AHRC Doctoral Studentship in English Literature – The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh

via David Bradshaw at the Faculty of English, Oxford

 

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

AHRC Doctoral Studentship in English Literature – The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh.

Applicants are sought for a three-year, fully-funded Studentship (including both fees and living costs) to work towards a DPhil (PhD) in the Faculty of English, University of Oxford on the AHRC project The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh. The Studentship will commence in October 2014 and is open to UK nationals, or EU nationals who have resided in the UK for 3 years or more. The successful applicant will normally have achieved a Master’s degree with distinction (or equivalent) in English Literature or a relevant subject, but does not necessarily have to be a Waugh specialist at the commencement of the Studentship.

The Project

The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh (CWEW) is an AHRC-funded project jointly led by Professor Martin Stannard (University of Leicester) and Professor David Bradshaw (University of Oxford), in collaboration with seven project partners including the Evelyn Waugh Estate and the Humanities Research Center, Texas. The project will produce the first scholarly edition of the complete writings of Evelyn Waugh, with Alexander Waugh as General Editor and OUP as publisher. CWEW will include a very large quantity of Waugh’s previously unpublished letters and personal writings as well as the writer’s novels, short stories, biographies and ephemera. The project is likely to form the largest scholarly edition of a British author to date. Publishing begins in 2016, to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Waugh’s death. The project blog may be viewed at: http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/waughandwords/

Nature and Scope of the Doctoral Studentship

The Studentship is focused on one of the project’s central areas of enquiry: Waugh’s inter-war travel writing. There is currently no scholarly edition of any of Waugh’s travel books. The Student’s supervisor will be editing two of them, and the Student will be examining the whole cultural and bibliographical context of all five of the inter-war texts with a view to producing a book from the thesis that could be submitted to OUP as a companion volume to the edition. He or she will also be invited to co-edit the proceedings of the project’s international conference in 2015.

Waugh wrote six travel books, publishing five in the 1930s. This decade is increasingly regarded as a golden age of travel writing and the Student will be poised to investigate not only Waugh’s books but also his numerous travel essays, and his many letters written about and during the course of his travels, and to examine their relation to travel books written by his friends and acquaintances such as Robert Byron and Graham Greene, as well as other inter-war exponents of the genre. Research questions to be addressed could be:

• In what sense does Waugh reconfigure the genre of travel writing?
• How fictionalised are his accounts of the Mediterranean, Ethiopia, British Guiana and Mexico?
• What themes spill into the travel writings from his fiction and vice-versa?
• In what sense does the cultural history of these writings inform the cultural context of the 1930s as a whole?

This DPhil will be a precursor of the renewed critical interest in Waugh which the Edition is expected to trigger. It will be one of the first critical works to interpret the mass of new materials the Edition will reveal and the Student will have access to a vast resource of unpublished letters etc. by and about Waugh.

Supervision and Support

The Student will be attached to the Faculty of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. He or she will be supervised by Professor David Bradshaw, and will also work closely with the project’s Principal Investigator, Professor Martin Stannard, and Research Associate, Dr Barbara Cooke, who are both based at the University of Leicester.

In Oxford, the Student will have access to the Bodleian Libraries, with their superb specialist collections. The Humanities Division, and English Faculty offer extensive research and teaching training programmes, taking students through from research methods, to job
interviews, public engagement, and applying for research grants. The Student will be encouraged to take courses throughout their period of study. Oxford offers a wealth of relevant research seminar series which run throughout the year, in addition to numerous
interdisciplinary series, and conferences. The Student will be encouraged to take advantage of these academic offerings, but also to gain professional training through working with the project team in public engagement activities, and giving papers at or organising conferences.

 

Further Information

If you would like to discuss any aspect of the project informally, please contact Professor Bradshaw at: david.bradshaw@worcester.ox.ac.uk or Dr Cooke at: bc144@leicester.ac.uk.

If you would like discuss the application process please contact the Oxford English Graduate Office at: graduate.studies@ox.ac.uk.

 

TO APPLY

Applicants must apply by Friday, 28 February 2014 using the graduate application form available at:
http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/postgraduate_courses/index.html

 

Completing the form:

• The Programme of Study is RESEARCH | 000592 | DPhil English
• You must clearly state ENGL Waugh Studentship for the Departmental Studentship Applications reference on page 6 of the application form.

Applications must include:

• 3 academic references
• Relevant transcripts
• Either two pieces of work of 2,000 words apiece, or a single piece of 4,000 words (please note that it is stated in the Graduate Admissions application guide that you should submit 2 pieces of 2,000 words, however the Faculty of English accept a single piece of 4,000 words and staff at the Admissions Office are aware of this).
• CV
• Research Proposal of around 2 pages – this should also outline your academic interests, prior research expertise, if any, in Waugh studies, and explain how your interests and experience make you a suitable candidate for this Studentship.

Further information on the graduate admissions criteria may be found at:
http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/prospective-graduates/admission/selection-criteria

At the time of your application, please also e-mail graduate.studies@ell.ox.ac.uk to inform us that you have submitted an application for the above Studentship.

Closing date: Friday, 28 February 2014.

Interviews of short-listed candidates will be conducted in mid-March.

Applications already submitted for the DPhil English programme:
If you have already applied to the DPhil in English programme, you do not need to submit a second application in order to apply for the Waugh Studentship. If you wish to be considered for the Studentship, please register your interest by contacting graduate.studies@ell.ox.ac.uk and also attach a revised research proposal relevant to the Studentship. Applications for the Studentship will be considered separately.

If you have any queries about the application process, please contact:
graduate.studies@ell.ox.ac.uk

TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THE STUDENTSHIP

You cannot hold this award in conjunction with any other significant Studentship (eg. an AHRC award). If you are offered and wish to accept an alternative award, you must let us know as soon as possible.

The award is subject to your continued enrolment and satisfactory progress on the course; and to continued and satisfactory progress relating to the one day’s research assistance as part of the Studentship.

Applicants will be admitted as Probationary Research Students and will be subject to the standard procedures and arrangements for transfer to DPhil. status. If they are unsuccessful in transferring to DPhil. status as laid down in the Examination Regulations, the Studentship funding will cease. 

The maintenance grant will be paid in three termly installments (each year) direct to the recipient’s bank account, at the beginning of each academic term. It is the recipient’s responsibility to ensure that the Faculty has up to date account details for payment.

All data supplied by applicants will be used only for the purposes of determining their suitability for the post, and will be held in accordance with the principles of the Data Protection Act 1998 and the University’s Data Protection Policy.