University of Hull > Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences > English > Our Staff

Professor Katharine Cockin, BA, MA, PhD (Leicester)

Contact details

Katharine Cockin

Head of Department

Email: K.M.Cockin@hull.ac.uk

Phone: +44 (0) 1482 465611

Office: Larkin building, Room 261 (L261)

Profile

My research interests range across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on three specific areas:

 

the British women's suffrage movement;

the lives and work of Edith Craig (1869-1947) and Ellen Terry (1847-1928);

and contemporary literature.

 

I am convener of the MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature.

Selected Publications

Books

Book by Dr Katharine Cockin
  • Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives (Cassell, 1998),
  • Women and Theatre in the Age of Suffrage: The Pioneer Players 1911-25 (Palgrave, 2001).

Edited Books

  • Ellen Terry: Spheres of Influence (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011).

 

Critical Editions

The Collected Letters of Ellen Terry: Volume Three (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012).

The Collected Letters of Ellen Terry: Volume Two (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011).

  • The Collected Letters of Ellen Terry: Volume One (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2010).

 

Anthologies

  • Women's Suffrage Drama (funded by the AHRC) Volume III in Women's Suffrage Literature in Routledge's ‘History of Feminism' series (Routledge 2007).
  • The Fiction of Gertrude Colmore II in Women's Suffrage Literature in Routledge's ‘History of Feminism' series (Routledge 2007).

 

As Co-editor

  • With Jago Morrison (eds), the Continuum Handbook on Post-war British Literature.

 

As Editor of Special Issue of a Journal

Law and Literature (special issue on 'Silence') XXIV, 1, 2012.

Critical Survey (Special Issue on Contemporary Fiction) XIX, 3, 2008

Critical Survey (Special Issue on Friends and Family Figures) XVIII, 2006  

Forthcoming as Editor

  • The Collected Letters of Ellen Terry (five further volumes) (Pickering and Chatto, forthcoming 2013-18)
  • (ed.) Ellen Terry: Lives of Shakespearian Actors (forthcoming Pickering & Chatto 2012)


Series Editor

Editor of "Dramatic Lives"
This series will present biographies, monographs and edited collections of scholarly essays about individuals who have worked in the theatre either as a principal occupation or who have made a significant contribution to the theatre. As well as studies of distinguished figures of the theatre, the series will include works on artists, writers, political activists and amateurs working on its fringes, bringing a wealth of other experience from fields such as literature, art, music, social reform and political activism.

http://www.pickeringchatto.com/series/dramatic_lives

Articles and chapters

  • 'Queen Caroline’s Pains and Penalties: Silence and Speech in the Dramatic Art of British Women’s Suffrage’ in Literature and Law, special issue on Silence, 24,1, 2012, pp. 40-58.
  • 'Ellen Terry: Preserving the Relics and Constructing the Brand' in Ellen Terry: Spheres of Influence (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011).
  • 'Introduction' in Ellen Terry: Spheres of Influence (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011).
  • 'Introduction' in The Collected Letters of Ellen Terry: Volume Two (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011).  
  • ‘Ellen Terry and Henry Irving: A Working Relationship' in Henry Irving: A Re-evaluation of the Pre-eminent Victorian Actor-Manager (ed.) Richard Foulkes, London: Ashgate 2008, pp. 37-48.
  • ‘Chicks and Lads: 'Chicks and Lads: Gender, Generation and Literariness in Contemporary British Fiction', Anglistik und Englischunterricht, (2007) pp. 107-24.
  • ‘Cicely Hamilton's Warriors: Dramatic Reinventions of Militancy in the British Women's Suffrage Movement', Women's History Review, XIV, 3 (2005) pp. 531-45;
  • ‘Inventing the Suffragettes: Anachronism, Gnosticism and Corporeality in Contemporary Fiction', Critical Survey, XVI, 3 (2004) pp. 17-32;
  • ‘Ellen Terry and Women's Suffrage Agitation', in Gender and Politics in the Age of Letter-Writing 1750-2000 (eds) Caroline Bland and Maire Cross, London: Ashgate, 2004, pp. 201-12;
  • ‘Rethinking Transracial Adoption: Reading Jackie Kay's The Adoption Papers', a/b: Autobiography Studies, XVIII, 2 (Winter 2003), pp. 276-91.
  • ‘Ellen Terry, The Ghostwriter and the Laughing Statue: The Victorian Actress, Letters and Life-writing', Journal of European Studies, XXXII (2002) pp. 151-63
  • ‘Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "Three Women": Work, Marriage and the Old(er) Woman', in Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Optimist Reformer (eds) Gill Rudd and Val Gough, University of Iowa Press, 2000, pp. 74-92;
  • ‘Women's Suffrage Drama', in The Women's Suffrage Movement: New Feminist Essays (eds) Maroula Joannou and June Purvis, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998, pp. 127-39;
  • 'The Pioneer Players: Plays of/with Identity,' in Difference in View: Women in Modernism (ed.) Gabriele Griffin. London: Taylor & Francis, 1994, pp. 142-54.
  • 'New Light on Edith Craig,' Theatre Notebook, XLV, 3 (1991) pp. 132-43, as well as the first biography, Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives (Cassell 1998)

Forthcoming Articles and chapters 

‘'Introduction' in Ellen Terry: Lives of Shakespearian Actors (forthcoming Pickering & Chatto 2012).


