Biography
Kerry joined the English & Creative Writing Subject Area at Birmingham Newman in September 2011.
Before joining Birmingham Newman, she worked as an Associate Lecturer at University of Portsmouth and a Temporary Lecturer in English at University of Southampton. She has a BA(hons) and a MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature from Loughborough University and was awarded a PhD from University of Southampton in 2011.
Her research specialism is Post-war and Contemporary Women’s Writing and she is currently Chair of the Contemporary Women’s Writing Association and a volume editor for The Literary Encyclopedia.
Profile
Research Interests
Kerry has published on Doris Lessing, R. D. Laing and anti-psychiatry; sex and censorship in post-war women’s writing; and post-war literature and food. She is currently working on women’s short fiction and the short story cycle form.
Teaching
Kerry has taught undergraduate modules in the novel, poetry, drama, critical theory, contemporary literature, gender, queer theory and postcolonial literature, as well as modules on study skills and employability. She also supervises postgraduate research and welcomes enquiries from MRes and PhD students working in the following areas: Doris Lessing; post-war and/or contemporary women’s writing; feminist and/or queer theory; women’s writing and mental illness; contemporary women’s short fiction; the body in contemporary literature and popular culture; contemporary reading practices.
Administrative Responsibilities
- Programme Leader for English Literature
- SEAtS Implementation Task Group, Newman, 2018-present
- Electronic Assessment, Marking and Feedback Task Group, Newman, 2018-present
Membership of Professional Organisations
- Editorial Team for The Literary Encyclopedia
- The Contemporary Women’s Writing Association
- British Association of Contemporary Literary Studies
- Newman Humanities Research Centre
- Doris Lessing Society
- European Network for Short Fiction Research
- Contemporary Studies Network
Other Activities
Conference Addresses and Papers
- ‘Women’s short story cycles: from nationalism to environmentalism’, International Contemporary Women’s Writing Association Conference: Locations and Dislocations, Algoma University, Ontario, Canada (July 2019)
- ‘Han Kang, feminist politics, and experiments in form’, CWWA 2018 Conference: Writing Wrongs, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne (Sept 2018)
- ‘Doing contemporary literature through local events and virtual spaces’, BACLS What Happens Now Conference, Loughborough University (July 2018)
- Han Kang’s translated works and the future of the short story form’, Beyond History: The Radiance of the Short Story Conference, University of Lisbon, Portugal (June 2018)
- ‘Student experiences of working in partnership to develop data-informed pedagogic interventions’, Birmingham Digital Partnerships (June 2018)
- ‘Evaluating the collaborative development of pedagogic interventions based on learning analytics’, SEDA conference, Leeds (May 2018)
- ‘Proactive assessment of student activity: reflections on a pilot study into learning analytics at Newman University’, Digifest, Birmingham (March 2018)
- ‘Freedom to learn: student engagement, digital literary and assessment’, Learning and Teaching Conference, Newman University (Jan 2018)
- ‘Proactive assessment of student activity: reflections on a pilot study into learning analytics at Newman’,Learning and Teaching Conference, Newman University (Jan 2018)
- ‘Developing an assessment strategy with students’, Learning and Teaching Conference, Newman University (Jan 2018)
- ‘Freedom to learn: building communities through digital literacy’, TILT Festival of Learning, Nottingham Trent (June 2017)
- ‘Freedom to learn: student engagement and digital literacy’, Learning & Teaching Conference, Bishop Grosseteste University (June 2017)
- ‘Making an Incision: Penelope Mortimer’s early fiction’, British Women’s Writing between 1930 and 1960: ‘Influences and Connectivity’, Chichester University (May 2017)
- ‘Gender, Madness and Bestiality in Contemporary Women’s Writing’, ‘Literature, the Human and the Non-human’, Humanities Research Group Seminar Series, Newman University (April 2017)
