Current and Recent Research Students
Dr Eleanor Spencer
Biography
Eleanor Spencer was awarded a First Class Honours BA in English Literature in 2007 and an MA with Distinction in Studies in Poetry in 2008, both at the University of Durham. She has recently completed her doctoral thesis on tradition, inheritance, and influence in the work of the Anglo-American poet Anne Stevenson, under the supervision of Dr Gareth Reeves and Dr Jason Harding. She is the recipient of an AHRC Research Preparation Masters Award (2007-2008) and an AHRC Doctoral Award (2008-2011). Her research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and American poetry, the New Woman novel, allusion and echo in contemporary poetry, literary synaesthesia, and bibliotherapy. Her recent publications include articles on the dramatic monologue, and the persistence of John Keats in the work of Anne Stevenson. Eleanor is a guest lecturer for Sovereign Education, lecturing to AS and A2 Level students on various areas of the English Literature syllabus. She is a trained 'Get Into Reading' shared reading group facilitator, fully accredited by The Reader Organisation, and was 'Reader in Residence' at a women’s prison from 2010-2011. In 2010, Eleanor was appointed as a member of Honorary Support Staff in the Department of English at the University of Liverpool, in recognition of her work in the field of reading, health, and wellbeing studies. In 2011 she was awarded a Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship, enabling her to take up a Visiting Fellowship in the Department of English at Harvard University for the 2011-2012 academic year. Forthcoming publications include articles on the polylogic poems of Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Stevenson, and post 9/11 elegy. She is the editor of the New Casebook on ‘American Poetry since 1945’ (Palgrave Macmillan), due for publication in 2014.
