MA (Cant) PhD (Tor)
Email chris.ackerley@otago.ac.nz
Office1N1 Arts Building
Projects
Conference — "Unattended Moments": The Medieval Presence in the Modernist Aesthetic
The Malcolm Lowry Project: Under the Volcano
The Beckett Monad, in build-up and final form.
Expertise
My field is Modernism, with expertise in Malcolm Lowry and Samuel Beckett, and research interests in Nabokov, Eliot, Pound, Joyce, J. G. Farrell, Borges and Roa Bastos. My research speciality is annotation.
Teaching
ENGL 121 English Literature: The Remix
ENGL 131 Controversial Classics
ENGL 250 Special Topic: Irish Literature in English (not offered 2018)
Possible supervision
I am willing to supervise sensible theses on the above authors but also on some aspects of Irish Literature or Literature and Science (but not Science Fiction). I have annotated Lowry and Beckett extensively, and while interested in all aspects of these authors, I am also willing to supervise editorial and/or annotation projects on other texts and writers. Theoretical orientation: I am unsympathetic to what Alan Sokal calls the "intellectual impostures" of postmodernism, but I am at ease with genetic criticism, although most of my research interrogates or reflects the principles and problems of validity in interpretation.
Current research
My current major projects are:
(1) a study of Samuel Beckett and Science (London: Continuum);
(2) annotating three works by Malcolm Lowry: (i) a long-lost but newly-discovered novel, In Ballast to the White Sea, (ii) the 1940 Volcano, and (iii) Swinging the Maelstrom; as part of the EMiC (Editing Manuscripts in Canada) project, in association with the U Ottawa Press;
(3) a Marsden-funded study of the modernist aesthetic, with reference to its Medieval roots and traditions, in association with the Centre for Modernism and Christianity (University of Bergen).
I am on the advisory boards of the Journal of Beckett Studies, Samuel Beckett Today (Amsterdam), Historicising Modernism (London: Continuum P), Modernism and Christianity (U Bergen), Otago French Notes (U Otago) and the Ionesco-Beckett Research Centre (National University of Theatre and Cinematography, Bucharest).
Publications
Ackerley, C. J., & Gontarski, S. E. (2004). The grove companion to Samuel Beckett: A reader's guide to his works, life, and thought. New York: Grove Press, 686p. Authored Book - Research
Ackerley, C. J. (Ed.). (2009). Watt: Samuel Beckett. London: Faber, 223p. Edited Book - Research
Ackerley, C. (2010). Obscure locks, simple keys: The annotated 'Watt'. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 296p. Authored Book - Research
Ackerley, C. (2010). Demented particulars: The annotated 'Murphy'. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 264p. Authored Book - Research
Ackerley, C. & Large, D. (2009). The Malcolm Lowry Project: Under the volcano: A hypertextual companion [Website]. Retrieved from http://www.otago.ac.nz/english/lowry Other Research Output