Dr Harry Acton

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Overview
Overview
Biography
I am a critic and fiction writer.
My research interests include:
- The experiential and ethical dimensions of reading, and their implications for critical practice.
- The relations between reading, critical aesthetics and literary innovation.
- Ecocriticism, especially fiction’s potential to shape a non-anthropocentric ethics.
Highlights
'Anthropocene Aesthetics in D.H. Lawrence's New World Fictions', Reading D.H. Lawrence in the Anthropocene, ed. by Terry Gifford (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming 2024).
'Reading the Nonhuman in D.H. Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature and Women in Love', D.H. Lawrence Review Vol. 44, No.2 (2022), 88-109.
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Research
Research
Research interests
- The experiential and ethical dimensions of reading, and their implications for critical practice.
- The relations between reading, critical aesthetics and literary innovation
- Ecocriticism, especially fiction’s potential to shape a non-anthropocentric ethics
Research overview
My PhD research, which I am developing as a monograph entitled Reading Feeling: The Embodied Reader in D.H. Lawrence’s Criticism and Fiction, explores the relation between Lawrence’s omnivorous, lifelong habits of autodidactic reading and his developing modernist critical and fictional practice.
I am also completing a novel that explores, in the form of a near-future fictional memoir, the unfolding, incalculable effects of ecological breakdown in rural Britain.
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Supervision and teaching
Supervision and teaching
Teaching
Teaching modules
- Writing the Planet (AREN292S7)
- Contemporary Writing 2: Genre (ENHU041S7)
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Publications
Publications
Article
- Acton, Harry (2019) Reading the nonhuman in D.H. Lawrence's 'Studies in Classic American Literature' and 'Women in Love'. The D. H. Lawrence Review 44 (2), pp. 88-109. ISSN 0011-4936.