Bella Adams – LJMU English

Research Centre Seminar Series 2015-16

15/03/201606/08/2017 By LJMU EnglishNo Comments

The Centre hosts a regular series of research seminars which welcomes a variety of external speakers, internal workshops and postgraduate sessions. Seminars take place on Tuesday evenings 5.30- 7pm in the John Foster Building rm. 1.27 unless otherwise stated. All are welcome to attend and refreshments are provided. For information please contact Michael Morris M.J.Morris1@ljmu.ac.uk Seminar Series 2015/16 - Semester 1: 6 Oct: Alice Ferrebe (LJMU): 'Junior Romantic Anthropologist bore': Colin MacInnes’s Adventures in Postwar Multiracial Britain 20 Oct: LJMU Postgraduate Session with Ryan Coogan and Christinna Hobbs 3 Nov: Helen Rogers (LJMU): ‘Writing Lives’: Bringing Life-Writing to Life: Writing Lives in the Community @ www.writinglives.org 24 Nov: Kostas Boyiopoulos (Durham University): Raconteur and Racketeer: Oscar Wilde and the Confidence Trick 8 Dec: Thomas Dixon (Queen Mary University of London): Raining Men: The Manly Tear from John Donne to Brian Blessed Semester 2: 19 Jan. Bella Adams (LJMU): Sharp White Backgrounds: A Critical Race Theory Reading of Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric. 2 Feb: Faye Hammill (University of Strathclyde):...

Bella Adams’s Pre-Show Talk at Liverpool Playhouse: A Raisin in the Sun

01/03/201606/08/2017 By LJMU EnglishNo Comments

On Thursday 3rd March, LJMU English's Bella Adams will be giving a pre-show talk on Lorraine Hansberry's ground-breaking 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun, which is on at the Liverpool Playhouse from 2nd-5th March. James Baldwin claimed of the play that, ‘Never before, in the entire history of theatre, has so much of the truth of black people’s lives been seen on the stage'. Bella's talk will explore the cultural and political context of the play, and you can get tickets to hear her speak here. Bella said, 'My talk will focus on Lorraine Hansberry’s varied political interests, the critical reception of the play, the Chicago Southside setting and housing segregation. This wasn't a play I knew well before I heard it was coming to the Playhouse, and reading and researching it has been fascinating. In fact, I'm thinking of adding it to the reading list for my Race in America module next year.' If you're studying that module, or fancy seeing a fascinating...

Research Seminar: Dr Bella Adams (LJMU), ‘Wrack & Ruin’ (2008) by Don Lee – An Ecocritical Reading (28 February 2012)

19/03/201212/12/2014 By LJMU EnglishNo Comments

Research Seminar Blog –Dr Bella Adams (LJMU): ‘Wrack and Ruin’ (2008) by Don Lee: an ecocritical reading, 28th Feb 2012 Michael Harley Dr Bella Adams’ research seminar was about the novel Wrack and Ruin (2008) by Don Lee, a Korean-American novelist and professor of creative writing at Temple University. Works preceding Wrack and Ruin include a short story collection Yellow (2001), set in the same fictional Californian town as Wrack and Ruin, and the novel Country of Origin (2005). The presentation was based on a chapter for a book entitled Asian American Literature and the Environment that Bella is co-editing. Bella’s central premise was to review the book on eco-critical terms, which means, as succinctly as I can for those uninitiated like myself in eco-criticism, a reading of the novel that focused on the depiction of the environment in regards to relationships between space and place and anthropomorphic depictions of nature or the ‘non-human.’ Wrack and Ruin is a satirical comedy that depicts...

Dr Bella Adams

13/08/201005/08/2017 By LJMU EnglishNo Comments

Teaching: I am currently teaching three undergraduate modules on the English degree: ‘Reading English’, Literary and Cultural Theory 1’ and ‘Race in America.’ I am module leader for ‘Race in America’, which mainly focuses on contemporary black American novels, poetry, film and theory. In the past, I have taught on a wide range of modules in English and American literature, from survey modules to more specialized modules in nineteenth century American writing, modernism, postmodernism, critical theory and contemporary poetry. I welcome inquiries from students interested in pursuing post-graduate degrees in the following topics: Asian American writing; African American writing; race in the US and contemporary race theory; racial and environmental justice discourses; anti-racist pedagogies. I am currently supervising two MRes students in American AIDS crisis writing, specifically in contemporary drama and poetry. Research and publications: Books: I have published three books - Amy Tan (Manchester UP, 2005), Asian American Literature (Edinburgh UP, 2008), and, most recently, Asian American Literature and the Environment, which I co-edited with...