Dr Arun Sood
Overview
Dr Arun Sood is Lecturer in Global Pre-1800 Literatures. His research and creative practice is underpinned by varied interests including the intesections between postcolonial and environmental writing, oral cultures, diaspora, global romanticisms, and cultural memory studies. His books include Robert Burns and the United States of America: Poetry, Print, and Memory, c. 1786-1886 (a critical study of the Romantic poet and song-collector Robert Burns in Global contexts); New Skin For The Old Ceremony: A Kirtan (a 'road novel' exploring notions of home, heritage, and belonging among the South Asian diaspora); and Searching Erskine (a non-fiction artbook exploring the intersections between art, ecology, and place released with an audio component). His essays and reviews have appeared the Guardian, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement.
Arun was appointed Lecturer in Global Pre-1800 Literature at the University of Exeter in 2023. Previously, he was a Fulbright Scholar at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C; Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress; and Lecturer in Romanticism at the University of Plymouth, following the completion of his AHRC-funded PhD at The University of Glasgow. Summary of Recent Activities- Arun is currently co-editing an Edinburgh University Press cross-journal special issue on 'Race and Racism in Scotland' set for publication in 2024. He is also editing a special issue of the Edinburgh University Press peer-reviewed journal The Burns Chronicle on 'Burns and North America', forthcoming 2025.
- Arun was recently awarded an AHRC IAA grant for the project Resisting Silence: Revealing everyday lives of plantations through material, oral, and archival histories. The project is co-led with museum curator Dr Marenka Thompson-Odlum (Pitt Rivers Museum) and archaeologist Dr Ashley Coutu (University of Oxford). It focuses attention on the neglected landscapes of colonial estates on the island of St Lucia (a British colony between 1814-1979), and the lives of enslaved people who laboured on them. A major follow on grant is in preparation.
- Arun recently published and released a creative non-fiction book and accompanying 12" vinyl album titled Searching Erskine which explores the intersections between place, landscape, and memory through a focus on the uninhabited island of Vallay in the Outer Hebrides. It has received attention from several shows on BBC Radio 3, BBC 6 Music's Cerys Matthews Show and BBC Scotland. The album was also The Guardian's 'Folk Album of the Month' in March 2022. Plans to tour the accompanying project exhibtion are currently underway.
- Arun published his debut novel New Skin For The Old Ceremony with award winning pyublisuher 404 INK in September 2022. The novel explores the intersections between personal histories and broader colonial legacies among the South Asian diaspora in Scotland.
- In April 2023, Arun's article “We were amused by an itinerant singing-man”: Print, Writing, and Orality in Mungo Park’s Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa" appeared in Eighteenth-Century Fiction.
- Arun is currently preparing his second monograph, Scottish Print Culture, Cuba, and the Caribbean, c. 1700-1800, co-authored with Cuban novelist, translator and scholar Dr Félix Flores Varona.
Research
Dr Arun Sood’s research spans across a diverse range of Global anglophone literatures and encompasses both critical writing and creative practice. Key research interests include:
- Orality and Print
- The Global Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
- Cultural Memory Studies
- Folk culture and Balladry
- Postcolonial Ecocriticism / Settler Colonial and Indigenous Studies
- Place, Heritage, and Diaspora
- Scottish and American Literatures in Global / Transatlantic Contexts
- Anglophone Caribbean Literatures
- Sound Studies
- Island Studies
Research collaborations
Resisting Silence: Revealing everyday lives of plantations through material, oral, and archival histories is an ongoing research project in collaboration with museum curator Dr Marenka Thompson-Odlum (Pitt Rivers Museum) and archaeologist Dr Ashley Coutu (University of Oxford) which addresses the landscapes of former Caribbean sugar plantations as 'sites of forgetting'. The project focuses attention on the neglected landscapes of eighteenth-century colonial estates on the island of St Lucia and uses archival research, oral history, poetry, and archaeological evidence to reveal more about the enslaved peoples who worked on the estates; as well as generate responses to the legacies of plantation slavery using a community-centred approach. The project aims to bring eighteenth-century material culture into greater dialogue with texts and archives, in specific relation to the commemoration and cultural memory of these neglected sites and landscapes. In phase one of the project, documentary evidence from the St. Lucia National Archives and the Colonial Office papers at the UK National Archives were consultued before a one-month period of of fieldwork on Balenbouche Estate, Saint Lucia. A number of poets and artists including Kendel Hyppolyte, Jane King, and Robert Lee were invited to participate in workshops at the former sugar plantation site, comprising of site walks, engaging with colonial archives, and examining recently excavated material culture and objects from both colonial and pre-colonial periods. This resulted in the poets and artists composing responses to the site – which has all come to inform an academic article currently in press, as well as a chapbook which will be released alongside an exhibition and suite of audio works currently in production. Plans for a major follow on grant bid are currently underway, as well as exhibitions in both the UK and Saint Lucia.Supervision
Research supervision Arun welcomes research projects in the following areas:- The Global Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
- Global Romanticism
- Transatlantic Studies
- Orality and Print
- Cultural Memory Studies
- Postcolonial Ecocriticism / Settler Colonial and Indigenous Studies
- Place, Heritage, and Diaspora
- Scottish Literature in Global / Transatlantic Contexts
- Anglophone Caribbean Literatures
- Sound Studies
Publications
Copyright Notice: Any articles made available for download are for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the copyright holder.
