Dr. Roberta Garrett

Roberta Garrett

Senior Lecturer

Department of Music, Writing & Performance , School Of Arts And Creative Industries

  • Senior lecturer in Creative Writing and PhD supervisor.

Areas Of Interest

  • Gender
  • Islamophobia
  • Domestic abuse
  • The family
  • Neoliberalism
  • Creative writing
Dr. Roberta Garrett

OVERVIEW

Dr Roberta Garrett is a senior lecturer on the Creative Writing programme and the Media Foundation programme in the Department of Arts and Cultural Industries at the University of East London. She has published widely on representations of gender, class and race in popular literature and film. She is the author of Postmodern Chick-Flicks: the Return of the Woman’s Film (Palgrave, 2008) co-editor of We Need to Talk About Family: Essays on Neoliberalism, the Family and Popular Culture (Cambridge Scholars, 2016) and author of Writing the Modern Family: Contemporary Literature, Motherhood and Neoliberal Culture (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021).

She has published numerous book chapters and articles in journals such as Clues, Studies in the Maternal and The Journal of Screenwriting. These include pieces on Nora Ephron, Game of Thrones, Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, maternal memoirs, the figure of the 'mumpreneur' in popular culture and, more recently, domestic noir novels and screen adaptations. She has a forthcoming article on recent novel and screen representations of domestic abuse in Feminist Media Studies and is currently co-editing a Bloomsbury Critical Perspectives anthology on the work of author Rachel Cusk.

CURRENT RESEARCH

I'm currently writing a monograph on representations of domestic abuse in film and literature and co-editing the first scholarly collection on author Rachel Cusk.

Selection of publications

  • Writing the modern family - neoliberalism and representation of parenting in contemporary novels and memos, Roberta Garrett 2021.
  • (with Angie Voela and Tracey Jensen) We Need to Talk About Family: Essays on Neoliberalism, The Family and Popular Culture (edited collection) Cambridge Scholars, 2016
  • 'Austerity Culture and the Myth of the Mumpreneur' in Thriving Mothers/Depriving Mothers: Mothers and Welfare, eds. K. Levasseur, S. Patterson and L. Turnbull, Demeter Press, October 2020
  • 'A Sly and Stubborn People': Game of Thrones, Orientalism and Islamophobia in A Song of Ice and Fire', in Contesting Islamophobia: Anti-Muslim Prejudice in Media, Culture and Politics, eds. P. Morey, A. Yaquin and A. Forte, IB Taurus, May 2018
  • 'Gendering the Post 9/11 Movie: Love, Loss and Regeneration in Julie and Julia', Women Do Genre in Film and Television eds. M. Harrod and K. Paszkiewicz, Routledge, December 2017
  • Postmodern Chick-Flicks: The Return of the Woman's Film, Palgrave, 2007.
  • (We Need to Talk About) Kevin as feminist and Anti-American Allegory in Women's Writing Post 9/11 (eds) Sebastian Groes, Claire Colbrook and Peter Childs (Lexington Press, (2014)
  • Novels and Children: Mum's Lit and the Public Mother/Author, MAMSIE: studies in the Maternal, Volume 5, Issue 1, 2013.
  • 'Female Fantasy and Post-Feminist Politics and Nora Ephron's Screenplays' in 'The Journal of Screenwriting'  Vol 3 number 2, February, 2012) Intellect Journals

Periodical and newspaper articles

  • Hutchinson Encyclopaedia of Britain feature entry on 'The British Film Industry' (Helicon, 1999)
  • Hutchinson Encyclopaedia feature entry 'What is the Future of Special Effects in Films?' (Helicon, 2000)
  • 'So Lucky'  (short story) 2020
  • Interview with Julie Ruiz for SoFilm
  • 'Alias Grace: A Period Drama for the #metoo Movement', The Independent, 13 December, The Conversation, 5 December 2017.

