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Clearing Study Experience Research Collaborate About us

Professor Sara Upstone

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

Faculty Director of Postgraduate Research and Professor of Contemporary Literature

[email protected]

Professor

About

I am Professor of Contemporary Literature and Faculty Director of Postgraduate Research. I coordinate the provision of and have overall management responsibility for PhD and research MA programmes across Kingston School of Art. I am also currently the Faculty Athena Swan Lead, and a member of the Faculty EDI Committee.

I teach creative writing, English literature, and film studies and accept proposals for PhD research in these areas. I welcome all proposals, but as a disabled scholar with a working-class background, I am very keen to offer project development support to groups who are underrepresented in academia. Please get in touch if I can help.

I've worked at Kingston since 2005. Before being Faculty Director of PGR, I was Head of the School of Arts, Culture and Communication, Head of Department of Humanities, and a School Director of Learning and Teaching.

Qualifications

PhD English Literature
MA English Literary Research
BA English Literature with History
Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PGCLTHE)

Domains

Publications

The hidden queer: queer approaches to fairy-tale Disney films

2026, Marvels and Tales (40), 1, Published

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Howard Ashman, Stephen Sondheim and the queering of magical realist space

Upstone, Sara, 2026, Marvels and Tales (40), 1 pp 65-83, Published

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The transglossic: contemporary fiction and the limitations of the modern

Shaw, Kristian and Upstone, Sara, 2021, English Studies (102), 5 pp 573-600, Published

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Against walls

Upstone, Sara, 2019, Versopolis : the European Review of Poetry, Books and Culture, Published

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Against kindness

Upstone, Sara, 2019, Versopolis : the European Review of Poetry, Books and Culture, Published

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Against drinking

Upstone, Sara, 2019, Versopolis : the European Review of Poetry, Books and Culture, Published

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Against food

Upstone, Sara, 2019, Versopolis : the European Review of Poetry, Books and Culture, Published

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Against people

Upstone, Sara, 2019, Versopolis : the European Review of Poetry, Books and Culture, Published

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Against culture

Upstone, Sara, 2019, Versopolis : the European Review of Poetry, Books and Culture, Published

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Some interventions in the question of living

Upstone, Sara, 2018, Versopolis, E-pub ahead of print

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Beyond the bedroom: Motherhood in E. L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy

Upstone, Sara, 2016, Frontiers : a Journal of Women Studies (37), 2 pp 138-164, Published

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You never let me leave

Upstone, Sara, 2015, Bloodstone Review (1), 1 pp 36-40, 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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You are what you eat: postcolonial eating in the novels of Salman Rushdie

Upstone, Sara, 2009, South Asian Review (30), 2 pp 119-135, Published

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"Same old, same old": Zadie Smith's 'White teeth' and Monica Ali's 'Brick Lane'

Upstone, Sara, 2007, Journal of Postcolonial Writing (43), 3 pp 336-349, Published

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Domesticity in magical-realist postcolonial fiction: reversals of representation in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children

Upstone, Sara, 2007, Frontiers (28), 1 & 2 pp 260-284, Published

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The fulcrum of instabilty: Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath her Feet and the postcolonial traveller

Upstone, Sara, 2006, Wasafiri (21), 1 pp 34-38, Published

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Anancy as trickster: magical space in the fiction of Wilson Harris

Upstone, Sara, 2004, World Literature Written in English (40), 2 pp 23-39, Published

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Writing the post-colonial space: Ben Okri's magical city and the subversion of imperialism

Upstone, Sara, 2004, Partial Answers: Journal of literature and the history of ideas (2), 2 pp 139-159, Published

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Toni Morrison and the magical re-visioning of space

Upstone, Sara, 2003, U.S. Studies Online: The BAAS Postgraduate Journal (3), Published

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Applicability and truth in The hobbit, The lord of the rings, and The silmarillion: readers, fantasy, and canonicity

Upstone, Sara, 2002, Mythlore (23), 4 pp 50-66, Published

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Book review of 'Conversations with Salman Rushdie' by Michael R. Reder

