Dr Andy Mousley

Department of English and Creative Writing

Reader in Critical Theory and Renaissance Literature and Subject Leader

Contact Details  
Email: amousley@dmu.ac.uk

Andy graduated with a First Class English degree from the University of Wales, Cardiff. He has an MA in Elizabethan and Jacobean Studies from the University of Kent, where he also completed his PhD. He joined the English department at De Montfort University as Senior Lecturer in 1999, having previously worked as Lecturer in English at Leeds University and Senior Lecturer in Literature at the University of Bolton.

His main areas of academic interest are in critical theory, humanism and posthumanism, Renaissance literature, and autobiography. He is a leading figure in the current resurgence of interest in humanist literary criticism and is the editor, with introduction, of Towards a New Literary Humanism (London: Palgrave, 2011). He has also recently published two articles in the prestigious British theoretical journal, Textual Practice:  ‘The New Literary Humanism: Towards a Critical Vocabulary’, Textual Practice, 24:5 (2010), 819-39; and  ‘Early Modern Autobiography, History and Human Testimony: The Autobiography of Thomas Whythorne’, Textual Practice, 23:2 (2009), 267-87.

Other major publications include: Re-Humanising Shakespeare: Literary Humanism, Wisdom and Modernity (2007), Critical Humanisms: Humanist/Anti-Humanist Dialogues (with Martin Halliwell, 2003), Renaissance Drama and Contemporary Literary Theory (2000), and, as editor, New Casebooks: John Donne (1999). He is also the series co-editor of Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature. Fifteen titles in this series have so far been published.

As an extension of one of his ‘signature’ research specialisms in literature and humanism, he has created a website, commended by Alain de Botton, designed to deepen public interest in the value of literature and the way that past and present writers can provoke reflection on what it is to be human. The interactive website, called Sage Bites: Reflections on Quotations for Life, is available at http://sagebites.squarespace.com. There is a link to the website from the ‘Community Engagement’ English Subject Centre project at: http://www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/resources/community/reference.

Andy would welcome research students interested in any of the following areas: any aspect of humanism and/or posthumanism, including period-specific humanist ideas, the history of humanist literary criticism, contemporary humanisms and posthumanisms; theories of emotion and/or embodiment and their relevance to literature; the human significance of literature; life writing, especially Renaissance life writing; Shakespeare, especially in relation to humanist/posthumanist ideas.
He is currently teaching Ways of Reading: the Past and Present of Literary Studies (Level 5), History of English (Level 5), and Writing the Self: Twentieth Century Autobiography (Level 6).

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Research and publications