Dr Daniel O'Gorman
FHEA
Vice Chancellor Research Fellow in English Literature
School of Education, Humanities and Languages
Role
I am currently module leader for the third-year undergraduate module, 'Contemporary Literature', having taught it many times previously in previous roles at Brookes, including as a Lecturer in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature from 2016 to 2018. This module defines contemporary writing as that which has been published within the past ten years. As a result, the texts and topics on it change slightly every year, always making it an exciting module to teach.
I also lead the English and Modern Languages research cluster, Networks and Localities.
I have worked at Oxford Brookes previously in more teaching-focused roles, and have also taught extensively on contemporary literature, critical theory, study skills and many other topics at London South Bank University, Bucks New University, and Royal Holloway, University of London, where I completed my PhD in 2014.
I am an Associate Editor at the Journal of Postcolonial Writing (Routledge).
Teaching and supervision
Courses
Modules taught
Current teaching
- Contemporary Literature (3rd year)
Previous teaching
- Critical Debates and Methods (MA)
- Dissertation (3rd year)
- Contemporary Literature (3rd year)
- Postcolonial Literatures (3rd year)
- Contemporary American Fiction (2nd year)
- Crime, Culture and Transgression (2nd year)
- Landscapes and Mindscapes (2nd year)
- World Literature (1st year)
- Critical Theory in Action (1st year)
- Culture, Criticism and Literature 1 (1st year)
- Culture, Criticism and Literature 2 (1st year)
Research
My research interests include:
- Contemporary literature
- Transnationalism
- Postcolonialism and globalisation
- Terror, terrorism and counterterrorism
- Islamophobia
- Trauma theory
- Spatial theory
- Affect theory
I specialise in transnational contemporary literature, with a focus on 'terror' and official responses to it. My first book, Fictions of the War on Terror: Difference and the Transnational 9/11 Novel (Palgrave Macmillan: 2015), analysed American post-9/11 fiction in a transnational context.
My co-edited volume, The Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Literary Fiction (Routledge: 2018; with Robert Eaglestone; interview here), offers a broad and varied set of approaches to contemporary literary studies, and my next book, Global Literature and Terror: Twenty-First Century Perspectives, is contracted with Routledge. This will expand on my first book's focus on novels to encompass poetry, drama, short stories, comics and memoir, while also tracing more recent developments in discourses surrounding political violence, including responses to far-right attacks, the continuing normalisation of Islamophobia, and the proliferation of drones in the context of global conflict and surveillance.
I am also interested in exploring the similarities and differences between the terms 'terror' and 'terrorism', as well as the impact of both upon experiences of space, whether public or private, global or local, online or offline. I am theorising these spatial experiences by drawing on the idea of the 'terrorscape'.Research group membership
Departmental memberships
- 'Networks and Localities' research cluster (cluster leader)
- 'Memory and Life-writing' research cluster
External memberships
- British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies (BACLS)
- Postcolonial Studies Association (PSA)
- Modern Language Association (MLA)