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Dr Gillian Moore Ph.D. (University of Cambridge)Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow

Research and Teaching Interests

Gillian Moore is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of English, Trinity College Dublin.
Gillian was awarded a PhD in American Literature at the University of Cambridge in 2022. Her doctoral thesis focused on creative engagements with self-help culture in the work of eight writers: Paul Beatty, David Foster Wallace, Sheila Heti, Tao Lin, Myriam Gurba, Alexandra Kleeman, Ben Lerner, Benjamin Kunkel, and Miranda July. Her IRC project, an extension of her doctoral research, explores generative dialogues between contemporary American writing and practices of self-help, self-improvement, and self-care. Her first monograph, based on this research, is under contract with Cambridge University Press.

At Trinity, Gillian has delivered lectures for the undergraduate courses Modernisms and American Identities as well as leading seminars for the MPhil in Modern and Contemporary Literary Studies. At Cambridge, she taught the courses Contemporary Writing in English and American Literature: Texts and Contexts 1865-Present for several years. She has supervised dissertations on a wide range of topics, including autofiction, digital literature, the Harlem Renaissance, William Faulkner, Ecuadorian travel writing, Nella Larsen, the New York poets, and contemporary Irish writing.

Her research interests include post-45 American literature; contemporary writing; autofiction; Latinx and Chicanx literature; the history of ideas; modern and postmodern literature; popular media; and oratory and public speech.
She is Reviews Editor with The Stinging Fly magazine and has a wide range of writing and tutoring experience.

Recent and Forthcoming Publications

Monographs

Contemporary American Fiction and Cultures of Self-Help (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024)

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

“[Un]covering Joyce: Dubliners 100 and Intertextual Practice in the Contemporary Irish Short Story” Canadian Journal of Irish Studies Vol. 42, 2019.

Peer-reviewed Book Chapters

“‘A kind of perfectibility of the human body’: Lydia Davis’s stories of corporeal control” (forthcoming in Essays on Lydia Davis, eds. Lola Boorman and Julie Tanner, 2024)

“American Exceptionalism and Hopes for Resistance in Two Stories by George Saunders” in George Saunders: Critical Essays, eds. Philip Coleman and Steve Ellerhoff, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Review Essays

“The Art of Advice”. Review essay on The Self-Help Compulsion: Searching for Advice in Modern Literature by Beth Blum. The Cambridge Quarterly. Vol. 50.2, June 2021.

“Technological Underwhelm”. Review essay on The Digital Banal: New Media and American Literature and Culture by Zara Dinnen. Critical Quarterly. Vol. 61, January 2019.