Dr Martin Dines

Kingston School of Art
Department of Humanities
School of Creative and Cultural Industries
Penrhyn Road

Associate Professor and School Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange

[email protected]

ORCID

About

I am Associate Professor and Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange for the School of Creative and Cultural Industries.

I lecture in 20th-century and contemporary British and American writing at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

My research focuses on literary engagements with built and 'natural' environments, and on British and American queer writing from the 1950s to the present. 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 late-20th-century 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 20th-century and contemporary British and American writing. From 2015 to 2021, I was course leader for Kingston's MA English Literature, a 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. For our first-year module 'Reading London', 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. I have liaised with Kingston-based organisations to develop live briefs for the third-year module 'Humanities in the Environment', which sees students apply creative-writing and literary-critical approaches to deal with a challenge or issue that relates to the local environment.

I have taught recently on the following UG and PG English / Creative Writing 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 Writers'; 'Gender and Sexuality'; 'Radical Writers'; 'Humanities in the Environment'
Level 7: 'Transgression and Dissidence'; 'Sex and Text'.

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 the emergent, contested histories of the US suburbs – places which are so often (and problematically) presumed to be timeless and complete.

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-20th-century Britain. Other work addresses literary engagements with gentrification in late-20th-century London, and literary responses to suburban diasporas.

I am currently developing projects that attend to: walking methodologies; British nature writing in the post-war years; and queer writing and intergenerationality.

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 built and 'natural' environments; writing, domesticity and the everyday; and sexuality, literature and theory.

Specialisms

Literary urban studies
Environmental humanities
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)

Publications

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, Published

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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, Published

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Book Review of: 'All the Tiny Moments Blazing: A Literary Guide to Suburban London' by Ged Pope

Dines, Martin, 2022, London Literary Society reviews, Published

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Book Review of: 'Trespassers? : Asian Americans and the battle for suburbia' by Willow S. Lung-Amam

Dines, Martin, 2018, Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa, 1 pp 191-193, Published

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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, Published

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Book Review of 'Imagined frontiers: contemporary America and beyond' by Carl Abbott

Dines, Martin, 2016, Journal of American Studies (50), 4 pp 1130-1131, Published

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Education should be a right for all

Dixon, Paul, Favretto, Ilaria, Finn, Peter, Smart, Jackie, Spencer, Philip, Stockhammer, Engelbert, Stuart, John, Suess, Eleanor, Giaxoglou, Korina, Goldsmith, Carlie, Hallward, Peter, Hawkins, Sue, Swift, Allan, Upstone, Sara, Vallee-Tourangeau, Frederic, Wells, Julian, Wilson, Scott, 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, Blackburn, Robert, Botting, Fred, Brady, Mary, Osborne, Peter, Pinnock, Winsome, Piper, Jason, Choat, Simon, Chu, Jonathan, Cinpoes, Radu, Coultas, Valerie, Dines, Martin, Caygill, Howard, Chadwick, Howard, Chanter, Tina, Roberts, Mike, Rogers, David, Sandford, Stella, Searby, Michael, Siddiki, Jalal Uddin, Ponto, Maria, Raphael, Sam, Reid, Trish, Agnew, Eadaoin, Alliez, Eric and Auerbach, Paul, 2014, The Guardian, Published

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Bringing the boy back home: domesticity and egalitarian relationships in postwar London novels

Dines, Martin, 2013, Literary London Journal (10), 2, Published

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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, Published

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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, Published

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Country cousins: Europeanness, sexuality and locality in contemporary Italian television

Dines, Martin and Rigoletto, Sergio, 2012, Modern Italy (17), 4 pp 479-491, Published

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From subterranean to suburban: the landscapes of gay outlaw writing

Dines, Martin, 2007, American Studies Journal (50), Published

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Sacrilege in the sitting room: contesting suburban domesticity in contemporary gay literature

Dines, Martin, 2005, Home Cultures (2), 2 pp 175-194, Published

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Keeping up and falling down in the suburbs

Dines, Martin (2025). In: Crosthwaite, Paul, (eds.) Cambridge University Press pp 175-191 [Published]

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'Where the city dissolves': suburban diasporas, psychosis and reparative writing

Dines, Martin (2024). In: Grant, Charlotte, Robinson, Alistair, (eds.), London, U.K.: [Published]

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Desiderio d'Europa e istanze locali ne Il padre delle spose

Dines, Martin and Rigoletto, Sergio (2020). In: Rigoletto, Sergio, (eds.), Milan: pp 52-72 [Published]

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Designs for living rooms

Dines, Martin (2018). In: Gorman-Murray, Andrew, Cook, Matt, (eds.), London, U.K.: Bloomsbury Academic pp 95-107 [Published]

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'Is it a queer book?': re-reading the 1950s homosexual novel

Dines, Martin (2018). In: Bentley, Nick, Ferrebe, Alice, Hubble, Nick, (eds.), London, U.K.: Bloomsbury Academic pp 111-140 [Published]

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'Ode to a suburban garden': eccentric narrative and 'The stranger's child'

Dines, Martin (2017). In: Mathuray, Mark, (eds.), London, U.K.: pp 175-195 [Published]

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A child in the suburb

Dines, Martin (2016). In: Berberich, Christine, Campbell, Neil, Hudson, Robert, (eds.), Abdingdon, U.K.: pp 99-112 [Published]

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Gay and lesbian subcultures from Stonewall to 'Angels in America'

Dines, Martin (2016). In: McHale, Brian, Platt, Len, (eds.), Cambridge, U.K.: pp 247-261 [Published]

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Metaburbia: the evolving suburb in contemporary fiction

Dines, Martin (2015). In: Archer, John, Sandul, Paul J. P., Solomonson, Katherine, (eds.), Minneapolis, U.S.: pp 81-90 [Published]

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Wasteland of the free: suburbia and autonomy in Dennis Cooper's Try

Dines, Martin (2008). In: Hegarty, Paul, Kennedy, Danny, (eds.), Eastbourne, UK: pp 20-31 [Published]

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Poodle Queens and the Great Dark Lad: class, masculinity and suburban trajectories in gay London

Dines, Martin (2007). In: Cunningham, Gail, Barber, Stephen, (eds.), New York, USA: Berghahn Books pp 189-201 [Published]

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Gallery of work

'Surbiton Stories' app-based walking workshop

Speaking at 'The Coast is Queer', an LGBTQ+ literary festival held in Brighton, September 2019

The Literary London Society Annual Conference 2018

The Literature of Suburban Change

‘"Is it a Queer Book?" Re-reading the 1950s Homosexual Novel'

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View my Academia page

Dr Martin Dines

About

Qualifications

Domains

Teaching and learning

Research

Leadership and management

Publications

Articles

Books

Book Sections/Chapters

Conference Items

Theses

Gallery of work

'Surbiton Stories' app-based walking workshop

Speaking at 'The Coast is Queer', an LGBTQ+ literary festival held in Brighton, September 2019

The Literary London Society Annual Conference 2018

The Literature of Suburban Change

‘"Is it a Queer Book?" Re-reading the 1950s Homosexual Novel'

Stay connected