I like having a student-run bar,
because it keeps it friendly and cheap!
Dr Ross Wilson
MA (Cantab), MA (London), PhD (Cantab)
Official Fellow; Tutor
University Lecturer in Criticism, Faculty of English
Biography
I was born in Salford and brought up in Manchester. I came to Emmanuel to read Theology in 1997 and, after a very happy first year, switched to English in my second. After a Master's degree at UCL, I returned to Emmanuel, completing my PhD in 2004, and I was elected to a research fellowship in the same year. My first teaching post was at the University of East Anglia, but I returned to Cambridge as Lecturer in Criticism in the Faculty of English in 2013. After a bit of a detour, I rejoined Emmanuel in 2019 and have since served as Acting Tutor and Director of Studies in English (Part I).
Teaching Interests
My main teaching interests are in the history, theory, and practice of literary criticism, and in literature (especially poetry and non-fiction prose) from around the middle of the eighteenth century to today. I regularly teach for the following papers: Practical Criticism and Critical Practice (Parts IA and II); English Literature and its Contexts, 1660-1870; Lyric; The Ethical Imagination; History and Theory of Literary Criticism. I have also taught for English Literature and its Contexts, 1830 to the present; Tragedy; and Prose Forms.
Research
My research interests overlap considerably with my teaching interests. I have published books on the poet Percy Shelley (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and the critic and philosopher Theodor Adorno (Routledge, 2007), as well as numerous essays on literary theory and criticism, British and Continental Romanticism, and Victorian poetry. I have just finished a project on the generic forms in which literary criticism has been written since about 1750. There's a short talk about my most recent research here; a list of publications and a link to my full CV is available on my Faculty webpage (see 'Links' below).