Dr Martin Dines
Faculties, deparments and locations
- Kingston School of Art
- Department of Humanities
- School of Creative and Cultural Industries
- Penrhyn Road
Senior Lecturer in English Literature
- Email:
- m.dines@kingston.ac.uk
About
I am Associate Professor and Joint Head of the Department of Humanities.
I lecture in twentieth-century and contemporary British and American writing at undergraduate and postgraduate level.
My research focuses on British and American queer writing from the 1950s to the present, and on literary engagements with space and place. My latest book, The Literature of Suburban Change (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), explores how writers have innovated with a variety of literary forms in order to make sense of the growing complexity of the US suburbs. My most recent research examines literary responses to gentrification, mobility and infrastructure in 1960s and 1970s London.
I am chair of Kingston University's Race/Gender Matters research group.
Qualifications
- Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Kingston University (2011)
- PhD English Literature, Kingston University (2006)
- MA English Literature (with distinction), University of Sussex (2001)
- BA hons English Studies and Philosophy, University of Nottingham (1997)
Domains
I lecture in twentieth-century and contemporary British and American writing. From 2015 to 2021 I was course leader for Kingston's MA English Literature, whose programme I redesigned and which now focuses on transgressive texts and dissident writing.
My teaching engages with a range of live issues, including the ways authors have grappled with social and technological change, how narratives have been shaped by borders, migration and the experience of being between cultures, and the intimate yet often troubled relationship between writing and sexuality.
I find classroom-based teaching enormously rewarding, but I am also excited to work with students outside of the seminar room. In 2020, for instance, I devised and led ‘walking workshops' in which students explore the literary heritage – and the narrative possibilities – of local neighbourhoods with the help of a mobile phone-based app. (For details, see Gallery, below.)
I currently teach on the following BA and MA English Literature modules:
Level 4: 'Reading London: Drama, Poetry, Prose'; 'Reading through Theory'
Level 5: 'Transforming Realities: Innovation and Social Change in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Literature'
Level 6: 'Black and Asian Writing'; 'Gender and Sexuality'; 'Radical Writers'; 'Dissertation'
Level 7: 'Transgression and Dissidence'; 'Sex and Text'; 'English Literature Dissertation'
Qualifications
- Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Kingston University (2011) and Fellow of the Higher Education Authority (FHEA)
Courses taught
My research focuses on queer writing from the 1950s to the present, and on literary engagements with space and place. My latest book, The Literature of Suburban Change (Edinburgh University Press, in the series Modern American Literature and the New Twentieth Century), explores how writers, from 1960 to the present, have employed formal innovation to articulate the temporal dimensions and emergent, contested histories of the US suburbs - places which are so often presumed to be timeless, fixed and finished.
In other recent publications I examine how domestic spaces, in particular the living room, provided writers a crucial imaginary site for negotiating the possibilities and contradictions of queer life in mid-twentieth century Britain. My most recent book chapter argues that the reformist and respectable British 'homosexual novel' of the 1950s needs to be re-read as a narrative that is shaped - or deformed - by the persistent presence of disreputable and pleasurable intimacies, locations and narrative modes; such a re-reading helps us to question simplistic progressivist histories of sexuality.
I edited Issue 16.1 (2020) of The Literary London Journal.
My ongoing research examines literary engagements with gentrification in late twentieth-century London, and literary responses to suburban diasporas.
I am chair of the research group Race/Gender Matters, which focuses on theoretical, critical and creative engagements with race, gender and the environment.
I welcome enquiries from potential postgraduate students who seek supervision for projects in my areas of specialism, in particular: literary responses to the built environment; writing, domesticity and the everyday; and sexuality, literature and theory.