Conference papers

  • The Myth of the Mumpreneur, Austerity, Gender and Domestic Finances, Kent University, June 2015
  • Tiger Mothers, 'Chinese' parenting and neo-liberal parenting culture, PCA/ACA Chicago, April, 2014
  • 'I was only being honest', maternal confessionals and the neo-liberal mother, University of East London , research and Knowledge conference, June 2013
  • 'Book Groups and The Contemporary Novel: Do Book groups Make a Positive Contribution to Literary Culture?' The East London Literary Festival, Oct 2011
  • I Blame the Parents; Maternal Ambivalence and Infant Determinism in Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin',
  • Critical Perspectives: Contemporary Women Novelists, Roehampton University, April 2011 (I also gave this paper at the Affecting Feminism Conference, Newcastle University December 2010)
  • The Post 9/11 Chick-Flick?:Loss and Maternal Recuperation in Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously,
  • The Depoliticisation of 9/11, Newcastle University, November, 2010 Chick-Flicks and 9/11, CSA Milwaukee, 2010.
  • 'Myth, Gender and Metaphysics in Contemporary Eco-Fiction', CSA New York, 2008
  • 'Ideology and Media Representations of Family and Parenting in Contemporary British Culture (with Dr Michael Peplar) Univesidade Lusofona, Lisbon, November 2006
  • Fiftiesness Revisited, Postmodernism, gender and cinema, PCL conference, Altlanta, April, 2006.
  • 'Romantic-Irony and the Reinvention of the Single Girl,' Association of Cultural Studies Inaugural Conference, July 2003, Pittsburgh

Media/art outputs

  • Interviewed for and appeared on Channel Four's Dark Tales (on Angela Carter, women writers) Hart-Ryan productions, January, 1999

PUBLICATIONS

Books

  • Writing the Modern Family: Contemporary Literature, Motherhood and Neoliberal Culture (2020)
  • We Need to Talk About Family: Essays on Neoliberalism, The Family and Popular Culture. Jensen, T. and Voela, A. (co eds) (2016)
  • Postmodern Chick-Flicks: The Return of The Woman's Film (2007)

Journal Articles

  • Smoke and Mirrors: Dan Mallory, A. J. Finn and The Woman in the Window as postfeminist noir pastiche, Clues (special issue on domestic crime fiction) 2021
  • 'Home is Where the Hate is: Gender, Race, Class and the Domestic Abuse Plotline in Fiction and on Screen' Feminist Media Studies (forthcoming, 2021)
  • 'Fathers Know Best: Mother's Milk, 'Dads' Lit and the Childcare Wars of the Mid 2000s.' The Journal of Mother Studies, Issue 1, September 2016
  • 'Novels and Children: Mum's Lit and the Public Mother/Author', MAMSIE: studies in the Maternal, Vol. 5, Issue 1, 2013
  • 'Female Fantasy and Post-Feminist Politics and Nora Ephron's Screenplays' in 'The Journal of Screenwriting', Vol. 3, number 2, February 2012, Intellect Journals

Book Chapters

  • 'Austerity Culture and the Myth of the Mumpreneur' in Thriving Mothers/Depriving Mothers: Mothers and Welfare, eds. K. Levasseur, S. Patterson and L. Turnbull, Demeter Press, March 2019
  • 'A Sly and Stubborn People: Game of Thrones, Orientalism and Islamophobia in A Song of Ice and Fire', in Contesting Islamophobia: Anti-Muslim Prejudice in Media, Culture and Politics, eds. P. Morey, A. Yaquin and A. Forte, IB Taurus, February 2018
  • 'Gendering the Post 9/11 Movie: Love, Loss and Regeneration in Julie and Julia', Women and Genre, eds. M. Harrod and K. Paszkiewicz, Routledge, December 2017
  • 'A Terrible Deal for the Western Parent: Maternal Memoirs, Mother-Shaming and Neoliberal Parenthood', in Fragile Subjects: Child Figures in Western Modernity, Routledge, eds. K. Launis and J. Ahlbeck, Routledge, October 2017
  • 'Cavorting in the Ruins? Truth, Myth and Resistance in Contemporary 'Mumoirs'', We Need to Talk About Family: Essays on Neoliberalism, The Family and Popular Culture, eds. R. Garrett, T. Jensen and A. Voela, Cambridge Scholars, September 2016.
  • '(We Need to Talk About ) Kevin as feminist and Anti-American Allegory)' in Women's Writing Post 9/11 eds. S. Groes, C. Colbrook and P. Childs, Lexington Press, 2014.
  • 'Costume Drama and Counter-Memory in Sally Potter's 'Orlando' in Postmodern Subjects/Postmodern Texts eds. J. Dowson and S. Earnshaw, Rodopi, 2000.
  • 'Gender, Sex and The Family' in M. Storry and P. Childs (eds.) British Cultural Identities, Routledge, 1999.

Other Publications

  • 'So Lucky' (short story) 2020
  • Interview with Julie Ruiz for SoFilm
  • 'Alias Grace: A Period Drama for the #metoo Movement', The Independent 13th
  • December, The Conversation, 5 December 2017.
  • Hutchinson Encyclopaedia of Britain feature entry on 'The British Film Industry', Helicon, 2004.
  • Hutchinson Encyclopaedia feature entry 'What is the Future of Special Effects in Films?' Helicon, September, 2002.

