Houses of Death: Ruth Rendell's Domestic Gothic and the Emptying Out of Romance

A blackened, burned dress hangs limply in an upstairs wardrobe in a dusty, deserted house in the Fens in Ruth Rendell's The Brimstone Wedding (1996). This dress, like the airless, loveless, and love-lost houses in both The Brimstone Wedding and The Secret House of Death (1968) serves as a reminder of false romantic promises, the emptying out of desire into the mundane, the dangers and betrayals both of passion and of the everyday domestic. This is Rendell's domestic Gothic at its best. In both Rendell and her alias Barbara Vine's more psychological thrillers, the twin comforts of romance and a safe home and family give way to disturbance, discomfort, disease, and disruption. Romance is treacherous and betrayed. However passionate, stolen, turbulent, and filled with promise, it slips away at a single deceptive act or through the repetitive, mundane everyday. Its worst outcomes are cruelty following the end of love or the equally destructive, mind-numbingly banal winding down into lovelessness. Clandestine love nests are cleared out and shuttered up; suburban family life is devalued. Each is prone to absences, deceit, and death. Much of Rendell's domestic Gothic has echoes of Daphne du Maurier's earlier influential genre-shifting romantic crime Gothic Rebecca (1938), and this novel's haunting of our reading of Rendell's texts underpins the discussion of The Brimstone Wedding and The Secret House of Death. Both use strategies of women's crime entwined with romantic domestic Gothic to undermine thoroughly investment in romantic love, domestic bliss, and the security of the family home

Imagining beyond extinctathon: indigenous knowledge, survival, speculation - Margaret Atwood's and Ann Patchett's eco-Gothic

Both Margaret Atwood and Ann Patchett engage with issues concerning indigenous knowledge, biodiversity and survival. Margaret Atwood constructs a form of wilderness Gothic in Surfacing (1972) and Survival (1972), while in her darker eco-Gothic texts, The Handmaid's Tale (1985) and the MaddAddam trilogy (Oryx and Crake, 2003; The Year of the Flood, 2009; MaddAddam, 2013), she focuses on survival post holocaust. In her work she is influenced by indigenous knowledge and the awareness of imminent disaster should people fall out of harmony with nature, a threat enacted in these Canadian eco-Gothic dystopian fictions. This threat of extinction, of natural disaster based on arrogantly, deliberately or accidentally ignoring the importance of ecological diversity and of balance, of contestation, different voices and ways of being informs much of Atwood's work throughout her writing career and her everyday life. It is also of interest to many other women writers, including Ann Patchett from the US (State of Wonder, 2011), Alexis Wright from Australia (The Swan Book, 2013), Patricia Grace from New Zealand, (Baby No-Eyes, 1998), and Nalo Hopkinson from Jamaica/Toronto ("A Habit of Waste", 2001), each of whom engages with forms of indigenous knowledge, and recognizes the importance of diversity, exploring threats to survival and suggesting ways forward, and several of whom (including Patchett) evidence Atwood's influence on a younger generation of women writers. I should like to link Atwood's work to that of Ann Patchett, specifically her novel State of Wonder, which problematizes the involvement of non-indigenous people with the tribal behaviours, beliefs, and richness of the forest and jungle worlds in which they live in a balanced harmony

Pasajes: la obra de autoras sudasiáticas en Gran Bretaña

Resumen Como Tania, el rebelde y afortunado personaje femenino que sitúa e Londres Meera Syal en Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee (1999), las escritoras asiáticas que publican en Gran Bretaña negocian ese pasaje tan difícil y a la par tan diverso entre múltiples identidades, historias y formas de expresión

Professional learning: lessons for supervision from doctoral examining

Most research into research supervision practice focuses on functional, collegial or problematic power-related experiences. Work developing the supervisory role concentrates on new supervisors, and on taught development and support programmes. Most literature on academics’ professional learning concentrates on learning to be a university teacher and, latterly, a researcher. However, the research supervisor’s role is constantly evolving in response to experiences with a variety of students, and reflection on this can contribute to professional learning. Initial research (Mullins & Kiley, 2002) suggests examiners learn from examining experiences feeding back into supervisory roles. We argue that being a thesis examiner provides academic staff with opportunities to learn about their own supervisory practices, enhancing their professional learning. Our research reports on examiner perceptions of learning from examining doctoral theses, which can be taken back into supervisory practice, and translated into advice for other supervisors and doctoral students

Supervisor wellbeing and identity: Challenges and strategies

Purpose This research aims to explore the professional identity of supervisors and their perceptions of stress in doctoral learning supervision. The research determines ways of developing strategies of resilience and well-being to overcome stress, leading to positive outcomes for supervisors and students. Design/methodology/approach Research is in two parts: first, rescrutinising previous work, and second, new interviews with international and UK supervisors gathering evidence of doctoral supervisor stress, in relation to professional identity, and discovering resilience and well-being strategies. Findings Supervisor professional identity and well-being are aligned with research progress, and effective supervision. Stress and well-being/resilience strategies emerged across three dimensions, namely, personal, learning and institutional, related to emotional, professional and intellectual issues, affecting identity and well-being. Problematic relationships, change in supervision arrangements, loss of students and lack of student progress cause stress. Balances between responsibility and autonomy; uncomfortable conflicts arising from personality clashes; and the nature of the research work, burnout and lack of time for their own work, all cause supervisor stress. Developing community support, handling guilt and a sense of underachievement and self-management practices help maintain well-being. Research limitations/implications Only experienced supervisors (each with four doctoral students completed) were interviewed. The research relies on interview responses. Practical implications Sharing information can lead to informed, positive action minimising stress and isolation; development of personal coping strategies and institutional support enhance the supervisory experience for supervisors and students. Originality/value The research contributes new knowledge concerning doctoral supervisor experience, identity and well-being, offering research-based information and ideas on a hitherto under-researched focus: supervisor stress, well-being and resilience impacting on supervisors’ professional identity. </jats:sec