Dr Ellen McWilliams

Senior Lecturer

4021

01392 724021

Overview

My interests are in the fields of twentieth-century women's fiction, anti-colonial history and the aftershocks of colonial violence, intergenerational memory/postmemory, transgenerational trauma, ancestral guilt, literary responses to the pain of revolution and civil war, political violence and literary form, and migration and diasporic identity. I am a member of the Routes: Migration, Mobility, Displacement Network and the Centre for Histories of Violence and Conflict.

The story of my writing can be found at this site. My book, Resting Places: On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution, has just been published by Belfast's Beyond the Pale Books. Literary scholar Lucy McDiarmid describes it as 'the creation of a new literary form' while historian Ronald Hutton concludes that ‘Land, family, community and tragic history make one of the most powerful and poignant combinations of which human experience is capable, and rarely has it found such an expressive and humane voice, capable of such wonderful language, as that of Ellen McWilliams’. BBC War Correspondent Fergal Keane calls it it 'a work of eloquent, haunting beauty, a song of mourning and revelation that deserves the widest possible audience. This is a story rooted in a place and time, but it is truly the story of all wars in all times'. Further details of pre-publication reviews from Linda Connolly, Lucy McDiarmid, Claire Mitchell, Fintan O'Toole, Jonathan Meades, and other readers are available on this page. To date, the book has been reviewed in the Irish Times, the Irish Examiner, the Irish News, the Irish Post, the Morning Star, the Western People, the Irish Evening Echo, the Southern Star, the Bristol Post, the Northern Review of Books, and the Belfast News Letter with reviews forthcoming in History Ireland, the New York Irish Echo, The Arts Desk, the Irish Literary Supplement, the History Workshop, the Oxonian Review, New Hibernia Review, Irish Studies Review, and the Dublin Review of Books. A short article on the genesis of the book, 'A Broken Prayer for a Most Painful History', can be found on the RTE Culture site and a profile of Resting Places was recently published in the New York Irish Echo.

I have written three academic books, Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman (2009), Women and Exile in Contemporary Irish Fiction (2013), and Irishness in North American Women's Writing: Transatlantic Affinities (2021). My next academic book is provisionally entitled Hauntings: Trauma and Narrative Repair in Irish Women's Lifewriting.

I have a special interest in New York magazine culture and have published four essays on Maeve Brennan's writing for The New Yorker, including '"A Sort of Rathmines Version of a Dior Design": Maeve Brennan, Self-Fashioning, and the Uses of Style' for Women: A Cultural Review and an article on Brennan's years at Harper's Bazaar, 'Maeve Brennan, Celebrity, and Harper's Bazaar in the 1940s'.

I have received a number of awards for research, including an Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholar Award, a British Library-Eccles Centre Fellowship in North American Studies, and a John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies Fellowship.

I contributed to an RTE Radio 1 Book Show programme dedicated to the life and work of Maeve Brennan and in 2017 coordinated a series on Women Writers and Irish America for The Irish Times to celebrate the centenary of Brennan's birth. I was also one of the academic consultants for, and appeared in, the BBC1 documentary 'Imagine... Margaret Atwood' (directed by Katy Homan and presented by Alan Yentob).

My teaching at Exeter focuses on Transatlantic Literary Relations, American Literature, and Irish Literature. I teach a special option in Year 3, 'Modern Irish Literature: Rebels & Radicals', and a strand of the first year module Academic English called 'Write For Your Life: Autobiographical Fiction, Lifewriting, and the Personal Essay'. I have received three awards for teaching, including a University of Exeter Teaching Fellowship.

I grew up in West Cork but have lived in the West Country for over 20 years. I attended the Convent of Mercy Sacred Heart Secondary School in Clonakility and hold close the value of a Sacred Heart education. I was lucky to benefit from the Irish government's visionary expansion of Higher Education in the mid-to-late 1990s and luckier still to receive a Cork County Council Higher Education Grant to study for an Arts Degree at University College Cork.

I was the first in my family to go to university and have been committed to widening access to Higher Education and to teaching in community settings since the beginning of my academic career.

My Office Hours for this term fall on Monday (In Person) and Tuesday (On Teams) in Queen's Room 120. Please book in for a meeting here.

Research

I have research interests in twentieth-century women's writing, Irish, British and North American literature, writing and diasporic identity, and transatlantic literary relations. I have also published on life writing, self-fashioning, New York magazine culture, and James Joyce and influence.

