Dr Claire Drewery
Senior Lecturer
Summary
Claire is a Senior Lecturer in English literature and has been Course Leader for BA English Literature since September 2015. She values her interaction with students and the opportunity this has given to develop a diverse range of modules and a variety of teaching and learning methods. Her teaching is informed by her main research interests, which include modernism, literary and popular cultures, visual media, literary theory, liminality and short fiction. In addition, Claire is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and one of the founding members of the May Sinclair Society.
About
Since joining Ï㽶ÊÓƵ I have developed and delivered a diverse range of teaching across a variety of formats: seminars, study-skills workshops, one-on-one supervision, interactive lectures and student-led sessions. I have written and taught modules on ‘The City in Literature’, ‘Children’s Literature’, ‘Literary Contexts’, ‘Great Contemporary Texts and Popular Culture’ and ‘Adaptation: Text to Screen, Screen to Text’, as well as creating a series of specialist, interactive lectures on short fiction. I also have longstanding teaching interests in war and interwar fiction, early twentieth century and dystopian literatures, which have informed many of the seminars delivered across the range of modules I teach. Out of these sessions, students have been inspired to develop some fascinating, original undergraduate dissertations which I have been privileged to supervise.
My main research interests are in modernism and twentieth-century literary cultures. In July 2013 I co-founded the May Sinclair Society and organised and hosted their first International Symposium at Sheffield Hallam. I am the author of Modernist Short Fiction by Women: the Liminal in Katherine Mansfield, Dorothy Richardson, May Sinclair and Virginia Woolf (Ashgate 2011). My chapter on ‘Liminal and “Liminoid” Discourses in Modernist Women’s Short Fiction: Performance, Spectatorship, and Cinema’ appeared in Liminality and the Short Story (2014). I have published essays on ‘“The failure of this now so independently assertive reality”: Mysticism, Idealism and the Reality Aesthetic in Dorothy Richardson’s Short Fiction’ and ‘The Modernist Short Story: Fractured Perspectives’. More recent critical projects have included an edited collection, May Sinclair: Re-thinking Bodies and Minds (Edinburgh, 2016), a special edition of the Literature Compass journal entitled ‘One Hundred Years of the Stream of Consciousness’ (June 2020), and an essay on ‘Katherine Mansfield and Sexuality’ for the Bloomsbury Handbook to Katherine Mansfield (2020). Current research projects include an article exploring the relationship between text and image in the work of May Sinclair and the artist Jean de Boschère, as well as the editing of Dorothy Richardson’s short fiction for Oxford University Press. I am also working on a monograph entitled Modernism’s Corporeal Epiphany: Visionaries, Voyeurs and the Embodiment of the ‘Revelatory’ Moment in Literature and Film 1890-1961. I am a regular-peer reviewer for Tinakori, the journal of Katherine Mansfield studies. Specialist areas of interest My main research interests are in modernist aesthetics and interdisciplinary cultures, twentieth-century writing, literary and cultural theory, visual and popular cultures, women’s writing, particularly May Sinclair, Dorothy Richardson and Katherine Mansfield, liminality, and short fiction.
Specialist areas of interest
Claire's main research interests are in Modernism, twentieth-century literary cultures, literary and cultural theory, visual and popular cultures, women’s writing, liminality and short fiction.
Teaching
Department of Humanities
College of Social Sciences and Arts
English
English Literature
Claire is Module Leader for ‘Children’s Literature’ and she teaches on a number of other modules in the Department, including ‘Introduction to English Studies’ and ‘Literature in the Twentieth Century’.
Ï㽶ÊÓƵ
I am currently editing Dorothy Richardson’s short fiction. In addition, I am a member of the Editorial and Advisory Boards of the Dorothy Richardson Scholarly Editions Project.
Publications
Journal articles
Drewery, C. (2025). . Katherine Mansfield Studies: Katherine Mansfield and Women.
Drewery, C. (2023). The Modern Short Story and Magazine Culture, 1880–1950. The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies, 14 (2), 274-279.
Bowler, R., & Drewery, C. (2020). . Literature Compass, 17 (6), e12570.
Drewery, C. (2018). Which of my many […] hundreds of selves?' Extending Mansfield’s Posthumous Literary Reception. .
Drewery, C. (2011). . Pilgrimages:The Journal of Dorothy Richardson Studies, 4.
Book chapters
Drewery, C. (2024). . In De Bont, L., Brasme, I., & Marie, F. (Eds.) May Sinclair in her Time: Reappraising May Sinclair’s Role in Early-Twentieth-Century Literature and Philosophy. (pp. 149-172). Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée – PULM:
Drewery, C. (2020). . In Martin, T. (Ed.) The Bloomsbury Handbook to Katherine Mansfield. (pp. 437-454). London: Bloomsbury Academic:
Bowler, R., & Drewery, C. (2016). Introduction: May Sinclair's interdisciplinarity. In May Sinclair: Re-Thinking Bodies and Minds. (pp. 1-17).
Drewery, C. (2016). . In Bowler, R., & Drewery, C. (Eds.) May Sinclair Re-Thinking Bodies and Minds. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press:
Drewery, C. (2016). . In Bowler, R., & Drewery, C. (Eds.) May Sinclair Re-Thinking Bodies and Minds. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press:
Drewery, C. (2016). . In Head, D. (Ed.) The Cambridge History of the English Short Story. (pp. 135-151). Cambridge University Press:
Drewery, C. (2015). . In Achilles, J., & Bergmann, I. (Eds.) Liminality and the Short Story : Boundary Crossings in American, Canadian, and British Writing. (pp. 50-62). New York: Routledge:
Books
Bowler, R., & Drewery, C. (Eds.). (2016). . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Drewery, C. (2011). . Ashgate.
Drewery, C. (2011). Modernist short fiction by women: The liminal in Katherine Mansfield, Dorothy Richardson, May Sinclair and Virginia Woolf.
Scholarly editions
Drewery, C., & Bowler, R. (Eds.). (2020). One Hundred Years of the Stream of Consciousness. Literature Compass.
Other activities
I am Postgraduate External Examiner for the University of Buckingham.
Postgraduate supervision
I am currently supervising a Ph.D. on the work of Ethel Lina White.
Media
The May Sinclair Society has a regularly-updated website, Facebook page and Twitter account.