Staff Profile
Dr Alexander Beaumont
Senior Lecturer
My teaching and research take place across the English Literature and Politics programmes at YSJU, where I am a specialist in British literature and culture from 1945 to the present and critical and political theory. I received my undergraduate degree from the University of Exeter and my MA from the University of York. I completed my PhD at the University of York in 2011 and taught there until autumn 2013, when I took up my position at York St John University.
I completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice in 2015 and am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
- School – School of Humanities
- Email – a.beaumont@yorksj.ac.uk
- Phone – 01904 876 716
- Research - View my work in RaY
Teaching
My teaching on the undergraduate degree in English Literature focuses on twentieth and twenty-first century literature and theory. I am responsible for the political philosophy strand of the undergraduate degree in Politics, which encompasses the study of modern political ideologies and the broader history of political thought. I also coordinate and teach across York St John's MA in Contemporary Literature.
Research
My research is principally organised around the intersection of politics and spatiality in British cultural production of the period 1945 to the present. My work focuses on how representations of space in the culture of this period conceptualise, but frequently foreclose, visions of the political. I have particular interests in literary and geographical theories of space, democratic political theory and the post-Marxist tradition of critical theory.
My monograph Contemporary British Fiction and the Cultural Politics of Disenfranchisement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) examines representations of urban space across a range of fiction published in the wake of Thatcherism in order to evaluate the political legacy of British cultural studies in the field of literary production. I co-edited the first collection of critical work on the Cumbrian writer Sarah Hall (Gylphi, 2023) and have co-edited and published material in special issues of Literary Geographies (on J.G. Ballard’s novel Concrete Island and the topic of 'Literary Geographies in Isolation'), C21 Literature (on melancholia in contemporary British and Irish fiction) and the Open Library of Humanities (on the topic of ‘Freedom After Neoliberalism’).
My work has appeared in Contemporary Literature and the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, as well as edited collections on the cultural politics of Thatcherism, the novelist Maggie Gee, the politics of integrity, and as part of Cambridge UP’s ‘British Literature in Transition’ series. A chapter is forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook of Literary Geographies and I am currently at work on a book-length study of twentieth- and twenty-first-century representations of the architect in British fiction.
I welcome Ph.D. proposals in any area of postwar and contemporary culture, critical theory, twentieth- and twenty-first-century political theory and the study of political ideologies. I am currently supervising the following PhD projects:
Joseph Owen Wright, ‘Ecological Plasticity: An Ecocritical and New Materialist Examination of the Concepts of Nature and Ecology in Contemporary Post-Apocalypse Fiction.’
Oscar Williams, ‘Environmentalism and the Nation-State in 21st Century Scottish Nature Writing.’
Publications
Books
Beaumont, A. and D’hoker, E., (eds.) (2023) Sarah Hall: Critical Essays. Canterbury: Gylphi.
Beaumont, A. (2015) Contemporary British Fiction and the Cultural Politics of Disenfranchisement. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Journal Issues (as editor)
Beaumont, A., Hones, S., Ridanpää, J. and Saunders, A. (2020) Literary Geographies in Isolation. Literary Geographies 6(2).
Beaumont, A. and Kelly, A. (eds.) (2018) ‘Freedom After Neoliberalism.’ Open Library of Humanities 4(2).
Beaumont, A. and Magennis, C. (eds.) (2017) ‘The Melancholy Islands.’ C21 Literature 5(1).
Beaumont, A. and Martin, D. (eds.) (2016) ‘Ballard’s Island: Histories, Modernities and Materialities.’ Literary Geographies 2(1).
Chapters and Articles
Beaumont, A. (forthcoming) ‘Contemporary Literary Geographies.’ In: Alexander, N. and Cooper, D. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Literary Geography. London: Routledge.
Beaumont, A. (2023) ‘Sarah Hall’s Material Imagination.’ In: Beaumont, A. and D’hoker, E. (eds.) Sarah Hall: Critical Essays. Canterbury: Gylphi.
Beaumont, A. and D’Hoker, E. (2023) ‘Introduction.’ In: Beaumont, A. and D’hoker, E. (eds.) Sarah Hall: Critical Essays. Canterbury: Gylphi.
Beaumont, A. (2020) ‘Hannah Arendt: Integrity and World.’ In: Carpenter, A. and Wiseman, R. (eds.) Portraits of Integrity. London: Bloomsbury.