My first book, Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman, was published in 2009. It received the Margaret Atwood Society Award for Best Book in that year and was reviewed in The European Journal of American Culture, The Review of English Studies, The Journal of American Studies, Contemporary Women’s Writing, The European Legacy, The Routledge Bibliography of English Studies, The Year's Work in English Studies, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, and Études Anglaises.

My second book, Women and Exile in Contemporary Irish Fiction, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013 and was reviewed in The Journal of Interdisciplinary Feminist Thought, Irish Studies Review, Irish University Review, The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, The Irish Review, and The London Irish Feminist Network Newsletter. An early review of the book concluded: ‘McWilliams makes a major contribution to the study of contemporary Irish fiction as well as to the study of the Irish diaspora. Although this is certainly a scholarly book and McWilliams shows a broad and deep understanding of an enormous range of scholarly and theoretical texts, her writing is so direct and clear and her arguments so carefully made that this work will be of interest to and readable by many people outside of the field of literary study… In short, McWilliams gave me a new way of thinking about this fiction, which is exactly what we hope for when we begin reading a scholarly work but all too seldom find’ (Professor Maureen Reddy, Journal of Interdisciplinary Feminist Thought).

My third book was published in 2021. Professor Anne Fogarty (University College Dublin) described it as ‘a lively, thought-provoking, engrossing, and eminently readable study of cross-connections in North American women’s writing. Irishness in North American Women’s Writing: Transatlantic Affinities is a timely, original, and richly observant study of six diverse women writers and a valuable intervention in the field of transatlantic studies’.

I am a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Margaret Atwood Studies and Irish Studies Review and am a reader and reviewer for Women: A Cultural Review, Contemporary Women’s Writing, Journal of Gender Studies, Irish Studies Review, Irish University Review, The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, and Canadian Literature.

Awards for Research

Fulbright Scholar Award in the Humanities; AHRC Fellowship; John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies Visiting Fellowship - Free University of Berlin; University of Notre Dame Cushwa Centre for Irish-American Studies Research Award; Fulbright Occasional Lecturer Bursary; Boston College Institute for the Liberal Arts Bursary; Institute of English Studies Visiting Fellowship, School of Advanced Studies, University of London; Clinton Institute for American Studies Visiting Fellowship, University College Dublin; Moore Institute Visiting Fellowship, NUI Galway (2012 & 2015); Margaret Atwood Society Award for Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman; British Library-Eccles Centre Visiting Fellowship in North American Studies; Canadian High Commission Faculty Research Award; International Council for Canadian Studies Fellowship.

Research collaborations

I have participated in a number of programmes funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, including the AHRC Engaging with Government Programme (Institute of Government, 2013) and the AHRC Leadership Programme (Clore Duffield Foundation, 2012). I am a member of the Fulbright Ireland Research Mentoring Network.

Supervision

Research students

Lead Supervisor - Kate Limond, '"Mocked with Art": Strategies of Representation in A.S. Byatt’s Fiction'

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 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2007 |

2023

McWilliams E. (2023) Resting Places: On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution, Beyond the Pale Books.

2022

McWilliams E. (2022) 'Dunmanway Fields: Saying Something to Break the Silence about a Great Local Hurt', The Irish Times.

2021

McWilliams EM. (2021) Irishness in North American Women's Writing: Transatlantic Affinities, Palgrave Macmillan.

2020

McWilliams E. (2020) 'Looking for Irish America in the Memoirs of Mary McCarthy', Women’s Studies, volume 49.4, pages 391-391, DOI:10.1080/00497878.2020.1760825.
McWilliams EM. (2020) ‘Relocations: Diaspora, Travel, Migrancy’, Irish Literature in Transition, 1980-2020, Cambridge University Press.
McWilliams EM. (2020) 'American-Irish Literary Relations', Irish Literature in Transition, 1940-1980, Cambridge University Press.

2019

McWilliams EM. (2019) Review of Oscar Wilde and Contemporary Irish Drama (Graham Price), The Irish Review.

2018

McWilliams EM, Murray T. (2018) 'Introduction – The Literature and Culture of the Irish Abroad', Irish Studies Review, volume 26.1, pages 1-4.
McWilliams EM. (2018) Review of Irish Feminist Futures (Claire Bracken), Journal of Gender Studies.
McWilliams EM. (2018) 'Maeve Brennan and James Joyce', Irish Studies Review, volume 26.1, pages 111-123.
McWilliams EM. (2018) 'Diasporic and Transnational Writing 1950-present', A History of Modern Irish Women’s Literature, Cambridge University Press.

