Professor Susan Watkins

Professor Leeds Beckett University

  • Leeds West Yorkshire

Professor Susan Watkins is an expert in contemporary women's fiction and feminist theory.

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Biography

Susan Watkins is Professor of Women's Writing in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. She is an expert in contemporary women's writing and feminist theory, with particular research interests in dystopia, apocalyptic fiction, ageing and the future.

Susan's most recent book is about contemporary women’s post-apocalyptic writing. As well as her interests in Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, and contemporary women's dystopian and apocalyptic fiction, Susan is currently working on research projects on ageing and the future and ageing and the cultural industries. She welcomes proposals from prospective PhD students in these areas and in the broader field of women's fiction and feminist theory.

Susan is a founder member and former Chair of the Contemporary Women's Writing Association and previously a Co-Editor of the Journal of Commonwealth Literature. She was Director of the university's Centre for Culture and the Arts for 10 years.

Susan's main teaching at undergraduate level includes modules on Twentieth-Century Literature: Alienation and Dystopia (level 5) and Twentieth-Century Women Novelists: Feminist Theory into Practice (level 6). At MA level she teaches the modules Literature in Practice and Contemporary Apocalyptic Fictions.

Industry Expertise

Research
Education/Learning
Writing and Editing

Areas of Expertise

Contemporary Women's Dystopian and Apocalyptic Fiction
Doris Lessing
Gender
Culture
Ageing
Feminism
Literature
Margaret Atwood

Affiliations

  • Contemporary Women's Writing Association : Member

Languages

  • English

Media Appearances

S2E1 Feat. Professor in the School of Cultural Studies and Humanities and Director of the Centre for Culture and the Arts at Leeds Beckett University, Susan Watkins

Tales From The Leeds Library  online

2022-03-09

Welcome back to Tales from The Leeds Library! Kicking off our second season is a fascinating conversation with Susan Watkins. We talk about her work on contemporary women's post-apocalyptic fiction and what post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction can tell us about our current world.

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The Squid Game effect: Why do we seek out dystopias?

RTÉ  online

2021-10-07

Arguably, it’s a sign of the times. "Since the start of the pandemic, dystopia, apocalypse, infection films and games [have] just been hugely popular," explains Professor Susan Watkins from the School of Cultural Studies and Humanities at Leeds Beckett University, an expert in post-apocalyptic writing.

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‘Squid Game’: Have we become desensitized to hyper-violence?

The South African  online

2021-10-06

“Since the start of the pandemic, dystopia, apocalypse, infection films and games [have] just been hugely popular,” says Professor Susan Watkins of Leeds Beckett University.

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Articles

Critical Future Studies and Age

Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research

2021

This paper draws on cultural gerontology and literary scholarship to call for greater academic consideration of age and ageing in our imaginations of the future. Our work adds to the development of Critical Future Studies (CFS) previously published in this journal, by arguing that prevailing ageism is fuelled by specific constructions of older populations as a future demographic threat and of ageing as a future undesirable state requiring management and control.

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Reduced to curtain twitchers? Age, ageism and the careers of four women actors

Journal of Women & Aging

2021

Cultural gerontology has developed critical work around cultural representations of age and aging and their role in the reproduction of ageism. However, the cultural industries as producers and disseminators of representations remain under researched. This paper draws on a focus group with four older women actors to argue that workforce allocation and assumptions about audience demographics intersect with cultural attitudes around women’s aging to impact on older women actors’ career opportunities.

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Reimagining the Maternal in Jenny Diski’s and Doris Lessing’s Apocalyptic Imaginative Memoirs

Doris Lessing Studies

2018

First she refers to her unease with the conventional tropes and structures of the cancer diary, such as its use of the well-worn" journey" motif, the personification of cancer as an enemy to be fought or battled, and her own reluctant positioning, like a performer in a pantomime, by the recognised cultural scripts about cancer.

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