Dr Maria Christou
BA in English Literature, University of Lancaster, 2006-2009.
MA in Literary and Cultural Studies, University of Lancaster, 2009-2010.
PhD, University of Lancaster, 2011-2015.

20th century literature; modernism; postmodernism; literary food studies; critical animal studies; theory; ecocriticism; Samuel Beckett; Georges Bataille; Paul Auster; Margaret Atwood.

My research interest in C20th literary representations of food and eating involves a variety of different angles. One is the function of food in modernist and postmodernist movements (as well as avant-garde movements like Futurism and Surrealism), and, in particular, how these representations conform to, or challenge, these movements' wider principles, such as the injunction to 'make it new'. It also involves delving into intersections with different subfields, such as critical animal studies, ecocriticism, and literature and religion.

My first monograph, entitled Eating Otherwise: The Philosophy of Food in Twentieth-Century Literature, will be published by Cambridge University Press.

My first article, 'I Eat Therefore I Am: An Essay on Human and Animal Mutuality', published in Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, engages with the field of critical animal studies through an alimentary perspective.

Another article of mine that engages with the field of critical animal studies, entitled 'The Turn to Affect, the Human-Animal Question, and Patrick Suskind's Perfume' (currently under review).

My exploration of the theological resonances of the alimentary in the fiction of Margaret Atwood has appeared in Literature and Religion, in an article entitled 'A Politics of Auto-Cannibalism'.

My engagement with the field of ecocriticism from an alimentary perspective will appear in the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Literature and Food, in the form of a chapter contribution entitled 'Alimentary Monstrosities: Genetic Modification and Ethical Ambiguities in Contemporary Fiction'.

ENGL 100: English Literature; ENGL101: World Literature (Assistant Director); ENGL 201: The Theory and Practice of Criticism; ENGL 301: Dissertation (I am currently supervising work on Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondatje, Khaled Hosseini, Donna Tartt, Kazuo Ishiguro, and others). 

Previous Teaching 

ENGL419: Research Methodologies in English Literature