2017

McWilliams E, Murray T. (2017) The Literature and Culture of the Irish Abroad - Special Issue of Irish Studies Review, Taylor & Francis.
McWilliams EM. (2017) Women Writers and Irish America – A Series in Celebration of the Centenary of Maeve Brennan's Birth, The Irish Times.
McWilliams EM, Murray T. (2017) Irishness and the culture of the Irish abroad, Irish Studies Review, volume 26, pages 1-4, DOI:10.1080/09670882.2017.1404687.
McWilliams EM. (2017) 'Mary McCarthy and the Cure for Nostalgia', The Irish Times.
McWilliams EM. (2017) 'Maeve Brennan, Celebrity, and Harper's Bazaar in the 1940s', Special Issue on Gender, Sexuality, and Intersectionality, Breac: A Journal of Irish Studies.

2016

McWilliams EM. (2016) '"A Sort of Rathmines Version of a Dior Design": Maeve Brennan, Self-Fashioning, and the Uses of Style', Women: A Cultural Review, volume 27, no. 1, pages 1-20.
McWilliams EM. (2016) 'James Joyce and the Lives of Edna O'Brien', Modernist Afterlives in Irish Literature and Culture, Anthem Press (Anthem Irish Studies Series), 48-59.

2015

McWilliams EM. (2015) Review of Irish Writing London (Tom Herron), Canadian Journal of Irish Studies.
McWilliams EM. (2015) ‘Adaptations of Joyce in the Fiction of Patrick McCabe’, Joycean Legacies, Palgrave Macmillan, 71-91.

2014

McWilliams EM. (2014) '"No Place is Home – It is as It should be": Exile in the Writing of Maeve Brennan', Éire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies, volume 49 (3/4), no. 49.3-4, pages 95-111, DOI:10.1353/eir.2014.0015.
McWilliams EM. (2014) Review of Reading the Contemporary Irish Novel 1987-2007 (Liam Harte), Irish Studies Review.
McWilliams EM. (2014) Review of Irish Literature in the Celtic Tiger Years 1990-2008 (Susan Cahill), Canadian Journal of Irish Studies.

2013

McWilliams EM, Walter B. (2013) New Perspectives on Women and the Irish Diaspora - Special Issue of Irish Studies Review, Taylor & Francis.
McWilliams EM. (2013) Review of London Irish Fictions: Narrative, Diaspora and Identity (Tony Murray), Irish Studies Review, volume 21, no. 4, pages 498-500.
McWilliams EM. (2013) Review of Irish Women Writers: New Critical Perspectives (Elke D'Hoker, Raphaël Ingelbien,and Hedwig Schwall), Irish Studies Review, no. 21.1, pages 136-138.
McWilliams EM. (2013) Women and Exile in Contemporary Irish Fiction, Palgrave Macmillan.
McWilliams EM, Walter B. (2013) 'Introduction – Special Issue on New Perspectives on Women and the Irish Diaspora', Irish Studies Review, no. 21.1, pages 1-5.
McWilliams EM. (2013) ‘Avenging “Bridget”: Irish Domestic Servants and Middle-Class America in the Short Stories of Maeve Brennan’, Irish Studies Review, no. 21.1, pages 99-113.

2012

McWilliams EM. (2012) 'Patrick McCabe', The Encyclopedia of the Gothic, Wiley-Blackwell.
McWilliams EM. (2012) 'Margaret Atwood', The Encyclopedia of the Gothic, Wiley-Blackwell.
McWilliams EM. (2012) ‘The Vanishing Irish in John McGahern’s Amongst Women’, The Irish Review, no. 44, pages 104-117.

2011

McWilliams EM. (2011) Review of Engendering Genre: The Works of Margaret Atwood (Reingard Nischik), Contemporary Women's Writing, no. 5.2, pages 162-164.
McWilliams EM. (2011) ‘Architectures of Exile: Confinement, Insularity, and Escape in William Trevor’s Felicia’s Journey’, Journal of Gender Studies, no. 20.3, pages 237-250.
McWilliams EM. (2011) ‘Making it Up with the Motherland: Revision and Reconciliation in Edna O’Brien’s The Light of Evening’, Women: A Cultural Review, no. 22.1, pages 50-69.

2010

McWilliams EM, Griffin B. (2010) Irish Studies in Britain: New Perspectives on History and Literature, Cambridge Scholars Press.
McWilliams EM. (2010) ‘Enabling Undergraduate Research – In Search of “The Angel in the House”: Women and Domestic Culture in the Nineteenth Century’.
McWilliams EM. (2010) ‘Madness and Mother Ireland in the Fiction of Patrick McCabe’, Irish Studies Review, no. 18.4, pages 391-400.
McWilliams EM. (2010) ‘Knitting Paradise Lost: Masculinity and Domesticity in the Fiction of Carol Shields', Women Constructing Men, Rowman and Littlefield, 171-184.
McWilliams EM. (2010) Introduction, Irish Studies in Britain: New Perspectives on History and Literature, Cambridge Scholars Press, 102-108.

