- 200 years
- Study
- International
- Business and employers
- Research
- About us
https://webcdn.mmu.ac.uk/profiles/img/profile-images/jessedwards-resize-100x100-52a8846aedb5e.jpg
I’ve been at MMU since 2004 and Head of the Department of English since 2011. My main areas of interest are both the literary aspects of geography and the geographic aspects of literature. So far my research has predominantly been concerned with the early modern period when a recognisably ‘modern’ cartography first emerged. My first book dealt with seventeenth-century discourses on geometry, mapping and surveying, and more recent work has explored contributions to seventeenth and early eighteenth-century geographic culture by John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and Daniel Defoe. But I’m also interested in twentieth and twenty-first century travel, place and nature writing.
I aspire to create an inclusive classroom atmosphere in my teaching that makes the most confident learners feel challenged and the less confident feel supported and encouraged. I’m a firm believer in student-led learning.
English is a richly diverse subject which accommodates a wide range of interests and tastes. Its flexibility makes it possible to build a curriculum which brings students close to the research which makes academics passionate about the subject, and it’s the communication of this passion which is most highly valued by our students. But while English students may often be driven principally by their own love of the subject and their own developing interests and enthusiasms, they’re also developing skills which are highly valued beyond the University. As the English academic Patricia Waugh has said, in an optimistic assessment of the future of the humanities, the world needs the ‘creative thinkers and crafty readers’ that English produces.
You need to love, or be prepared to learn to love, both reading and writing: the enjoyment, analysis and discussion of words and ideas. Always read twice: once for pleasure; the second time with a pen in your hand. If you can do both at once, you’ll save time – I can’t.
Jess Edwards has a BA in English and an MA in Anglo-American Literary Relations from University College London. He completed his doctorate in the School of English and American Studies at the University of Sussex in 1997.
Jess Edwards took up his first full-time academic post at London Metropolitan University in 1999, joining Manchester Metropolitan in 2004. He became Head of Department in 2011.
Head of Department
Sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth-century English Literature, particularly poetry and the early novel.
Sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth-century English Literature, particularly poetry and the early novel.
Cultural geography: literature, cartography and space. I’m interested in both the literary aspects of geography and the geographic aspects of literature. So far my research has predominantly been concerned with the early modern period when a recognisably ‘modern’, mathematical cartography first emerged. My first book dealt with seventeenth-century discourses on geometry, mapping and surveying, and recent work has explored Daniel Defoe’s contributions to early eighteenth-century geographic culture.
J. Edwards (2006). Writing, Geometry and Space in Seventeenth-century England and America. Psychology Press.
J. Edwards Writing, geometry and space in early modern Europe and America: circles in the sand.
J. Edwards (2019). Literature and sense of place in UK landscape strategy. Landscape Research. 44(6), pp.659-670.
J. Edwards (2017). ‘The Land to Forget Time’: tourism, caving and writing in the Derbyshire White Peak. Landscape Research. 42(6), pp.634-649.
J. EDWARDS (2012). Geographic Literacy and Defoe's Complete Englishmen: Mere Bookcases v. Walking Maps. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies. 35(3), pp.325-341.
J. Edwards (2012). Thomas Hobbes, Charles Cotton and the ‘wonders’ of the Derbyshire Peak. Studies in Travel Writing. 16(1), pp.1-15.
J. Edwards (2005). Study, marketplace and labyrinth: geometry as rhetoric. New Formations: a journal of culture/theory/politics. pp.126-144.
JR. Edwards (2003). How to Read an Early Modern Map: Between the Particular and the General, the Material and the Abstract, Words and Mathematics. Early Modern Literary Studies: a journal of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature. 9(1), pp.1-58.
J. Edwards (2000). “NATURE IN DEFECT”: YIELDING LANDSCAPES IN EARLY MODERN DISCOURSES OF ENCLOSURE AND COLONISATION. Studies in Travel Writing. 4(1), pp.1-28.
JR. Edwards (2014). Defoe’s Global Geography in Atlas Maritimus & Commercialis. In: Topographies of the Imagination: New Approaches to Daniel Defoe. AMS,
JR. Edwards (2012). John Norden. In: Encyclopaedia of English Renaissance Literature. Oxford: Blackwell, pp.854-855.
JR. Edwards (2012). A Compass to Steer by: John Locke, Carolina and the Politics of Restoration Geography. In: Early American Cartographies. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, pp.94-115.
J. Edwards (2012). A compass to steer by: John Locke, Carolina, and the politics of restoration geography. In: Early American Cartographies. pp.93-115.
JR. Edwards Defoe the Geographer: Redefining the Wonderful. In: Travel Narratives: The New Science and Literary Discourse, 1569-1750. Farnham: Ashgate,
JR. Edwards (2012). Christopher Saxton. In: Encyclopaedia of English Renaissance Literature. Oxford: Blackwell, pp.741-743.
J. Edwards Between 'plaine wildernesse' and 'fine grain fields': representing land use in early Virginia.
JR. Edwards (2005). How to Read an Early Modern Map: Between the Particular and the General, the Material and the Abstract, Words and Mathematics. J. Glauser, C. Kiening. In: Text-Bild-Karte: Kartographien der Vormoderne. Freiburg: Rombach, pp.95-130.
J. Edwards Points mean prizes: how early modern mathematics hedged its bets between idealism and the world.