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Staff Profile

Dr Adam Stock

Senior Lecturer in English Literature

Profile image of Adam Stock

As a researcher I specialise in the interdisciplinary areas of Utopian Studies, sf and modernisms. My book, Dystopian Fiction and Political Thought: Narratives of World Politics (Routledge, 2019) examines dystopian fiction from the first half of the twentieth century. My current work focuses on questions about boundaries and borderlands, spatialisation, and the temporalities of speculative fiction in the twentieth and twenty-first century.

I joined York St John University as Lecturer in English Literature in 2015 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2019. I hold a BA (Hons) in History and Politics (Birmingham, 2006), an MA in Cultural and Intellectual History (QMUL, 2007) and completed my PhD on mid-twentieth century dystopian fiction in the English Studies Department, Durham University (2012). My teaching practice at York St John has included literary and critical theory, experimental writing, the post-human turn and employability modules, in addition to those with a period and genre-based focus.

I began teaching at Durham University in 2008. Prior to joining York St John, I also taught at Newcastle University, where I was Research Associate from 2012 to 2015. During this period some of my work was awarded funding by the Leverhulme Trust and the AHRC. In summer 2015 I was Visiting Scholar at Concordia University, Montreal. I served as Hon. Treasurer of the Utopian Studies Society 2013 to 2019.

I welcome enquiries from potential research students with interests in any of my research and teaching specialisms.

Further information

Teaching

Courses that I teach

  • LIT4004M Intro to Literary Studies II
  • 2EN450 Literary Theory
  • 2EN510 Literature at Work
  • 2EN601 SF for Survival
  • 3EN601 The Experimental Century
  • LIT7001M Theorising the Contemporary
  • LIT7004M World, Globe, Literature
  • LIT7005M Speculative Bodies

Recent publications

Journal articles and book chapters

  • “The Future-As-Past in Dystopian Fiction” Poetics Today 37.3 (September 2016). pp. 415-442.
  • “The Blind Logic of Plants: Biology and Enlightenment in John Wyndham’s The Day of The Triffids”. Science Fiction Studies 42.3 (November 2015). pp. 433-457.
  • “Little Nephews: Big Brother’s Literary Offspring” in George Orwell Now Ed. Richard Keeble. (New York: Peter Lang, 2015). pp. 63-80.
  • “Dystopia as Post-Enlightenment Critique in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four” in Dystopia Matters Ed. Fátima Vieira. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013). pp. 115-29.
  • “Of Pigs and Men: The Politics of Nature in George Orwell’s Fiction” in Orwell Today Ed. Richard Keeble. (Bury St Edmunds: Abramis Press, 2012). pp. 38-53.

Reviews

  • Review: Patrick Parrinder, Utopian Literature and Science: From the Scientific Revolution to Brave New World and beyond. Review of English Studies. March 2016.
  • “A Handbook for Doom” Review: Voigts, Eckart and Alexandra Boller (eds) 2015. Dystopia, Science Fiction, Post-Apocalypse: Classics, New Tendencies, Model Interpretations. Anglia 134.2 (June 2016).

Forthcoming

  • Dystopian Fiction and Political Thought: Narratives of World Politics. Monograph under contract with Routledge. In Preparation. Expected Publication Date: 1 April 2018. (c. 90,000 words).
  • “In the Mesh” App. Brian Greenspan, Adam Stock, et al. In Preparation. Expected Publication Date: May 2018.

Selected recent conference contributions

  • The Ten Commandments, Revisited: a Round Table on Approaches to Ruins. Past Matters, Research Futures: AHRC conference, Royal Society London, 12-13 Dec 2016.
  • Ruin in Utopia. Congreso internacional 500 años de Utopía. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 15-16 Dec 2016.
  • Living After the End Times: Utopia, Apocalypse, and Ruins. ACLA, Harvard University, 17-20 March 2016.
  • Time after time: Apocalypse, Ruins and the Cities of Dystopian Fiction. 16th International Conference of the Utopian Studies Society, Newcastle University, 1-4 July 2015.
  • Roundtable: “Ruins, Temporalities, Utopia and the City”. AHRC Symposium, “Utopias, Temporalities and Futures: Critical Considerations for Social Change.” Bristol Zoo, 20-21 May 2015.
  • Re-thinking Ruins and Temporality in Fiction and Film. AHRC Care for the Future/Labex Pasts in the Present Joint Workshop, Royal Society London 22-23 Apr 2015.
  • Blast Paris! Ambivalent topographies in Modernist Fiction. Society for Utopian Studies. Montreal, 22-24 Oct 2014.
  • To the Metropolis, and Beyond! Ambivalent Topographies in the Fiction of Wyndham Lewis. European Avant-garde and Modernist Studies network (EAM). University of Helsinki 28-31 Aug 2014.
  • Little Nephews: Big Brother’s Literary Offspring. George Orwell Now. The George Orwell Society symposium, University of Lincoln. (Invited speaker) 12 June 2014.
  • “Ghastly Paraphernalia”: A Cultural History of the Hypodermic Syringe and Drug Use. “Understanding Human Flourishing” conference, Durham University. 16-17 May 2013.