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Dr Miles Leeson

Reader in English Literature

Dr Miles Leeson

About

Dr Miles Leeson is the Director of the IMRC and Visiting Research Fellow at Kingston University.

He is the lead editor of the Iris Murdoch Review, the Series Editor of ‘Iris Murdoch Today’ with Palgrave Macmillan, and has published widely on Murdoch’s work.

He published Iris Murdoch: Philosophical Novelist (Continuum) in 2010, the edited collection Incest in Contemporary Literature (Manchester University Press, 2018), the festschrift Iris Murdoch: A Centenary Celebration (Sabrestorm Fiction, 2019), the edited collection Iris Murdoch and the Literary Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) and is currently writing Iris Murdoch: Feminist. All enquiries related to the IMRC should be directed to him in the first instance.

Professional

Module Co-ordinator for:

  • Year 1  Decadence and Desire: Late 19th Century Literature
  • Year 1 Conflicts and Controversies in Victorian Literature
  • Year 1 Contemporary Fiction: War, Women, and the World
  • Year 2 Agents of Change: Women’s Writing in the 20th and 21st Centuries
  • Year 3   European Literary Legacies: Writing the City (Venice)
  •  MA  Literature in the Present Moment
  • MA Activating Research

Research

Dr Leeson focuses on areas including:

  • Contemporary British and European fiction
  • Intertextuality in Fiction
  • Transdisciplinary work in philosophy and ethics in relation to Literature
  • Trauma Studies

He is also the Director of the Iris Murdoch Research Centre.

Key Publications

Monographs and Edited Collections

  • Iris Murdoch: Philosophical Novelist London Continuum Press, 2010 (Paperback, October 2011)
  • Incest in Contemporary Literature  Manchester University Press, 2018 (Paperback, 2019)
  • Iris Murdoch: A Centenary Celebration  Sabrestorm Fiction, 2019
  • Iris Murdoch and the Literary Imagination  Palgrave Macmillan 2022
  • Iris Murdoch, Feminist  (In development)

Articles and Essays

  • ‘Morality in a World without God: Iris Murdoch and Martin Heidegger’ in Simone Roberts and Alison Scott-Baumann (eds.) Iris Murdoch and the Moral Imagination: Essays Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Press June 2010 [p.221-237]
  • ‘Iris Murdoch’s A Severed Head – A Revision of Ideas: Freud and Nietzsche’ in The McNeese Review McNeese University, Lake Charles, Louisiana Vol. 47, November 2009 [p.66-84]
  • ‘The Engendered and Dis-engendered Other in Iris Murdoch’s Early Fiction’ in Claire Westall and Rina Kim (eds.) Cross-Gendered Voices: Appropriating, Resisting, Embracing Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan May 2012 [p.113 – 127]
  • ‘The French Connection: Iris Murdoch and Raymond Queneau’ in Mark Luprech (ed.) Iris Murdoch: Influence and Influences Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press (2014)
  • ‘“[T]he thing that makes us different from other people”: Narrating incest through ‘différance’ in the work of Angela Carter, A.S. Byatt and Doris Lessing’ (Co-authored) in Miles Leeson (ed.) Incest in Contemporary Literature  Manchester University Press, 2018
  • ‘Avuncular Ambiguity: Ethical virtue in Murdoch’s The Black Prince and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Mandarins’ in Miles Leeson (ed.) in  Incest in Contemporary Literature  Manchester University Press, 2018
  • ‘Encoding Love: Hidden Correspondence in the fiction of Brigid Brophy and Iris Murdoch’ in Richard Canning and Gerri Kimber (eds.) Brigid Brophy in Transition, 2019
  • ‘Iris Murdoch: Fictive Theologian’ in Andrew Taylor and Paul Fiddes (eds.) Iris Murdoch and Theology, Oxford: Firedint Press, 2019
  • ‘Encoding Love: Hidden Correspondence in the fiction of Brigid Brophy and Iris Murdoch’ in Richard Canning and Gerri Kimber (eds.) Brigid Brophy in Transition, Edinburgh University Press, 2020

Media Work

Miles has appeared on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 5Live, as well as writing for The Guardian, English Review, Books Ireland, and the Northern Ballet, and featuring on the Netflix documentary series ‘Myths and Monsters’.

