Staff Profile
Dr Fraser Mann
Senior Lecturer in English Literature
My principal research interests are in mid-twentieth century American fiction and its relationship with salient socio-cultural phenomena of the same period. My PhD explored the literary representation of masculine combat experience in twentieth-century war narratives using a combination of literary analysis, gender theory and historical contextualisation.
My current research examines literary responses to the First and Second World Wars and the Vietnam conflict. My primary focus is on the anxiety existing between ideological representations of masculinity and the graphic truth of experience in terms of both the corporeal and psychological self. I am fascinated by the relationships between American myth, masculine identities and the material world.
I also work with American memoir and the autobiographical voice. These texts offer a paradoxical narrative self situated in complex iterations of culture. I am involved in work with colleagues from the York Centre for Writing in examining how these ideas play out in contemporary music memoirs written by key figures from American punk and indie.
- School – School of Humanities
- Email – f.mann@yorksj.ac.uk
- Phone – 01904 876 469
- Postgraduate Research Supervisor
Teaching
Current modules
Undergraduate:
- Introduction to Literary Studies I
- Forms of Narrative
- The Modern American: Fact, Fiction, Myth
- Mapping America
- Conflicting Words
- American Literature in the Twentieth Century
Postgraduate:
- Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Literature
- Contemporary American Literature
- Alternative Americas
- Transnational Border Crossings
Publications
Edgar, R., Mann, F., Pleasance, H. (2019) ‘Title: Music, Memory and Memoir: critical and creative engagement with an emerging genre’ Journal of Writing in Creative Practice.
Edgar, R., Mann, F., Pleasance, H.(Eds.) (2019) Music, Memory and Memoir. New York. Bloomsbury
Mann, F. (2019) ‘‘The road bare and white’: Hemingway, Europe and the artifice of ritualised place.’ Alicante Journal of English Studies, Vol.31
Mann, F. (2013) ‘The dehumanised enemy in the Pacific war novels of Norman Mailer and James Jones’ in Ternès, Anabel (Ed) Communications: Breakdowns and Breakthroughs. Oxford. Interdisciplinary Press.
Mann, F. (2012) ‘Never So Simple: Why We Should Learn From Mailer’s Engagement with Complexity’. Mailer Review, 6.1. 326+
Conferences
September 2018: Writing the Noise – Second International Subcultures Network Conference, Reading, UK. Panel Paper: ‘ Music, Memory and Memoir: creative methodology and curated archive’.
April 2018: EBAAS 2018 – King College London, UK. Academic Paper: ‘‘The band is really flying tonight’: creative and cultural space in Kristin Hersh’s Paradoxical Undressing.
July 2017: Storifying the Self – University of Brighton, UK. Panel Paper: ‘Music and Memoir’.
April 2017: Fictional First World War – University of Aberdeen, UK. Academic Paper: ‘The road bare and white’: Hemingway’s warscapes and the artifice of ritualised space’.
October 2015: Living, Thinking, Writing – An International Conference on the Work of Siri Hustvedt – Birkbeck. Academic paper: ‘No before and no after: Siri Hustvedt and traumatic tradition’.
September 2014: Occupation/Liberation: Cultural Representations of 1944-45 and its Legacy – University of Bristol, UK (MHRA funded). Academic paper: ‘“Fitted into a fear ladder” – The paradox of Moral War in Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead’.
August 2013: “Man-Making Words”: Masculinities, Citizenship and the Nation: 1750 – 1945 – University of Newcastle, Newcastle, UK. Academic Paper: ‘This call is meant for you my boy’: William March, Dalton Trumbo and the harrowed masculine self of World War I'.
May 2013: English Graduate Conference – University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. Academic Paper: ‘Dear Reader: the letter as textual object in American war fiction’.
November 2012: 7th Annual Methodologies Conference – York St John University, York, UK. Academic paper: ‘The Narrative Evolution of the Male Body in the American War Novel’.
September 2012: 49th Parallel: Interdisciplinary Conference of North American Studies – University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK. Academic paper: ‘It’s Duty Boy: George Creel, John Dos Passos and the Battle of First World War Narrative'.
October 2012: Norman Mailer Society Annual Conference:; Norman Mailer - Achievements and Paradoxes – Mailer House, Provincetown, MA, USA. Academic paper: ‘Hidden complexities: dynamics of the masculine group in The Naked and the Dead'.
May 2012: Conflicting Words: Gender, World War and Writing – York St John University, York, UK. A self-organised research seminar involving myself and Dr Kate McLoughlin (Birkbeck, University of London).
November 2011: Mailer & Jones: Friends & Writers – University of Texas, Austin, USA. Academic paper: ‘The dehumanised enemy in Mailer & Jones’ narratives of conflict'.
November 2011: Probing the Boundaries: Communication & Conflict – Inter Disciplinary.Net, Prague, Czech Republic. Academic paper: ‘Dehumanising the enemy in twentieth-century American war narratives'.
September 2011: Performing Identities in American Literature - University of Durham, Durham, UK. Academic paper: ‘Tim O’Brien and the nature of Vietnam Truth'.
August 2011: Annual Conference of The Society for European Philosophy and The Forum for European Philosophy - York St John University, York, UK. Panel Paper: ‘'Ideology and disillusionment: the influence of Althusser's Ideological State Apparatus on reading American war narratives'.
January 2011: Sensory Stories – University of York, York, UK. Collaboration with contemporary dance artists to interpret thematic issues within research.
Membership
- British Association of American Studies
- Music Memoir Research Group