Specialisms
- Literary urban studies
- Sexuality, literature and theory
- Twentieth-century and contemporary British and American Literature
Scholarly affiliations
- Literary London Society: committee member since 2011; President (2017-20)
- British Association of American Studies: member; executive committee member (2016-17): served on judging panels for several awards, including the US Embassy Small Grants Programme
- Association of Literary Urban Studies: member
- American Comparative Literature Association: member
- Advisory Board Member for the exhibition and events series ‘Queer between the Covers', Senate House Library (2017-18)
- Advisory Board Member, AHRC-funded project ‘Queer beyond London' (2016-17)
- Member, AHRC-funded research network, ‘Home, Crisis and the Imagination' (2015-16)
- Partner and Co-investigator, Leverhulme Network Grant, ‘Cultures of the Suburbs International Research Network' (2011-14)
I am joint Head of Department for Humanities in the School of Arts, Culture and Communication. With my colleague Dr Matthew Birchwood I oversee the running of courses in English, Creative Writing and Philosophy, and we also have overall responsibility for the Kingston Language Scheme (KLS) and the English for Academic and Professional Development Programme (EAPD) provision.
I am an elected member of The University's Academic Council (formally known as Senate), representing Kingston School of Art.
From 2017-2020 I was President of the Literary London Society.
Publications
The literature of suburban change: narrating spatial complexity in metropolitan America
Dines, Martin (2020). Edinburgh, U.K.: (Edinburgh University Press)
New suburban stories
(2013). London, U.K.: (Bloomsbury Academic)
Gay suburban narratives in American and British culture: homecoming queens
Dines, Martin (2010). Basingstoke, U.K.: (Palgrave Macmillan)
Book Review of: 'The Poetics of Cruising: Queer Visual Culture from Whitman to Grindr' by Jack Parlett
Dines, Martin, 2024, American Literary History (36), 2, pp 674-677
Expanded narratives of gentrification : mobility, infrastructure and urban change in 1970s London literature
Dines, Martin, 2023, Journal of Urban Cultural Studies (10), 1, pp 31-51
Book Review of: 'All the Tiny Moments Blazing: A Literary Guide to Suburban London' by Ged Pope
Dines, Martin, 2022, London Literary Society reviews
Book Review of : 'Trespassers? : Asian Americans and the battle for suburbia' by Willow S. Lung-Amam
Dines, Martin, 2018, Etnografia e ricerca qualitative, 1, pp 191-193
Book Review of 'Sex, time and place : queer histories of London, c.1850 to the present' by Simon Avery and Katherine M. Graham (eds.)
Dines, Martin, 2017, Literary London Journal (14), 2, pp 89-93
Book Review of 'Imagined frontiers : contemporary America and beyond' by Carl Abbott
Dines, Martin, 2016, Journal of American Studies (50), 4, pp 1130-1131
Education should be a right for all
Agnew, Eadaoin, Alliez, Eric, Auerbach, Paul, Blackburn, Robert, Botting, Fred, Brady, Mary, Caygill, Howard, Chadwick, Howard, Chanter, Tina, Choat, Simon, Chu, Jonathan, Cinpoes, Radu, Coultas, Valerie, Dines, Martin, Dixon, Paul, Favretto, Ilaria, Finn, Peter, Giaxoglou, Korina, Goldsmith, Carlie, Hallward, Peter, Hawkins, Sue, Haywood, Peter, Higginbottom, Andrew, Ichijo, Atsuko, Isaac, Marina, Jensen, Meg, Kayyali, Reem, Kettyle, Ann, Lambrou, Marina, Latimer, Amanda, Linton, Marisa, Lipsedge, Karen, Malabou, Catherine, O Maoilearca, John, McQuillan, Martin, Micklethwaite, Paul, Morgan Wortham, Simon, O'Brien, Catherine, Osborne, Peter, Pinnock, Winsome, Piper, Jason, Ponto, Maria, Raphael, Sam, Reid, Trish, Roberts, Mike, Rogers, David, Sandford, Stella, Searby, Michael, Siddiki, Jalal Uddin, Smart, Jackie, Spencer, Philip, Stockhammer, Engelbert, Stuart, John, Suess, Eleanor, Swift, Allan, Upstone, Sara, Vallee-Tourangeau, Frederic, Wells, Julian and Wilson, Scott, 2014, The Guardian
Bringing the boy back home: domesticity and egalitarian relationships in postwar London novels
Dines, Martin, 2013, Literary London Journal (10), 2
Suburban gothic and the ethnic uncanny in Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides
Dines, Martin, 2012, Journal of American Studies (46), 4, pp 959-975