2009

McWilliams EM. (2009) Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman, Routledge.
McWilliams EM. (2009) ‘Homesickness in John McGahern’s Short Stories “Wheels” and “A Slip-up”’, Journal of the Short Story in English, no. 53, pages 69-79.

2007

McWilliams EM. (2007) Entries on Margaret Atwood, Edna O'Brien, Roddy Doyle, and Patrick McCabe.
McWilliams EM. (2007) ‘Margaret Atwood's Canadian Hunger Artist: Postcolonial Appetites in The Edible Woman’, Kunapipi: Journal of Postcolonial Writing, no. 28.2, pages 63-72.
McWilliams EM. (2007) ‘Keeping Secrets, Telling Lies: Fictions of the Artist and Author in the Novels of Margaret Atwood’, Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, and Social Justice / Études critiques sur le genre, la culture, et la justice sociale, no. 32.1, pages 25-33.
McWilliams EM. (2007) ‘The Pleasures and Dangers of Storytelling in Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride’, Notes on Contemporary Literature, no. 37.3, pages 8-10.

External impact and engagement

I have been active in widening participation and teaching in community settings since the beginning of my academic career. I established the Access to English scheme at the University of Bristol (2003) and the University of Exeter Scholars in English programme (2013).

As a PhD student and Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at the University of Bristol, I developed a number of lifelong learning programmes on nineteenth- and twentieth-century women’s writing to coincide with BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Watershed Fiction project.

More recently, I have developed a series of outreach and community projects that involved working with community groups, agencies, and research initiatives concerned with the welfare of Irish elders in Britain and the United States, including: the Federation of Irish Societies, the London Irish Women’s Centre, the Aisling Irish Community Centre in New York, and the Gallagher Initiative (Coordinators: Professor Elaine Walsh, Hunter College, CUNY, and Professor Brenda McGowan, Fordham University).

In addition to funding research towards the monograph Women and Exile in Contemporary Irish Fiction, my AHRC Fellowship (2011-2012) supported a conference on 'New Perspectives on Women and the Irish Diaspora' (March 2012), which included a roundtable discussion with charity-based organisations that work closely with the Irish community in Britain. Proceedings of the conference were published as a special issue of Irish Studies Review in 2013 (co-edited with Professor Bronwen Walter, Anglia Ruskin University).

The AHRC also provided funding for a seminar series on 'Women and Exile in Irish Literature and Culture' that I developed in collaboration with the London Irish Women’s Centre in autumn-winter 2011. The seminar series led to the Rian Art Project coordinated by artist Sarah Strong in 2012 and was one of the subjects of Sarah's short film 'I Hear Fish Drowning' (2014).

While on a Fulbright Scholarship to Fordham University in New York in 2012, I developed a lifelong learning reading group project in collaboration with the Institute of Irish Studies at Fordham and the Aisling Irish Community Centre in Woodlawn.

I have written for The Irish Post and served as an academic consultant for the Federation of Irish Societies, as well as contributing to research for the documentary Breaking Ground: The Story of the London Irish Women’s Centre (Toy Factory Films, 2013). In 2013 I contributed to an RTE Radio 1 Book Show programme dedicated to the life and work of New York writer Maeve Brennan and in 2017 coordinated a series on Women Writers and Irish America for The Irish Times to celebrate the centenary of Brennan's birth (fellow contributors included Angela Bourke, Claire Bracken, Patricia Coughlan, and Sinéad Moynihan).

I was one of the academic consultants for, and appeared in, the 2017 BBC1 documentary 'Imagine... Margaret Atwood' (directed by Katy Homan and presented by Alan Yentob).

Teaching

I have received a number of awards for teaching including a Faculty of Arts Teaching Prize from the University of Bristol, a Bath Spa University Teaching Fellowship, and a University of Exeter Teaching Fellowship.

Modules taught

Biography

I completed my undergraduate degree at University College Cork and was awarded a scholarship to the University of Constance to pursue postgraduate study.

I received a National University of Ireland Travelling Prize in English before completing my PhD at Bristol with the assistance of a University of Bristol Arts Faculty Graduate Student Scholarship and an International Council for Canadian Studies Graduate Student Scholarship. Prior to being appointed at Exeter, I taught at the University of Bristol and Bath Spa University and spent time as a Fulbright Scholar at Fordham University in New York.

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