Dailey, Sara, 2001, Ariel (32), 4 pp 258-259, Published

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Utopian realism and race

Upstone, Sara (2026). In: Edwards, Caroline, (eds.), Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press pp 197-220 [Published]

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'An inevitable course‘ Political responsibility in 'The Remains of the Day'

Upstone, Sara (2023). In: Shaw, Kristian, Sloane, Peter, (eds.), Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press [Published]

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Eyes, ears, head, memory, heart: transglossic rhythms in Memory Palace and Twice Upon a Time

Upstone, Sara (2023). In: Shaw, Kristian, Upstone, Sara, (eds.)[Published]

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Even the ghosts: community in the wake

Upstone, Sara (2022). In: Upstone, Sara, Ely, Peter, (eds.)[Published]

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Spaces: the magically real spaces of twentieth- and twenty-first-century fairy tale

Upstone, Sara (2021). In: Teverson, Andrew, (eds.), London, U.K.: Bloomsbury Academic pp 137-158 [Published]

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Post-ethnicity and the politics of positionality

Upstone, Sara (2020). In: Nasta, Sushelia, Stein, Mark U., (eds.), Cambridge, U.K.: pp 650-662 [Published]

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Black British literature

Upstone, Sara (2019). In: O'Gorman, Daniel, Eaglestone, Robert, (eds.), Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge [Published]

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The 'post' in 'postcolonial'

Upstone, Sara (2016). In: McHale, Brian, Platt, Len, (eds.), Cambridge, U.K.: pp 262-277 [Published]

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Postcolonial and diasporic voices - bringing Black to the Union Jack: ethnic fictions and the politics of possibility

Upstone, Sara (2015). In: Hubble, Nick, Tew, Philip, Wilson, Leigh, (eds.), London, U.K.: Bloomsbury Academic pp 123-148 [Published]

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'Some kind of black': black British historiographic metafictions and the postmodern politics of race

Upstone, Sara (2015). In: Platt, Len, Upstone, Sara, (eds.), New York, U.S.A.: pp 279-294 [Published]

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'Footprints are the only fixed point': mobilities in postcolonial fiction

Upstone, Sara (2014). In: Murray, Lesley, Upstone, Sara, (eds.), Basingstoke, U.K.: pp 39-56 [Published]

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Mobilising representations: dialogues, embodiment and power

Murray, Lesley and Upstone, Sara (2014). In: Murray, Lesley, Upstone, Sara, (eds.), Basingstoke, U.K.: pp 1-20 [Published]

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(In)fusion and the 'postcolonial‘: Salman Rushdie‘s 'Shame' as ethical-political fiction

Upstone, Sara (2012). In: Ghosh, Ranjan, (eds.), New York, U.S.: pp 132-148 [Published]

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Iris Murdoch, Ian McEwan and the place of the political in contemporary fiction

Rowe, Anne and Upstone, Sara (2012). In: Rowe, Anne, Horner, Avril, (eds.), Basingstoke, U.K.: pp 59-73 [Published]

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Representation and realism: Monica Ali‘s 'Brick Lane'

Upstone, Sara (2012). In: Ahmed, Rehana, Morey, Peter, Yaquin, Amina, (eds.) Routledge pp 164-179 [Published]

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The history house: the magic of contained space in Arundhati Roy‘s 'The God of Small Things'

Upstone, Sara (2012). In: Ghosh, Ranjan, Navarro-Tejero, Antonia, (eds.), Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge pp 71-79 [Published]

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Introduction

Teverson, Andrew and Upstone, Sara (2011). In: Teverson, Andrew, Upstone, Sara, (eds.), Basingstoke, U.K.: pp 1-13 [Published]

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9/11, British Muslims, and popular literary fiction

Upstone, Sara (2010). In: Birkenstein, Jeff, Froula, Anna, Randell, Karen, (eds.), London, U.K.: pp 35-44 [Published]

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Negotiations of London as imperial urban space in the contemporary postcolonial novel

Upstone, Sara (2006). In: Lindner, Christoph, (eds.), London, UK: Routledge pp 88-100 [Published]

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