Book Review of 'Erotic city : sexual revolutions and the making of modern San Francisco' by Josh Sides
Dines, Martin, 2012, Journal of American Studies (46), 1, pp 258-259
Country cousins: Europeanness, sexuality and locality in contemporary Italian television
Dines, Martin and Rigoletto, Sergio, 2012, Modern Italy (17), 4, pp 479-491
From subterranean to suburban: the landscapes of gay outlaw writing
Dines, Martin, 2007, American Studies Journal (50)
Sacrilege in the sitting room: contesting suburban domesticity in contemporary gay literature
Dines, Martin, 2005, Home Cultures (2), 2, pp 175-194
'Where the city dissolves' : suburban diasporas, psychosis and reparative writing
Dines, Martin (2024). In: Grant, Charlotte, (eds.) and Robinson, Alistair, (eds.), Cultures of London : legacies of migration. London, U.K.: Bloomsbury
Desiderio d'Europa e istanze locali ne Il padre delle spose
Dines, Martin and Rigoletto, Sergio (2020). In: Rigoletto, Sergio, (ed.), Le norme traviate. Saggi sul genere e sulla sessualità nel cinema e nella televisione italiana. Milan: Meltemi, pp 52-72
Designs for living rooms
Dines, Martin (2018). In: Gorman-Murray, Andrew, (eds.) and Cook, Matt, (eds.), Queering the interior. London, U.K.: Bloomsbury Academic, pp 95-107
'Is it a queer book?' : re-reading the 1950s homosexual novel
Dines, Martin (2018). In: Bentley, Nick, (eds.), Ferrebe, Alice, (eds.) and Hubble, Nick, (eds.), The 1950s : a decade of modern British fiction. London, U.K.: Bloomsbury Academic, pp 111-140
'Ode to a suburban garden' : eccentric narrative and 'The stranger's child'
Dines, Martin (2017). In: Mathuray, Mark, (ed.), Sex and sensibility in the novels of Alan Hollinghurst. London, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 175-195
Gay and lesbian subcultures from Stonewall to 'Angels in America'
Dines, Martin (2016). In: McHale, Brian, (eds.) and Platt, Len, (eds.), The Cambridge history of postmodern literature. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, pp 247-261
A child in the suburb
Dines, Martin (2016). In: Berberich, Christine, (eds.), Campbell, Neil, (eds.) and Hudson, Robert, (eds.), Affective landscapes in literature, art and everyday life : memory, place and the senses. Abdingdon, U.K.: Routledge, pp 99-112
Metaburbia : the evolving suburb in contemporary fiction
Dines, Martin (2015). In: Archer, John, (eds.), Sandul, Paul J. P., (eds.) and Solomonson, Katherine, (eds.), Making suburbia: new histories of everyday America. Minneapolis, U.S.: University of Minnesota Press, pp 81-90
Wasteland of the free: suburbia and autonomy in Dennis Cooper's Try
Dines, Martin (2008). In: Hegarty, Paul, (eds.) and Kennedy, Danny, (eds.), Dennis Cooper: Writing at the Edge. Eastbourne, UK: Sussex Academic Press, pp 20-31
Poodle Queens and the Great Dark Lad: class, masculinity and suburban trajectories in gay London
Dines, Martin (2007). In: Cunningham, Gail, (eds.) and Barber, Stephen, (eds.), London eyes: reflections in text and image. New York, USA: Berghahn Books, pp 189-201
"Keep in mind you are making memories" : narrating suburban childhoods
Dines, Martin(2014). In: The Story of Memory : New Perspectives on the Relationship between Storytelling and Memory in the Twenty-First Century, 04 - 05 Sep 2014 :London, U.K.
Egalitarian relationships and the middle-class home in postwar queer London novels
Dines, Martin(2011). In: Literary London 2011 : Representations of London in literature, 20-22 July 2011 :London, U.K.
Homecoming queens : gay suburban narratives in British and American film and fiction
Dines, Martin (2006), PhD thesis, Kingston University
Gallery of work
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'Surbiton Stories' app-based walking workshop
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Speaking at 'The Coast is Queer', an LGBTQ+ literary festival held in Brighton, September 2019
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The Literary London Society Annual Conference 2018
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The Literature of Suburban Change
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‘"Is it a Queer Book?" Re-reading the 1950s Homosexual Novel'
