Dr Claire Drewery
Senior Lecturer
Summary
Claire is a Senior Lecturer in English literature and has been Course Leader for BA English Literature since September 2015. She values her interaction with students and the opportunity this has given to develop a diverse range of modules and a variety of teaching and learning methods. Her teaching is informed by her main research interests, which include modernism, literary and popular cultures, visual media, literary theory, liminality and short fiction. In addition, Claire is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and one of the founding members of the May Sinclair Society.
About
Since joining Sheffield Hallam University I have developed and delivered a diverse range of teaching across a variety of formats: seminars, study-skills workshops, one-on-one supervision, interactive lectures and student-led sessions. I have written and taught modules on ‘The City in Literature’, ‘Children’s Literature’, ‘Literary Contexts’, ‘Great Contemporary Texts and Popular Culture’ and ‘Adaptation: Text to Screen, Screen to Text’, as well as creating a series of specialist, interactive lectures on short fiction. I also have longstanding teaching interests in war and interwar fiction, early twentieth century and dystopian literatures, which have informed many of the seminars delivered across the range of modules I teach. Out of these sessions, students have been inspired to develop some fascinating, original undergraduate dissertations which I have been privileged to supervise.
My main research interests are in modernism and twentieth-century literary cultures. In July 2013 I co-founded the May Sinclair Society and organised and hosted their first International Symposium at Sheffield Hallam. I am the author of Modernist Short Fiction by Women: the Liminal in Katherine Mansfield, Dorothy Richardson, May Sinclair and Virginia Woolf (Ashgate 2011). My chapter on ‘Liminal and “Liminoid” Discourses in Modernist Women’s Short Fiction: Performance, Spectatorship, and Cinema’ appeared in Liminality and the Short Story (2014). I have published essays on ‘“The failure of this now so independently assertive reality”: Mysticism, Idealism and the Reality Aesthetic in Dorothy Richardson’s Short Fiction’ and ‘The Modernist Short Story: Fractured Perspectives’. More recent critical projects have included an edited collection, May Sinclair: Re-thinking Bodies and Minds (Edinburgh, 2016), a special edition of the Literature Compass journal entitled ‘One Hundred Years of the Stream of Consciousness’ (June 2020), and an essay on ‘Katherine Mansfield and Sexuality’ for the Bloomsbury Handbook to Katherine Mansfield (2020). Current research projects include an article exploring the relationship between text and image in the work of May Sinclair and the artist Jean de Boschère, as well as the editing of Dorothy Richardson’s short fiction for Oxford University Press. I am also working on a monograph entitled Modernism’s Corporeal Epiphany: Visionaries, Voyeurs and the Embodiment of the ‘Revelatory’ Moment in Literature and Film 1890-1961. I am a regular-peer reviewer for Tinakori, the journal of Katherine Mansfield studies. Specialist areas of interest My main research interests are in modernist aesthetics and interdisciplinary cultures, twentieth-century writing, literary and cultural theory, visual and popular cultures, women’s writing, particularly May Sinclair, Dorothy Richardson and Katherine Mansfield, liminality, and short fiction.
Specialist areas of interest
Claire's main research interests are in Modernism, twentieth-century literary cultures, literary and cultural theory, visual and popular cultures, women’s writing, liminality and short fiction.
Teaching
College of Social Sciences and Arts
English
English Literature
Claire is Module Leader for ‘Children’s Literature’ and she teaches on a number of other modules in the Department, including ‘Introduction to English Studies’ and ‘Literature in the Twentieth Century’.
Research
I am currently editing Dorothy Richardson’s short fiction. In addition, I am a member of the Editorial and Advisory Boards of the Dorothy Richardson Scholarly Editions Project.
