Professor Berthold Schoene
Professor of English & Postgraduate Research Coordinator
My profile
Biography
I started my academic career as a Modern Languages student in Germany in the mid-1980s, specialising in English and Scandinavian Studies. For a while it looked like I might embark on a PhD in Old Norse Poetry and I sometimes wonder where such eccentricity might have taken me. But I veered away from that into (the only slightly less arcane terrain of) Scottish Literature, which was also what transported me to the UK — Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee first, followed by lectureships at the Universities of Swansea, South Wales, Liverpool John Moores and Manchester. Since 2004 I’ve been Professor of English at Manchester Met. I was a visiting professor at the Universities of Chemnitz in Germany, Connecticut in the US, and Madras (Chennai) in India before immersing myself in faculty research management, initially as Associate Dean and eventually as Faculty Research Director. My main task was twofold: to establish a vibrant multidisciplinary research culture, and to shepherd a steadily growing community of Arts, Humanities and Social Science researchers through RAE2008, REF2014 and REF2021. In 2023 I decided to demit from the role in order to return to teaching and research in my home School of English.
I believe in the transformative power of art, literature, storytelling, and critical thought. Recently my interests have shifted from texts more or less exclusively preoccupied with human concerns onto the wider environmental dynamics of more-than-human representation, rapport and resonance. This has seen me venture into the exciting intellectual terrain of the newly emergent Environmental Humanities. Over the past few years I have written on arborealism and dendrography, eco-narratology and ruderal aesthetics, as well as trans-corporeality, hope, and degrowth aesthetics in the Anthropocene.
Research outputs
- Books (authored/edited/special issues)
Books (authored/edited/special issues)
Barker, N., Masters, B., Janes, D.M., Platt, L., Carpenter, G., Kennedy, B., Vardy, C., Marsh, H., Bennett, A., Byrne, E. (2020) Nicola Barker Critical Essays. Gylphi Limited.
Pollard, E., Schoene, B. (2018) British Literature in Transition, 1980–2000: Accelerated Times.
Schoene, B., Schoene-Harwood, B. (2010) The Edinburgh Companion to Irvine Welsh.
Schoene, B. (2010) The Edinburgh Companion to Irvine Welsh.
Schoene, B. (2009) The Cosmopolitan Novel. Edinburgh University Press.
Schoene, B. (2007) The Edinburgh companion to contemporary Scottish literature. Edinburgh University Press.
Schoene, B. (2007) The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature.
Schoene, B.J., Lea, D. (2003) Posting the Male. Masculinities in Post-War and Contemporary British Literature.. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Schoene, B.J. (2000) Mary Shelley. Frankenstein. A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Schoene, B.J. (2000) Writing Men: Literary Masculinities from Frankenstein to the New Man. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Schoene, B.J. (1995) The Making of Orcadia. Narrative Identity in the Prose Work of George Mackay Brown.. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
- Chapters in books
Chapters in books
Schoene, B. (2019) 'Angry Young Masculinity and the Rhetoric of Homophobia and Misogyny in the Scottish Novels of Alan Sharp.' Gendering the Nation: Studies in Modern Scottish Literature. pp. 85-106.
Pollard, E., Schoene, B.J. (2018) 'No such thing as society: the novel under neoliberalism.' In Pollard, E., Schoene, B.J. (ed.) British Literature in Transition, 1980-2000: Accelerated Times. Cambridge University Press,
Pollard, E., Schoene, B. (2018) 'Introduction.' pp. 1-22.
Schoene, B.J. (2016) 'Twenty-First-Century Fiction.' The Oxford History of the Novel in English. Volume 7: British and Irish Fiction since 1940. Edited by Peter Boxall and Bryan Cheyette. pp. 549-63.. Oxford University Press,
Schoene, B.J. (2013) 'Weltliteratur und kosmopolitische Literatur..' In Winko, S., Rippl, G. (ed.) Handbuch Kanon und Wertung. Metzler, pp. 356-363.
Schoene, B.J. (2011) 'Baffled Hopes and Bad Habits: Men, Marriage and Conformity in Queer Theory and Gay Representation.' In Horlacher, S. (ed.) Constructions of Masculinity in British Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 209-218.
Schoene, B. (2010) 'Welsh, Drugs and Subculture.' The Edinburgh Companion to Irvine Welsh. pp. 65-76.
Schoene, B. (2007) 'Going cosmopolitan: Reconstituting 'Scottishness' in post-devolution criticism.' The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature. pp. 7-16.
Schoene, B. (2007) 'Alan Warner, Post-feminism and the Emasculated Nation.' The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature. pp. 255-263.
Schoene, B. (2006) 'Queer politics, queer theory, and the future of "identity": spiralling out of culture.' In Rooney, E. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Literary Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 283-302.
Schoene, B. (2004) 'Nervous men, mobile nation: masculinity and psychopathology in Irvine Welsh's "Filth" and "Glue".' In Bell, E., Miller, G. (ed.) Scotland in Theory: Reflections on Culture and Literature. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 121-145.