| 2023 | 2022 | 2020 | 2018 | 2016 | 2015 |
2023
- Sood A. (2023) “We were amused by an itinerant singing-man”: Print, Writing, and Orality in Mungo Park’s Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, DOI:10.3138/ecf.35.2.193.
2022
- Sood A. (2022) Searching Erskine: On Art, Ecology, and Place, Blackford Hill/Random Spectacular.
- Sood A. (2022) New Skin for the Old Ceremony, 404 Ink Publishing.
2020
- Arun S. (2020) Burns, Whittier, and the “Rustic Bard of New Hampshire”: Mediations in Transatlantic Reception and Influence, Studies in Romanticism, volume 59, no. 2, pages 163-184, DOI:10.1353/srm.2020.0008.
2018
- Sood A. (2018) "Patrick Colquhoun and Slavery: Eighteenth-century Glasgow merchant", The Eighteenth- Century Intelligencer, volume 32, pages 15-18.
- Sood A. (2018) The Burnsian Palimpsest: Robert Burns in American Cultural Memory, c. 1840-1866, Symbiosis: a journal of anglo-american literary relations, volume 22, no. 1, pages 49-71.
- Sood A. (2018) Robert Burns and the United States of America: Poetry, Print, and Memory 1786–1866, Palgrave Macmillan, DOI:10.1007/978-3-319-94445-6.
2016
- Sood A. (2016) "Dreaming of the Self: Thomas De Quincey and the Development of the Confessional Mode", E-Sharp, volume 20.
- Sood A. (2016) ‘(Post)-Revolutionary Print Networks: Pirated Editions of Robert Burns’ Poetry in The United States of America, 1787-1859’, Oxford Research in English, volume 2.
2015
- Sood A. (2015) "A Modern Poet on the Scotch Bard": Walt Whitman's 1875 Essay on Robert Burns, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, volume 32, no. 4, pages 230-236, DOI:10.13008/0737-0679.2172. [PDF]
External impact and engagement
In recent years Arun has increasingly worked in partnership with cultural institutions, community groups, and policy-makers on both national and international levels.
In particular, his research and practice has informed the investigation and intepretation of historic sites, cultural landscapes and material culture. Partnerships of this vein have included working with Glasgow Life and Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum to develop civic and institutional strategies towards engaging with the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade; as well as working on decolonial curatorial initiaitves the The Box Museum and inidigenous North American partners and artists in the lead up to the 250th anniversary of the Mayflower sailing.
More recenty, Arun has been working with the Ministry of Tourism Saint Lucia and the The Saint Lucia Archaeological and Historical Society to co-develop strategies and initiatives towards the neglected sites and landscapes of former sugar plantations.
Media
Arun's various research projects, publications, and creative outputs have featured extensively in national and international media, including The Guardian, BBC 6 Music. BBC One, BBC Radio 3, The Conversation and Electronic Sound Magazine and Caught By The River.
Teaching
Modules taught include:
EAS1035 - Beginnings: English Literature before 1800
EAS3234 - Citizens of the World
EAS2102 - Satire and the City: English Literature 1660-1750
EAS3003 - Dissertation