Publications
Journal articles
Lin, A.C., Xie, F., Chang, R., Beaver, N., Drewery, C., Collins, C., ... Zhang, S. (2021). Amyloid-intercalated graphene oxide membranes for enhanced nanofiltration. Carbon Trends, 5, 100135. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cartre.2021.100135
Bowler, R., & Drewery, C. (2020). 'One Hundred Years of the Stream of Consciousness: Editors' Introduction. Literature Compass, 17 (6), e12570. http://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.12570
Drewery, C. (2018). Which of my many … hundreds of selves?’ Extending Mansfield’s Posthumous Literary Reception’. Katherine Mansfield Studies, 11 (Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf), 199-212.
Drewery, C. (2011). 'The failure of this now so independently assertive reality’: Mysticism, idealism and the reality aesthetic in Dorothy Richardson’s shorter fiction. Pilgrimages:The Journal of Dorothy Richardson Studies, 4. http://dorothyrichardson.org/PJDRS/Issue4/Contents_assets/Drewery11.html
Book chapters
Drewery, C. (2023). ‘A Sudden Corporeal Manifestation: The “Sublimative Epiphany” as Material Aesthetic in the Modernist Novels of May Sinclair and James Joyce’. In May Sinclair in her Time: Reappraising May Sinclair’s Role in Early-Twentieth-Century Literature and Philosophy. Edinburgh University Press
Drewery, C. (2020). Katherine Mansfield and sexuality. In Martin, T. (Ed.) The Bloomsbury Handbook to Katherine Mansfield. (pp. 437-454). London: Bloomsbury Academic: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/bloomsbury-handbook-to-katherine-mansfield-9781350111462/
Drewery, C., & Bowler, R. (2016). May Sinclair's Interdisciplinarity. In May Sinclair Re-Thinking Bodies and Minds. (May Sinclair: Re-Thinking Bodies and Minds). Edinburgh University Press
Drewery, C. (2016). 'Transgressing Boundaries, Transcending Bodies: Sublimation and the Abject Corpus in Uncanny Stories and Tales Told by SImpson'. In Bowler, R., & Drewery, C. (Eds.) May Sinclair Re-Thinking Bodies and Minds. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-may-sinclair.html
Drewery, C. (2016). 'Transgressing Boundaries, Transcending Bodies: Sublimation and the Abject Corpus in Uncanny Stories and Tales Told by SImpson'. In Bowler, R., & Drewery, C. (Eds.) May Sinclair Re-Thinking Bodies and Minds. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-may-sinclair.html
Drewery, C. (2016). The modernist short story: fractured perspectives. In Head, D. (Ed.) The Cambridge History of the English Short Story. (pp. 135-151). Cambridge University Press: http://doi.org/10.1017/9781316711712.009
Drewery, C. (2015). Liminal and liminoid discourses in modernist women’s short fiction : performance, spectatorship, and cinema. In Achilles, J., & Bergmann, I. (Eds.) Liminality and the Short Story : Boundary Crossings in American, Canadian, and British Writing. (pp. 50-62). New York: Routledge: https://www.routledge.com/Liminality-and-the-Short-Story-Boundary-Crossings-in-American-Canadian/Achilles-Bergmann/p/book/9780415738910
Books
Bowler, R., & Drewery, C. (Eds.). (2016). May Sinclair Re-Thinking Bodies and Minds. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-may-sinclair.html
Drewery, C. (2011). Modernist short fiction by women : the liminal in Katherine Mansfield, Dorothy Richardson, May Sinclair and Virginia Woolf. Ashgate.
Drewery, C. (2011). Modernist short fiction by women: The liminal in Katherine Mansfield, Dorothy Richardson, May Sinclair and Virginia Woolf.
Scholarly editions
Drewery, C., & Bowler, R. (Eds.). (2020). One Hundred Years of the Stream of Consciousness. Literature Compass.
Other activities
I am Postgraduate External Examiner for the University of Buckingham.
Postgraduate supervision
I am currently supervising a Ph.D. on the work of Ethel Lina White.
Media
The May Sinclair Society has a regularly-updated website, Facebook page and Twitter account.