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Dr James Baxter B.A. (University of Liverpool), M.A., Ph.D. (University of Reading)Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow

Research and Teaching Interests

James Baxter is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of English, Trinity College Dublin. His research project examines the impact of high-circulation little magazines (with a particular focus on New World Writing, Evergreen Review, New American Review, and Amistad) over the advent of ‘mass modernism’ in post-war American culture. He is working towards his second monograph tentatively titled Mass-market modernism and the ‘big little magazine’ in America.

James was awarded a PhD (2014-2018) in English Literature at the University of Reading where he researched the influence of Samuel Beckett over American literature in the second half of the 20th century. This was eventually published as a monograph titled Samuel Beckett’s Legacies in American Fiction: Problems in Postmodernism, released as part of Palgrave’s series ‘New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First Century.’ It has been described by Professor Bran Nicol (University of Surrey) as ‘a fresh, lucid, and necessary book, which sheds fascinating new light not just on Beckett but on postmodernism and its legacy.’

James has taught widely as a Sessional Lecturer at the University of Reading and has lead seminars on the Trinity MPhil Modern and Contemporary Literary Studies. His research interests include Samuel Beckett, post-45 American literature, ‘vulgar modernism,’ little magazine cultures, modernist masculinities, and postmodern metafiction. James is also currently developing a secondary research project on the novels and short stories of American literary-horror writer Brian Evenson. James is an experienced tutor, ghost-writer, and is an editor for the online magazine Hypocrite Reader.

Publications

Books

Samuel Beckett’s Legacies in American Fiction: Problems in Postmodernism, (Palgrave: 2021)

Peer Reviewed Articles

New American Review and mass-market modernism in the ‘big little’ magazine (forthcoming)
‘Growing Up Absurd: The Presence of Beckett in American Men’s Magazines,’ Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, (April 2022)
‘The “Problem” of Beckett in postmodern American fiction,’ Textual Practice, (October 2018)

Book Chapters

Beckett’s “heavy news”: Considerations of the American counterculture and Evergreen Review, Pop Beckett: Intersections with Popular Culture, ed. by Paul Stewart, David Pattie, (Ibidem: 2019)