Christopher Mourant
PhD in English
Email christopher.mourant@kcl.ac.uk
Thesis topic Exile from Eden: Miron Grindea’s ADAM International Review, 1929-95
First supervisor: Dr Anna Snaith
Second supervisor: Professor Max Saunders
Biography
Chris completed his BA (First Class Hons) and MA (Distinction) in English Literature at the University of Warwick. He is now a scholarship student within the PhD research network ‘Internationalisation of Literature and Science since the Early Modern Period’ between King’s College London, the University of Stuttgart, and the Sorbonne.
Summary of Current Research
Chris is researching ADAM International Review (1929-1995), a ‘literary monthly’ housed within the King’s College Archives. This project will assess the ways in which 20th century periodical culture created collaborative spaces and sites for new forms of identification which served to gather, define and reflect international communities.
Its title being an acronym for Arts, Drama, Architecture and Music, ADAM was designed to be eclectic and wide-ranging in focus. ADAM also looked to ‘promote research in the study of comparative modern literature’ and to further ‘the task of an active humanism’; to this end, articles were published in both English and French, and whole issues were devoted to the literatures of different national and continental traditions. Almost 500 issues of ADAM were published between its foundation in 1929 and the editor’s death in 1995, with notable contributions from HG Wells, TS Eliot, Winston Churchill, Pablo Picasso, Bertolt Brecht, Joan Miró, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, Graham Greene, Jean-Paul Sartre, EM Forster, Stefan Zweig and Thomas Mann. ADAM is therefore a unique portrait of much of the 20th century, reflecting the main trends in literary and artistic life.
Chris’ discovery of unpublished works by Katherine Mansfield was featured in The Independent and on The Guardian website; he has also been interviewed on BBC Radio 4 for the 'Today' programme.
Research Interests
Teaching
2012-13 Level 4, Language in Time
Selected Publications
‘Report’ (forthcoming), Katherine Mansfield Studies, Vol. 5 (October 2013)
Selected Conferences
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American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), ‘Collapse, Catastrophe, Change’, Brown University, March 2012: nominated for the Horst Frenz Prize, awarded for the best paper presented by a graduate student at the ACLA annual conference (awaiting outcome)
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British Association of Modernist Studies (BAMS), ‘New Work in Modernist Studies’, Institute of Advanced Studies, December 2011