Profile

Biography

Alice Hall is a Lecturer in Contemporary and Global Literature.

Alice completed a BA, MPhil and PhD in English at the University of Cambridge. She held a postdoctoral research fellowship at Nottingham University’s interdisciplinary Centre for Advanced Studies. Before coming to York she taught at Université Paris VII: Denis Diderot, Université Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle, and Cambridge.

Alice’s research interests are in literature and the body; cultural representations of care; disability theory; feminism; and medical humanities. She is particularly interested in twentieth and twenty-first century British and American writing.

In 2013, Alice was one of ten academics chosen as ‘New Generation Thinkers’ by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the BBC. With Professor Sanjoy Bhattacharya, she set up a new MA in Medical History and Humanities, which launched in 2016. She currently holds a Springboard Fellowship funded by the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Wellcome Trust (2018-2021). Alice is the editor of the Representations: Health, Disability, Culture and Society series published by Liverpool University Press.

Research

Overview

Alice works in the Modern Research School. She is also a member of the interdisciplinary the Centre for Modern Studies and the Centre for Global Health Histories, a World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre.

Her first book, Disability and Modern Fiction: Faulkner, Morrison, Coetzee and the Nobel Prize for Literature, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2012. Alice’s second book, Literature and Disability: Contemporary Critical Thought was published by Routledge in 2015.  She is the editor of the Routledge Companion to Literature and Disability (2020) and the forthcoming book, Contemporary Literature and the Body: a Critical Introduction (Bloomsbury).

Alice has also published journal articles and book chapters on British and American literature, disability theory, autobiographical fiction, cultural representations of care, and medical humanities. Alice worked with Professor Tobin Siebers from the University of Michigan to guest edit a special issue of the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies on the theme of disability and visual culture which was published in 2015.

In 2013, Alice was selected by the BBC and AHRC as one of the ten New Generation Thinkers. In this role, she has made broadcasts for BBC Radio 3’s arts and ideas programmes ‘Night Waves’ and ‘The Essay’, BBC Arts television, and given talks at the BBC’s Free Thinking Festival.

In 2014 Alice received funding from the Wellcome Trust funded Centre for Chronic Diseases and Disorders (C2D2) at York for research projects on memory and consciousness in contemporary fiction and life writing, and a video installation on adolescent health. She was PI on two Wellcome Trust grants to support the Northern Network for Medical Humanities which aims to foster connections between universities, arts and health organisations in the north through a series of research workshops (2014-2017).

In 2017 Alice was awarded a Springboard Fellowship by the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Wellcome Trust for her project, ‘Cultures of Care’ (2018-2021).

Supervision

Alice welcomes enquiries from potential PhD students interested in pursuing doctoral work in twentieth and twenty-first century Anglophone literature and culture, in relation to any of her particular areas of interest. 

She is currently acting as an advisor on doctoral projects on American disability poetry and African American literature and technology.

Teaching

Undergraduate

Alice convenes the third year special module, ‘The Body in Modern American Fiction and Culture’. She also lectures and teaches on the Global Literatures, Translations, Key Concepts, Bodies and Minds, Fictions of Human Rights, and Key Concepts first and second year modules.

Postgraduate

With Professor Sanjoy Bhattacharya (History, York), Alice set up a new Medical History and Humanities (MA), which launched in Autumn 2016. She acts as convenor for this MA and teaches the ‘Writing the Body’ option module. Alice also contributes to teaching on the core courses for the MA in Global Literature and Culture and the MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature and Culture.

External activities

Memberships

Alice is a founding member of the member of the Northern Network for Medical Humanities.

She has taken part in public engagement events at Cardiff Book Talk and the BBC Free Thinking Festival at the Sage in Gateshead.  As one of ten New Generation Thinkers selected by the AHRC and BBC in 2013, Alice has made broadcasts about her research for BBC Radio 3’s ‘Night Waves’ and ‘The Essay’, and for BBC Arts television.

She is part of a multidisciplinary group of researchers from the University of York who put together the ‘3Sixty: Jane’s Story’ installation on adolescent health and a project on Poetry and Illness that was included in York’s Festival of Ideas.