About
I joined Southampton in 2016 after being awarded my DPhil in English Literature by the University of Oxford in 2015. I also have an MSt in English Literature from Oxford (2011), and a BA in English Literature from Trinity College, Dublin (2009). In 2022-23 I was Humboldt Foundation Research Fellow at FU Berlin.
My academic research focuses on twentieth and twenty-first century literature, with a particular focus on the novel and visual culture.
History, Time, and the Novel Since 1945, forthcoming with Oxford University Press in 2026, offers a new account of the relationship between history and the novel by examining how novelists give form to historical time in fiction. It explores how writers such as Muriel Spark, John Updike, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Don DeLillo have used novel form to convey experiences of time distinct to the latter twentieth century: the extended present, the character series, the anticipation of independence, and the lessening of lateness. Ranging widely across British, American, African, and Caribbean literature, this book demonstrates that bringing close readings of style and form into dialogue with theorizations of historical time provides a new account of what a historical novel can be.
Art History, and Postwar Fiction, published with Oxford University Press in 2018, explored how novelists such as Samuel Beckett and W. G. Sebald responded to the visual arts from the aftermath of the Second World War up to the present day. In tracing novelists engagement with the visual artist it shows that writing about art was often a means of commenting on historical developments of the period: the Cold War, the New Left, the legacy of the Holocaust.
I am also a creative writer. Whatever Happened to Queer Happiness? (2022), a collection of essays, was long-listed for the Polari First Book Prize in 2023. My short stories and creative non-fiction have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Granta, The Paris Review, and The White Review. I regularly write criticism for magazines including the London Review of Books, Frieze, the Times Literary Supplement, and more. I discuss my creative work in podcasts, interviews, and live readings, and you can find out more about my creative writing at kevinbrazil.com.
I supervise PhD students working on modern and contemporary literature and culture, and welcome inquiries from graduate students interested in working on any aspect of twentieth- and twenty-first century fiction, visual culture, and modernism. I also welcome inquiries from creative writing students writing about queerness in any form, or who seek to blur the genres of fiction, non-fiction, and life writing.
You can update this in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘Edit profile’. Under the heading and then ‘Curriculum and research description’, select ‘Add profile information’. In the dropdown menu, select - ‘About’.
Write about yourself in the third person. Aim for 100 to 150 words covering the main points about who you are and what you currently do. Clear, simple language is best. You can include specialist or technical terms.
You’ll be able to add details about your research, publications, career and academic history to other sections of your staff profile.