Beaumont, A. (2018) ‘Cosmopolitanism without a World? David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas.’ Open Library of Humanities 4(2): 21, pp.1-39.
Beaumont, A. (2018) ‘Dystopia and Euphoria: Time-Space Compression and the City.’ In: Pollard, E. and Schoene, B. (eds.) Accelerated Times: British Literature in Transition, Volume 5: 1980-2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 273-288.
Beaumont, A. and Kelly, A. (2018) ‘Freedom After Neoliberalism.’ Open Library of Humanities 4(2): 25, pp.1-26.
Beaumont, A. and Magennis, C. (2017) ‘Introduction: The Melancholy Islands’. C21 Literature 5(1), pp.1-4.
Beaumont, A. (2016) ‘Ballard’s Island(s): White Heat, National Decline and Technology After Technicity Between “The Terminal Beach” and Concrete Island.’ Literary Geographies 2(1), pp.96-113.
Beaumont, A. and Martin, D. (2016) ‘Introduction: Ballard’s Island’. Literary Geographies 2(1), pp.16-30.
Beaumont, A. (2015) ‘Original Modern or a New Kind of Ordinary?’ Alluvium 4(3), n.p.
Beaumont, A. (2015) ‘Reproductive Politics and the Public Sphere: Natalism, Natality and Apocalypse.’ In: Dillon, S. and Edwards, C. (eds) Maggie Gee: Critical Essays. Canterbury: Gylphi, pp.51-77.
Beaumont, A. (2014) ‘Exile and Freedom in Jeanette Winterson's The Passion: Venice, the British Inner Cities and the Cultural Politics of Disenfranchisement.’ Contemporary Literature 55(2), pp.270-303.
Beaumont, A. (2012) ‘From Subculture to Urban Pastoral: Mapping the City, Mapping the Left.’ British Politics Review: Journal of the British Politics Society, 7(4), pp. 12-13.
Beaumont, A. (2010) ‘“New Times” Television? Channel 4 and My Beautiful Laundrette.’ In: Ho, E. and Hadley, L. (eds.) Thatcher and After: Margaret Thatcher and Her Afterlife in Contemporary Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.53-74.
Reviews
Beaumont, A. (2019) Review of J.G. Ballard: Landscapes of Tomorrow, by Brown, R., C. and Stainforth, E. (eds.). Literary Geographies.
Beaumont, A. (2016) ‘Literary Studies After the Spatial Turn’. Journal of Urban Cultural Studies 3(3), pp.395-405.
Conferences
Keynotes
Beaumont, A. (2016) ‘Cosmopolitanism Without a World? Ethics versus the Political in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.’ Keynote address presented to the Bath Spa Early Stage Researcher Conference, Bath Spa University, 16 May.
Beaumont, A. (2015) ‘English Literature and Britain’s Norths / British Literature and England’s North.’ Keynote address presented to the Melancholy Empire: British and Irish Literature in the 21st Century conference, University of Salford, 16 April.
Invited Talks
Beaumont, A. (2018) ‘Austerity and Suffering Agency in Blow Your House Down and On Black Sisters’ Street.’ Address at Humanities Approaches to Austerity in Europe and the Global South Conference, Clark University / Training Center and Séminaires De La Chambre Employees, Luxemburg, 15-18 June.
Beaumont, A. (2017) ‘Fiction, Politics and Post-Truth.’ Address at Fiction and Fake News Meets Management Conference, University of Cambridge, 18 October.
Beaumont, A. (2014) ‘Arendt, Truth and Politics.’ Address at Theoria research seminar, University of St Andrews, 12 March.
Beaumont, A. (2013) ‘Epidemics of the Will” and the Uses of Freedom.’ evekosofskysedgwick.net [Internet]
Beaumont, A. (2011) ‘Jeanette Winterson’s Venice and the Cultural Politics of Disenfranchisement.’ Address at the Centre for Modern Studies research seminar, University of York, 20 October.
Professional Activities
I co-edit the open-access, interdisciplinary journal Literary Geographies and have acted as external examiner of postgraduate research at a range of higher education institutions in the UK.
Public Engagement
Beaumont, A. (2016) Four Thought [radio] BBC Radio 4. 27 January.
Beaumont, A. (2013) ‘Epidemics of the Will” and the Uses of Freedom.’ evekosofskysedgwick.net [Internet]
Beaumont, A. (2012) ‘The BBC and the North.’ opendemocracy [Internet]
Beaumont, A. (2012) ‘The Olympic Dream.’ Manchester Salon [Internet]