Reviews and Contributions

  • Member of the Editorial Board for the Postgraduate English Journal, University of Durham
  • Reader for Miscelanea, University of Zaragoza
  • Reader for University of Iowa Press
  • Review of Bran Nicol, Iris Murdoch: The Retrospective Fiction Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004 in Textual Practice Vol. 20 2006 [p.573 – 576]
  • Review of Roula Oikonomakia, Metaphysical Ethography: ‘Gods, Godgames and Goodness’ in John Fowles’ The Magus and Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea Bern: Peter Lang, 2008 in The Iris Murdoch Review Vol 1, 3 [p.46 – 47]
  • Review of Matt Kimmich, Offspring Fictions: Salman Rushdie’s Family Novels Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2008 in The European Journal of English Studies (2012)
  • Review of Eibhear Walshe (ed.), Irish Writers in their Time: Elizabeth Bowen Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2009 in The European Journal of English Studies ( 2012)
  • Review of Anne Rowe and Avril Horner (eds.), Iris Murdoch and Morality Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 in Miscelanea, University of Zaragoza ( 2012)

Research Output

Book Sections

Leeson, M. (2023) Iris Murdoch and Schopenhauer. In: The Schopenhauerian Mind. Routledge Philosophical Minds . Routledge, London, pp. 544-555. ISBN 9780367501532 (In Press) 10.4324/9780367501532

Leeson, M. (2023) 'Adolescent Girls Attract Ghosts': Iris Murdoch and the supernatural. In: Iris Murdoch and the Literary Imagination. Iris Murdoch Today . Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp. 147-162. ISBN 9783031272158 10.1007/978-3-031-27216-5_9

Leeson, M. (2022) Is Iris Murdoch a Philosophical Novelist? In: The Murdochian Mind. Routledge philosophical minds . Routledge, London, UK, pp. 363-375. ISBN 9780367468019

Leeson, M. (2020) Encoding Love: Hidden Correspondence in the Fiction of Brigid Brophy and Iris Murdoch. In: Brigid Brophy Collection. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 143-161. ISBN 9781474462662

Leeson, M. (2018) Avuncular ambiguity: Ethical virtue in Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince (1973) and Simone de Beauvoir's The Mandarins (1954). In: Incest in Contemporary Literature. Manchester University Press, Manchester. ISBN 9781526122162

Leeson, M. and Miller, E. (2018) “[T]he thing that makes us different from other people”: Narrating incest through “difference” in the work of Angela Carter, A.S. Byatt and Doris Lessing. In: Incest in Contemporary Literature. Manchester University Press, Manchester. ISBN 9781526122162

Leeson, M. (2014) The French Connection: Iris Murdoch and Raymond Queneau. In: Iris Murdoch Connected. Tenn Studies Literature . The University of Tennessee Press, Tennessee, pp. 45-57. ISBN 978-1-62190-056-6

Leeson, M. (2012) The engendered and dis-engendered other in Iris Murdoch's early fiction. In: Cross-Gendered Literary Voices: Appropriating, Resisting, Embracing. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, pp. 113-131. ISBN 978-0-230-29978-0

Books

Leeson, M. and White, F. (2023) Iris Murdoch and the literary imagination. Iris Murdoch Today . Palgrave Macmillan, London. ISBN 978-3-031-27215-8

Leeson, M. (2019) Iris Murdoch: A Centenary Celebration. Saberstorm Fiction, Devizes. ISBN 9781912972005

Leeson, M. (2018) Incest in Contemporary Literature. Manchester University Press, Manchester. ISBN 9781526122162

Leeson, M. (2010) Iris Murdoch: Philosophical Novelist. Continuum Literary Studies . Continuum, London. ISBN 978-0-8264-4370-0

Other department members

Alison MacLeod
Visiting Professor in Creative Writing
Clare Toombes
Student Employability Adviser
Dave Swann
David Swann
Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing

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