Recent Conference Papers

  • Bad Grandmas: The representation of older women in domestic noir, Captivating Criminality, Bamberg June 2022
  • Fail Again, Fail Better: the politics of female failure in the work of Megan Nolan and Naoise Dolan. The Politics of Vulnerability in Contemporary Women’s Writing and Creative Practices, (IMLR, online, 19-20 May 2022)​​​​​​
  • Blessed be the Fruit: Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Maternal Ideology, NEMLA, Baltimore, March 2022
  • ‘Home is Where the Hate is: Gender, Race, Class and the Domestic Abuse Plotline in Fiction and on Screen’ Screen Conference, June 2021 (online). 
  • ‘another fucking saint’: A. J. Finn and the cult of the childcare expert’ Girls, Girls, Girls, Trinity College Dublin, August 2019.
  • Greenwich Literary Festival, reading various short stories, including ‘So Lucky’, June 2019.
  • Panel discussion of Rahm (a version of Shakespeare’s Measure to Measure set in Lahore) at SOAS with director Mahmood Jamal (writer and producer) and Ahmed Jamal (director) October 2018
  • 28 September 2018, invited speaker at a one day symposium at Warwick University as part of a British Academy funded project:  'Imagining We in the Age of I' . 'Home is Where the Hate is: Neoliberalism and Coupledom in Domestic Noir' 
  • ‘Hate not Hope: Popular Feminism, Neoliberalism and the rise of 'Grip-Lit', Captivating Criminality, Bath Spa June 2018
  • ‘Mother Studies in the Academy’, Keynote speaker, Oxytocin: Birthing the World, The Royal College of Art, 3 June 2017. 
  • ‘This Won't Affect My Reference will it?' Attachment Parenting, Mothers and 'Others' in Edward St. Aubyn's Mother's Milk’, Annual Conference of The Museum of Motherhood, New York City, May 2016.
  • ‘All the Pleasure of Normal Family Life has been Replaced by Dull-eyed Damage Control’:  Intensive/Attachment Mothering Versus the Teen Rebel in Julie Mye
  • 'The Myth of the Mumpreneur: Austerity, Gender and Domestic Finances', Kent University, June 2015
  • 'Tiger Mothers, 'Chinese' Parenting and Neoliberal Parenting Culture', PCA/ACA Chicago, April 2014.
  • 'I Was Only Being Honest', Maternal Confessionals and the Neoliberal Mother, University of East London, Research and Knowledge conference, June 2013
  • I organised a one day conference on The Family in Crisis? Neoliberalism and the Politicisation of Parenting and the Family 2013
  • 'Book Groups and The Contemporary Novel: Do Book groups Make a Positive Contribution to Literary Culture?' The East London Literary Festival, October 2011
  • 'I Blame the Parents; Maternal Ambivalence and Infant Determinism in Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin', Critical Perspectives: Contemporary Women Novelists, Roehampton University, April 2011. (I also gave this paper at the Affecting Feminism Conference, Newcastle University, December 2010)
  • 'The Post 9/11 Chick-Flick?: Loss and Maternal Recuperation in Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously', The Depoliticisation of 9/11, Newcastle University, November 2010
  • 'Myth, Gender and Metaphysics in Contemporary Eco-Fiction', CSA New York, 2008
  • Consultant/appeared on Channel Four's Dark Tales (on Angela Carter/women writers) Hart-Ryan productions, January 1999.
  • Key publications pre 2001: Costume Drama and Counter-Memory in Sally Potters Orlando in Postmodern Subjects/ Postmodern Texts Jane Dowson and Steve Earnshaw (eds) Rodophi, 1995.
  • Gender, Sex and The Family in Mike Storry and Peter Childs (eds) British Cultural Studies Routledge, 1997

TEACHING

MODULES

  • Origins of the Novel
  • Modernity, Literature and Culture
  • Postmodern Writing

Scholarly activities

  • PhD Supervision

PhD students, Alison Baker, class and gender in post-1970s children's fiction, Alison Baker, Muslim writers, religion and cross-cultural romance, Adrian Banting (UEL)

  • Awarded a research intern to assist in research into Cultural Representations of the Family in Literature and in planning and organising a one day symposium on 'The Family in Crisis? : representation of the neo-liberal family' (2013)
  • Memberships of Professional Bodies
  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Publications

The last four years of publications can be viewed below. 

Full publications list

Visit the research repository to view a full list of publications

Research repository