Schoene, B. (2003) 'The Union and Jack: British masculinities, pomophobia and the post-nation.' In Norquay, G., Smyth, G. (ed.) Across the Margins: Identity, Resistance and Minority Culture throughout the British Archipelago. pp. 83-98.
Schoene, B.J. (1997) 'The (Al)location of Culture: Scottish Postcoloniality and the Twentieth-Century Highland Novel..' In Norquay, G., Smyth, G. (ed.) Space and Place: The Geographies of Literature. Liverpool John Moores University Press, pp. 359-371.
Schoene, B.J. (1995) 'Angry Young Masculinity in the Scottish Novels of Alan Sharp..' In Whyte, C. (ed.) Gendering the Nation: Studies in Modern Scottish Literature.. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 85-106.
- Journal articles
Journal articles
Schoene, B. (2024) 'Degrowth Aesthetics and the Barely-There Novel: Reading Sara Baume.' Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment,
Schoene, B. (2024) 'Coming back down to Earth: the novel and the human condition in the Anthropocene.' English Studies, 105(4) pp. 587-605.
Schoene, B. (2024) 'Arboreal obliquity or trees doing the human in Murray Bail's Eucalyptus.' Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction,
Schoene, B. (2024) 'Max Porter’s ruderalism, or what nature is now.' Textual Practice,
Schoene, B. (2021) 'Arborealism, or Do Novels Do Trees?.' Textual Practice, 36(9) pp. 1435-1458.
Schoene, B.J. (2017) 'Contemporary American Literature as World Literature: Cruel Cosmopolitanism, Cosmopoetics, and the Search for a Worldlier American Novel.' Anglia: Zeitschrift fuer Englische Philologie, 135(1) pp. 86-104.
Schoene, B.J. (2013) 'The World on a Train. Global Narration in Geoff Ryman's 253 Online Tube Theatre and Print Remix..' Open Arts Journal, 1(1) pp. 7-15.
Schoene, B. (2013) 'Getting World Going in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake.' The Senses and Society, 8(1) pp. 96-105.
Schoene, B.J., Byrne, E., Mullaney, J. (2012) 'Barack Obama: Twenty-First-Century President.' Comparative American Stuides, 10(2-3) pp. 109-115.
Schoene, B.J. (2012) 'Cosmo-Kitsch vs. Cosmopoetics.' The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 32(3) pp. 105-113.
Schoene, B. (2010) 'Tour du Monde: David Mitchell's Ghostwritten and the Cosmopolitan Imagination.' COLLEGE LITERATURE, 37(4) pp. 42-+.
Schoene, B. (2008) 'Cosmopolitan Scots.' SCOTTISH STUDIES REVIEW, 9(2) pp. 71-92.
Schoene, B. (2008) 'Serial Masculinity: Psychopathology and Oedipal Violence in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho.' MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 54(2) pp. 378-397.
Schoene, B. (2006) 'The wounded woman and the parrot: post-feminist girlhood in Alan Warner's "The Sopranos" and Bella Bathurst's "Special".' Journal of gender studies, 15(2) pp. 133-144.
Schoene, B. (2006) 'The walking cure: Heimat, masculinity and mobile narration in Alan Warner's The man who walks.' SCOTTISH STUDIES REVIEW, 7(1) pp. 95-109.
Lea, D., Schoene, B.J. (2002) 'Introduction to the Special Section on Literary Masculinities.' Men and Masculinities, 4(4) pp. 319-321.
Schoene, B. (1999) 'Beyond (t)race: bildung and proprioception in Meera Syal's 'Anita and Me'.' Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 34(1) pp. 131-148.
Schoene, B. (1999) 'Dams burst: devolving gender in Iain Banks's "The Wasp Factory".' Ariel: review of international English literature, 30(1) pp. 131-148.
Schoene, B. (1998) 'Herald of hybridity: the emancipation of difference in Hanif Kureishi's "The Buddha of Suburbia".' International journal of cultural studies, 1(1) pp. 109-128.
Schoene, B. (1998) 'Emerging as the others of our selves: Scottish multiculturalism and the challenge of body in postcolonial representation.' Scottish Literary Journal, 25(1) pp. 54-72.
Schoene, B.J. (1995) 'I Imagined Nine Centuries: Narrative Fragmentation and Mythical Closure in the Shorter Historical Fiction of George Mackay Brown..' Scottish Literary Journal, 22(2) pp. 41-59.
Schoene, B. (1995) 'A passage to Scotland: Scottish literature and the British postcolonial condition.' Scotlands, 2(1) pp. 107-122.
- Other
Other
Schoene, B. (2015) Modernist Futures: Innovation and Inheritance in the Contemporary Novel.
Schoene, B.J. (2014) Foreword: A Queer Affinity.
Schoene, B.J., Byrne, E. (2013) Cosmopolitanism as Critical and Creative Practice. An Introduction..
Schoene, B. (2011) The Anti-Instrumentalist Community.