Dr Nicola Bishop
Senior Lecturer/ Education Lead
My profile
Biography
Academic and professional qualifications
BA in English Literature and History, MA in Historical Research, PhD in English Literature and History (all Lancaster University)
Other academic service (administration and management)
I am the Departmental Lead for Education - working with other Leads from across the Faculty on a wide range of projects linked to student experience, personal tutoring, teaching and learning, pedagogical research, and careers and employability.
Teaching
I currently lead and teach on our first year departmental core (Metropolis), as well as a L5 and 6 Employability unit (Fit for the Future).
Research outputs
My research to date has been interdisciplinary in approach, examining class, gender, and national identity across literature and popular culture from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. I am particularly interested in the lower middle classes in Britain and their representation in popular and middlebrow literature, sitcoms, and film. I also write about the influence of landscape on the construction of masculinity, as well as the cultural significance of other key, everyday sites: suburbia, office spaces, commuting.
I am also beginning new research projects on ‘landscape programming’ within contemporary television, and ‘new nature writing’ - exploring the commonalities between them as well as the relationship between current and past representations of place.
Key Words: Middlebrow fiction, rural writing, lower-middle-class masculinities, suburban culture, detective fiction.
Publications include:
Lower-Middle-Class Nation: the Office Worker in British Popular Culture (Bloomsbury, 2021)
‘Screening Twenty-First Century Sight: Adaptation and the ‘Most Perfect […] Observing Machine’’, Adaptation (2018) https://doi-org.ezproxy.mmu.ac.uk/10.1093/adaptation/apx030
‘Nature and Nostalgia: Recovering the Lost Idyll in British Crime Library Detective Fiction’, Green Letters, 22.1 (March 2018) (Crime Fiction and Ecology): 1-12
‘Presenting the Past: On Television History as Drama and Documentary’, in Sam Edwards, Michael Dolski, and Faye Sayer (eds.), Histories on Screen: The Past and Present in Anglo-American Cinema and Television (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017): 277-291
‘The Nature of Nostalgia’, in Rosemary Shirley and Verity Elson (eds.), Creating the Countryside: the Rural Idyll (Paul Holberton Publishing, 2017) (exhibition publication accompanying the ‘Creating the Countryside’ exhibition at Compton Verney): 101-104
‘Mundane and Menacing: “Nobodies” in the Detective Fiction of Agatha Christie’, in ‘Re-appropriating Agatha Christie’, a special edition of Clues: A Journal of Detection (Spring 2016): 82-95
‘Middlebrow “Everyman” or Modernist Figurehead? Experiencing Modernity through the Eyes of the Humble Clerk’, in Christoph Ehland (ed.), Middlebrow and Gender: 1880-1930 (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2016): 101-121
‘Ruralism, Masculinity, and National Identity: The Rambling Clerk in Fiction, 1900–1940’, Journal of British Studies, 54, No. 3 (July, 2015): 654-678
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Books (authored/edited/special issues)
Bishop, N. (2021) Lower-Middle-Class Nation The White-Collar Worker in British Popular Culture. Bloomsbury Academic.
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Chapters in books
Bishop, N.J. (2018) 'Presenting the Past: New Directions in Television History.' In Edwards, S., Sayer, F. (ed.) Histories on Screen: The Past and Present in Anglo-American Cinema and Television. Bloomsbury,
Bishop, N.J. (2018) 'Presenting the Past: New Directions in Television History.' In Edwards, S., Sayer, F. (ed.) Histories on Screen: The Past and Present in Anglo-American Cinema and Television. Bloomsbury,
Bishop, N.J. (2017) 'The Nature of Nostalgia.' In Shirley, R., Elson, V. (ed.) Creating the Countryside: The Rural Idyll. Paul Holberton Publishing,
Bishop, N.J. (2015) 'Middlebrow "Everyman" or Modernist Figurehead? Experiencing Modernity through the Eyes of the Humble Clerk.' Middlebrow and Gender, 1890-1945. Brill / Rodopi,
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Internet publications
Bishop, N. (2019) Gillette ad isn't anti-men, it's anti-toxic masculinity - and this should be welcomed. https://theconversation.com/gillette-ad-isnt-anti-men-its-anti-toxic-masculinity-and-this-should-be-welcomed-109995.
Bishop, N.J. (2017) James Bond Needs a New Attitude Not a New Actor. https://theconversation.com/james-bond-needs-a-new-attitude-not-a-new-actor-77572.
Bishop, N.J. (2017) The Return of the Great British 'Manly Man'. https://theconversation.com/the-return-of-the-great-british-manly-man-74775.
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Journal articles
Bishop, N.J. (2018) 'Rural Nostalgia: Revisiting the lost idyll in British Library Crime Classics.' Green Letters / Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism, 22(1)
Bishop, N. (2018) 'Screening Twenty-First Century Sight: Adaptation and 'the most perfect [...] observing machine'.' Adaptation, 11(1) pp. 58-74.
Bishop, N. (2018) 'Rural Nostalgia: Revisiting the Lost Idyll in British Library Crime Classics Detective Fiction.' Green Letters, 22(1) pp. 31-42.
Bishop, N.J. (2016) 'Mundane or Menacing? “Nobodies” in the Detective Fiction of Agatha Christie.' Clues: A Journal of Detection, 34(1)
Bishop, N. (2015) 'Ruralism, Masculinity, and National Identity: The Rambling Clerk in Fiction, 1900–1940.' Journal of British Studies, 54(3) pp. 654-678.
Press and media
Media appearances or involvement
‘James Bond needs a new attitude not a new actor’, The Conversation (12 May 2017), https://theconversation.com/james-bond-needs-a-new-attitude-not-a-new-actor-77572
‘The Return of the Great British ‘Manly’ Man’, The Conversation (27 March 2017), https://theconversation.com/the-return-of-the-great-british-manly-man-74775