- ‘Gender, Madness and Bestiality in Contemporary Women’s Writing’, C21 Animal Voices Symposium, Brighton (Nov 2016)
- ‘With Suspicious Intent: Teaching the Pleasures of Short Fiction’, Child of the Century: Reading & Writing Short Fiction, Edge Hill (May 2016)
- ‘“Our great obsession”: Post-war women’s writing and the escape from sex censorship’, International Women’s Day Conference 2016: Resounding Voices, St. Aiden’s College, Durham University (March 2016)
- ‘“It is all a load of old socks”: Lessing, Laing and the Politics of Madness’, Doris Lessing Conference, University of Plymouth (Sept 2014)
- ‘A Posthumous Return: Doris Lessing, Women and Madness’, Texts, Contexts and Cultures: Humanities Research Group Seminar Series, Newman University (May 2014)
- ‘Enhancing Learning with Moodle: A round table discussion with the English Subject Area’,Learning & Teaching Conference, Newman University (Jan 2013)
- ‘”My mother, my matter. My mother, myself. My mother, my monstrousness”: Mother-Daughter Relationships in the Female “Coming-of-Age” Novel’, Contemporary Women’s Writing: (Wo)Man and the Body, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan (July 2012)
- ‘Mother\Daughter Relationships in Women’s Contemporary “Coming-of-Age” Novels’, Writing Mothers\Daughters: 1780-2012, Newman University (June 2012)
- ‘Between Madness and Medicine: Anti-Psychiatry and the Female Body in David Reed’s Anna(1976)’, Paranoia and Pain, University of Liverpool (April 2012)
- ‘Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebookand R. D. Laing’s Disembodied Selves’, Demystifying Public Engagement: Gender and Sexuality Studies Beyond the Academy, Newcastle University (May 2011)
- ‘Reading Minds/Writing Bodies: The Matter of the Body in Doris Lessing’s “Madness Novels”‘,Writing Bodies/Reading Bodies, University of Oxford (Sept 2009)
- ‘”They treat human beings as if they were rats”: Questioning Intelligible Bodies in Lessing and Laing’, MLA Convention 2008, Doris Lessing Panel, San Francisco (Dec 2008)
- ‘The Sexual Politics of Madness: Constructing Intelligible Bodies in Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook’, The Body Conference, Cardiff University (June 2008)
- ‘”If only I could get back inside Mother”: Mary Barnes’s Journey into the Womb of the World’, PGR Presentations Event: University of Southampton (May 2008)
- ‘The Sexual Politics of Madness: Women’s Bodies and Anti-Psychiatry in David Reed’s Anna and R. D. Laing’s The Politics of Experience’, Mind and Body, University of Reading (July 2007)
- ‘The Psychic and the Psychotic: Exceeding the boundaries of Perception and Physicality in Doris Lessing’s The Four-Gated City’, Boundaries, Loughborough University (June 2006)
Publications
Parkes, A. Benkwitz, H. Bardy, K. Myler, J. Peters. (2020) ‘Being more human: rooting learning analytics through resistance and reconnection with the values of Higher Education.’ Higher Education Research & Development 39 .1, pp. 113-126.
Myler, K. (2019) ‘Doris Lessing, anti-psychiatry and bodies that matter’, Twentieth-Century Literature. 65.4, pp. 437-460.
Benkwitz, S. Parkes, H. Bardy, K. Myler, J. Peters, A. Akhtar, P. Keeling, R. Preece, T. Smith. (2019) ‘Using student data: Student-staff collaborative development of compassionate pedagogic interventions based on learning analytics and mentoring’. Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education 25, np.
Myler, K. (2018) ‘Food, Duty and Desire in the Women’s Novel in the 1960s’, in Piatti-Farnell, L. and Lee Brien, D. (eds) The Routledge Companion of Literature and Food. New York: Routledge, pp. 66-75.
Myler, K. (2017) ‘Sex, Censorship and Identity’, in Hanson, C., and Watkins, S. (eds) The History of British Women’s Writing, Vol IX, 1945-1975. London: Palgrave, pp. 108-123.
Myler, K. (2015) ‘Robert Rubenstein’s Literary Half-Lives’, Contemporary Women’s Writing 9.2, pp. 305-307. [Book Review]
Myler, K. (2013) ‘“Something New”: Madness and Mothering in Doris Lessing’s The Four-Gated City’, Doris Lessing Studies 31.1&2, pp. 15-20.
Myler, K. (2011) ‘You can’t judge a book by its coverage: the body that writes and the television book club’, in Ramone, J., and Cousins, H. (eds) The Richard & Judy Book Club Reader: Popular Texts and the Practices of Reading, Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 85-107.