Peter Fifield
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Overview
Overview
Biography
Peter came to Birkbeck in 2015, following research and teaching positions at St John's College, Oxford, and the University of York.
His research interests include modernist writing and medical humanities in its many guises, historical and contemporary. He is particularly interested in the diverse cultural uses of physical illness and its treatment, and would be pleased to receive expressions of interest on this topic from prospective PhD students. His most recent book is Modernism and Physical Illness (OUP, 2020) https://global.oup.com/academic/product/modernism-and-physical-illness-9780198825425?cc=gb&lang=en&
He has published widely, including on the work of Samuel Beckett, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, and Winifred Holtby.
His first book was about Samuel Beckett and the ethicist Emmanuel Levinas, (Palgrave, 2013), https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137294074 , and he remains interested in Beckett's work, and especially its intersections with illness and medicine, and with philosophy.
His current research is constructing a module of the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project, https://www.beckettarchive.org , comprising a genetic edition of Beckett's late drama. A separate, nascent project looks at inter-war best-sellers.
Apart from liking books, he is a keen, sometimes obsessive cyclist, and an accomplished eater.Highlights
My latest book is:
Modernism and Physical Illness: Sick Books
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/modernism-and-physical-illness-9780198825425?q=fifield&lang=en&cc=gb
Web profiles
Administrative responsibilities
- Director MA Modern and Contemporary Literature
- Co-Director MA Medical Humanities: Bodies, Cultures, and Ideas
Professional memberships
British Association of Modernist Studies
Board Member, London Modernism Seminar
Modernist Studies Association
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
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Research
Research
Research interests
- Modernism
- Illness, medicine, and Medical Humanities
- Samuel Beckett
- Inter-war Best-sellers
Research Centres and Institutes
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Supervision and teaching
Supervision and teaching
Supervision
I am currently supervising five PhD students, alongside various colleagues in the departments of English and History.
Harry Acton is working on D. H. Lawrence and readingLise Grønvold is working on contemporary feminist illness writing
Emily Best is working on Samuel Beckett's radio texts
Fiona Buck is working on the modernist salons of New York
Pedro Ferreira is working on the cultural dissemination of John Bowlby's writing
As of 2020, I have supervised three doctoral research projects to completion: Dr Vicky Sparrow, Dr Laura Cushing-Harries, and Dr Fran Lock.Current Supervisions
- Joint Principal Supervisor for 3 Birkbeck students
- Second Supervisor for 2 Birkbeck students
- external for 1 Birkbeck students
Teaching
Teaching modules
- Doing English (AREN208Z4)
- Reading and Writing the Contemporary (AREN223S7)
- Modernism and its Others (AREN253S6)
- Language Matters (ENHU122S7)
- Critical Entanglements in the Medical Humanities (SSHC483S7)
- Methods: Medicine, Culture, Text (SSHC484S7)
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Publications
Publications
Article
- Fifield, Peter (2020) Is Literary History sick? Thoughts on a declinist trope. Modernism/Modernity ISSN 1071-6068. (In Press)
- Fifield, Peter (2018) On the invisible threat: bacteriologists in fiction and periodical advertisements, 1894-1913. Journal of Victorian Culture 24 (1), pp. 33-52. ISSN 1355-5502.
- Bowler, Rebecca and Fifield, Peter (2018) The dental record, miscellany and the mediator as crank. Pilgrimages: The Journal of Dorothy Richardson Studies 10, pp. 50-69. ISSN 2050-9502.
- Eve, Martin Paul and Fifield, Peter (2016) Martin Eve & Peter Fifield on ‘No’s Knife’ at the Old Vic. Birkbeck Department of English and Humanities Blog
- Fifield, Peter (2015) Seeing things: the brain and Beckett's archive. Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui 27 (1), pp. 171-183. ISSN 0927-3131.
Book
- Fifield, Peter (2020) Modernism and physical illness: sick books. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198825425. (In Press)
- Fifield, Peter (2013) Late Modernist style in Samuel Beckett and Emmanuel Levinas. New Interpretations of Beckett in 21st C. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137294074.
Book Section
- Fifield, Peter (2016) '“I often wish you could answer me back: and so perhaps do you!” E. M. Forster and BBC Radio Broadcasting'. In: Feldman, M. and Mead, H. and Tonning, E. (eds.) Broadcasting in the Modernist Era. Historicizing Modernism. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781474275583.
- Fifield, Peter (2015) Samuel Beckett with, in, and around Philosophy. In: Van Hulle, D. (ed.) New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Beckett. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 145-157. ISBN 9781107427815.
- Fifield, Peter (2015) The body, pain and violence. In: Hillman, D. and Maude, U. (eds.) Cambridge Companion to the Body in Literature. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 116-131. ISBN 9781107644397.
- Fifield, Peter (2014) 'I am writing a manifesto because I have nothing to say’ (Soupault): Samuel Beckett and the Interwar Avant-Garde. In: Gontarski, S.E. (ed.) The Edinburgh Companion to Samuel Beckett and the Arts. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. pp. 170-184. ISBN 9780748675685.