impact and Interaction (Santa Barbara and Oxford: ABC-Clio, 2005), which offers a broad overview of the relationship between literature and science from the early modern period to contemporary literature and culture; and Masculinity in Fiction and Film: Representing Men in Popular Genres 1945-2000 (London and New York: Continuum, 2006), which encompasses the genres of science fiction, spy fictions, film noir and detective fictions, and the Western, to investigate constructions of masculinity in the post-war period. A seond monograph on masculinities, Contemporary Masculinities in fiction, film and television, was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2015.
A monograph on the contemporary London writer Iain Sinclair was published as part of Manchester University Press's Contemporary British Novelists series in 2007. Brian has also edited a collection of essays on screen adaptations of literature, Textual Revisions, which was published by the Chester Academic Press in 2009, and written the Reader's Guide to Essential Criticsm: Science Fiction (Palgrave, 2014).
Brian has supervised research students in the Gothic, fantasy fictions, graphic novels and spatiality, the post-war American short story, epic fantasy, Post-war American literature and culture, and bio-technological science fiction. He would welcome applications for research projects on twentieth-century American fiction and film in general, but in particular science fiction, gender (especially masculinity) in film, city fictions, and critical/creative and creative writing projects.
Brian currently teaches on ENGL204 American Literature before 1900, ENGL208 Literature and Film, and his specilaist unit ENGL365 Science Fiction. He also lectures on Contemporary Literature, Criticism and Theory and first-year courses.
Brian researches and publishes in several fields, including contemporary British fiction, science fiction, London fictions, masculinities, and film studies. Recent and current work includes seminar and conference papers, and published articles and book chapters, on the fiction of J.G. Ballard and Michael Moorcock; masculinity, mobility and spy fiction; teaching masculinities; tape technology and Gothic film; and time travel as pathological symptom.
He has several book projects ongoing. He is writing Fuzzy Revolutions: Science Fiction in the 1960s with Liverpool University Press (2014) and an article on John Le Carre.
Brian's blog, (SF) 365, can be found here.