Contributions to Oxford Dictionary of National BiographyBook by Dr Katharine Cockin

  • New entries: Margaret Ethel Robertson; Kittie Carson; Laurence Housman; Christopher St. John; Clare Atwood; Edith Craig; Mary Murdoch
  • Revised: William Abbott; James Anderson; Thomas Archer; George Bennett; George Bentley; Gustavus Brooke; Thomas Cobham; William Creswick; Edward Elton; Samuel Emery; John Hartley; Francis Huntley; Walter Lacy; Talbot Montague; Frederick Yates.

Conferences organised

  • 7-8 May 2011: The Pioneers Players 1911-25
  • Saturday October 2009: Writes and Wrongs: Documenting Liberty.
  • Saturday 6 June 2009: 'Ellen Terry and Edith Craig'; keynote speakers Sir Michael Holroyd CBE and Professor Nina Auerbach; supported by the Society for Theatre Research.
  • Saturday 10 May 2008: 'Silence'; keynote speaker Dr Maria Aristodemou, Birkbeck University of London.
  • Saturday 12 May 2007: co-organising with Dr Catherine Wynne ‘In Transit: Literature on the Move'
  • Saturday 9 December 2006: Postgraduate Conference ‘Dealing with Primary Sources' (Roberts Fund project to enhance the career prospects and transferable skills training of research studentS and postdoctoral researchers)
  • Saturday 20 May 2006: ‘The Literary North'; keynote speaker Professor Cora Kaplan, Queen Mary London University
    Saturday 14 May 2005: ‘Near and Dear: Friends and Family Figures in Contemporary Fiction'; keynote speakers Toby Litt and Professor Sue Thomas, De Montfort University

Seminar Series organised

Spring 2007 Law and Literature: papers by Dr Stephen Skinner (University of Aberystwyth); Dr Jago Morrison (Brunel University); Dr Mary Ford (University of Strathclyde); Dr Maria Aristodemou ( Birkbeck University of London).

  • Spring 2006 Contemporary Fiction: papers by Dr John McLeod, Paul McGarry, Dr Richard Brown, Sam Francis (University of Leeds); Dr Mark Llewellyn (University of Liverpool); Dr Catharine Spooner (University of Lancaster); Dr Catherine Wynne (University of Hull); Professor Berthold Schoene (Manchester Metropolitan University); Dr Lawrence Phillips (Liverpool Hope University).
  • Spring 2005 Contemporary Fiction: papers by Professor Imelda Whelehan (De Montfort University); Professor Berthold Schoene (Manchester Metropolitan University); Dr John McLeod (University of Leeds); Dr Lawrence Phillips (Liverpool Hope University College); Dr Margaretta Jolly (University of Exeter) and Dr Gill Plain (St Andrews University).

Research

  • AHRC Resource Enhancement Grant 2006 for the Ellen Terry and Edith Craig Database.
  • A British Academy Small Grant supported the first stage of my project to collect and edit Ellen Terry's letters.

Teaching

Undergraduate Programme convener

  • BA English with Law (from 2009)

Undergraduate Modules (convener and teacher)

  • 14375 Suffragettes and Citizens: Writing for the Vote (level 6)
  • The First World War in Literature (level 5)
  • Autobiography (level 6)
  • Cyborgs, Clones and Other Animals: Science in Fiction (level 6)
  • Between the Acts: Literature of the Thirties (level 6)
  • Autobiography (level 6)

Contributions to:  Law and Literature (level 5) convened by the Law School

Postgraduate Programme (as convener)

  • MA Modern and Contemporary Literature (from 2007)

Postgraduate Modules (as convener)

  • Rights and Wrongs
  • Literature and Law (team taught with staff from Law School)
  • Modern and Contemporary Literature
  • Theatre in the Modern World
  • The Literary North

Postgraduate Modules (seminars contributed to)

  • Family Matters
  • Research Skills I & II
  • Postgraduate supervision

    I have supervised to successful completion a Ph.D. on Anglo-Italian women's writing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (AHRB funded).

    Current PhD students are working on science fiction and literature and science (from the telegraph to the internet).
  • I have supervised MA dissertations on topics including the work of Ian McEwan; The Vagina Monologues; prisons in women's suffrage literature; the drama of Andrea Dunbar; representation of spinsters in inter-war fiction; history, fiction and narratives of the First World War; literature and cybertext; women's writing, history and the Spanish Civil War; and Mary Wollstonecraft.

I welcome applications from Ph.D. students in the following areas:

literature which engages with political events and movements, including women's suffrage; modern and contemporary literature; and women's writing from the nineteenth century onwards.

Administration

  • Head of Department (2010- )
  • Member of Senate (2010- )
  • Senior Tutor (2000-01; 2002-05)
  • University quality assurance committees (since 2001)
  • Student progress committee (2000-01; 2002-05)
  • Academic framework and standards committee (2002-04)
  • Faculty of Arts Board 1999-2001
  • Faculty Teaching and Learning Committee 2000-04
  • Member of AHRC Peer Review College 20010 onwards
  • External examiner at Liverpool John Moores University 2009-2012