Dr Rob Turner
Lecturer in 20th and 21st-Century Literature
Extension: 2116
Telephone: 01392 722116
Office: Room 210 (hours: Mon 10.30am-12.30pm, Tues 10.30-11.30am; please use sign-up sheet on door)
Rob Turner's research is focused on American literature, with a particular interest in experiments in the epic mode, ranging from Herman Melville to Marguerite Young. Other areas of interest include African American counterfactual writings, and the poetics of hip-hop.
His first monograph is titled Counterfeit Culture: Truth and Authenticity in the American Prose Epic Since 1960, and is scheduled for publication by Cambridge University Press in early 2019, where it will form part of the Studies in American Literature and Culture series. This book examines the birth of "alternative facts" in American fiction, tracing the long history of inauthenticity as a conscious national mode. Authors discussed in detail include Thomas Pynchon, Andy Warhol, and William T. Vollmann.
He is currently working on his second book, Hip-Hop in American Literature and Culture, an edited collection of essays exploring rap as a poetic medium. This volume will bring together a number of contemporary critics, examining the relationship between the MC and other traditional figures (from Senegalese griots to Nuyorican slam artists), and reading key methods and tropes in relation to currents in American oral and print poetry. The collection is scheduled for publication by Cambridge University Press in late 2020.
After completing his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2015, Rob was appointed a Teaching Fellow in American Literature at UCL. He is a regular contributor to the Wire magazine.
