War and Modern Fantasy Writing

The University of Glasgow and Imperial War Museums (IWM) are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded Collaborative doctoral studentship from October 2024 under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme.

This project will offer a CDP PhD student the chance to consider the impact that the intimate experience of war has had and continues to have on writers of fantasy fiction. The student will have the opportunity to contribute to the scope and narrative of IWM’s planned War and Modern Fantasy exhibition, to be held at IWM London in 2026.

Fantasy and speculative texts, in their broadest sense, are one of the most popular and global forms of cultural engagement and entertainment. Books, movies and television shows with fantasy themes form the cornerstone of the world’s entertainment and elements of these texts have become part of the zeitgeist of cultures all over the world. These stories often have global reach and transcend time periods with their universal themes. This PhD proposal is expected to appeal to students of English Literature and/or Cultural Studies, who are wishing to explore how authors and readers either in the past or present have engaged with conflict through expressions of fantasy and speculative texts (written, visual, cinematic, etc).

The research will have two principal elements: 1) investigating IWM’s and other archives’ collections (including written, visual, and material culture) for hitherto unidentified or lesser-known manifestations of expressions of fantastical or speculative thinking texts (in writing, painting, propaganda) as a direct experience in or reflection of modern war and conflict. 2) interviewing a sample of current fantasy and speculative literature creatives (authors, illustrators, filmmakers, and other practitioners) including those who have lived, or are living, in modern war zones, and to explore the impact conflict has had on the development of their imaginative worlds.

The PhD candidate will be encouraged to identify relevant material from IWM’s private papers, known to have information that sheds light on the role of fantasy and the imagination when processing the impact of conflict. IWM’s visual collections (art, film and photographs) will similarly offer opportunities to examine the creative process when influenced by war. The student will be expected to engage with sources held at other archives.

Key research questions to be addressed include: · In what respects has war impacted on key creative practitioners of fantasy during the twentieth century? · Can we unearth examples of how experience in or the impact of modern war and conflict was expressed through fantastical or speculative methods (writing, visuals, propaganda) that hitherto have gone unnoticed? · Are we seeing new trends in how more contemporary conflicts are shaping the development of these subjects and themes? · In what respects is this contemporary literature similar/different from that which documented earlier conflicts?

More information here – https://www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/arts/graduateschool/fundingopportunities/war-modern-fantasy-writing-phd-scholarship/