Dr Catherine Gander
Biography
(She/her.)
Catherine Gander researches and teaches modern and contemporary American literature, specialising in the intersections between written and visual texts and modes.
She is a leading, award-winning scholar of documentary poetics, Muriel Rukeyser, word-image studies, and Don DeLillo. Her first monograph, Muriel Rukeyser and Documentary: The Poetics of Connection (Edinburgh UP, 2013) won the biennial book award of the Irish Association for American Studies. On Rukeyser, she is the author of several peer-reviewed articles, an essay in the LA Review of Books, and is the editor of a special issue of Textual Practice on Rukeyser's The Life of Poetry (2018). With Stefania Heim, she is the co-editor of a creative-critical book exploring Rukeyser's continuing relevance: Beyond Ourselves: Contemporary Poets on Muriel Rukeyser (West Virginia UP, Spring 2026). This anthology is the subject of several public and research events, including an MLA 2025 panel.
Catherine's trans-disciplinary scholarship has won her prizes and research awards from a number of international associations, funding bodies, and institutions, including the IAAS, IAWIS, AHRC, IRC, PaCCS, BAAS, NYPL, and the Fulbright Commission. Her essay 'Black and White Landscapes: Topographies of Disorientation in the Works of Carrie Mae Weems and Claudia Rankine' was awarded the triennial 2023 Max Nänny Prize for Best Essay in Word and Image Studies. In March 2025, she will give the inaugural Max Nänny Lecture at the University of Amsterdam (in person and online).From 2019-2024, Catherine was Chair of the all-island Irish Association for American Studies (IAAS), an association with a large, international membership and several annual events, bursaries, and prizes. In 2023-2024, she shared this role with Dr Kate Fama (UCD).
From 2021-2023, she was co-Associate Dean of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) for the Faculty of Arts, Celtic Studies, and Philosophy at MU (now the Faculty of Arts and Humanities). She applied for this role jointly with Professor Moynagh Sullivan to model a gender-responsive and flexible method of collaborative leadership. The role involved co-chairing the Faculty Self-Assessment Team for the successful Athena SWAN Bronze Award application, and chairing the Implementation Group for the Gender Action Plan.
Catherine came to Maynooth after 4.5 years lecturing at Queen's University Belfast, where she founded the Research Centre for the Americas, and designed and convened the MA pathway in American Literature and Culture. Before that, she held teaching posts at the University of Nottingham and UEA, after completing her PhD at King's College London in early 2009.
Also a poet, Catherine's book publications include Matches (Verve Poetry Press, 2024), which was given long reviews in the leading poetry magazines of the UK and Ireland--Poetry Review and Poetry Ireland Review respectively--and Sea Between Us, co-authored with Georgia Hilton and Anna Kisby (Nine Pens Press, 2022).
Recently published academic books include:
- The Edinburgh Companion to Don DeLillo and the Arts (Edinburgh UP, 2023), a 500-page compendium of original essays and the first book to comprehensively examine Don DeLillo's deep and lasting engagement with the arts across the entirety of his career.
Current academic book projects include:
- Extending the Document: Contemporary Transmedial Poetics (under contract with Cambridge University Press), which takes as its starting point Muriel Rukeyser's dictum that 'poetry can extend the document' to consider poetry that works in a documentary vein to materialise language in various ways, often via visual, installation, and conceptual art.
- Beyond Ourselves: Contemporary Poets on Muriel Rukeyser (edited with Stefania Heim; submitted to West Virginia University Press), a creative/critical hybrid book that responds to Rukeyser's lasting legacy, exploring the models she provides for living, thinking, writing, and resisting in our own social, political, and poetic moment.
Awarded an Irish Research Council 'Research Ally' award, Catherine is currently mentor to two postdoctoral researchers:
- Dr Hilary White (IRC GOI 2023 fellow)
- Dr Lily Ní Dhomhnaill (IRC GOI 2024 fellow)
She was PI on the Irish Research Council-funded New Foundations project, Diversifying Irish Poetry: Poetry Critics of Colour in Ireland (2021-22), which made real, measurable, positive change to Ireland's reviewing culture and broader literary landscape by 1) introducing and augmenting the voices of poetry critics of colour across multiple reviewing and related platforms, and 2) augmenting a culture of accountability and awareness in literary publishing, particularly in the region of reviewing cultures, by taking steps to ensure such platforms practise fairness and equity in commissioning and accepting poetry reviews.
Previously funded projects include the AHRC and PaCCS-funded project 'LGBTQ Visions of Peace in a Society Emerging from Conflict'. This project's creative outcomes, including a photography exhibition and theatre performance, were launched during Belfast's Queer Arts Festival, Outburst, in November 2017, at Belfast Exposed and TheatreofplucK.
Supervision:
Catherine has supervised and mentored research projects at doctoral and postdoctoral level on the subjects of post-9/11 American literature, ecofeminist apocalyptic literature, modernist word-image texts, contemporary literature and neoliberalism, feminist and anti-racist poetry, Teju Cole, documentary poetry, poetry and extractivism, poetry and sleep.
She would be happy to receive PhD/Postdoc proposals in the areas of:
- documentary poetics
- word-image intersections
- modern & contemporary American poetry or fiction
- American visual culture / art
- creative writing (poetry)
- hybrid / non-generic texts
- literary and artistic cultures and the Capitalocene
Research Interests
- Word-image studies
- Modern and contemporary American poetry and poetics
- American visual culture, photography, and art
- Contemporary American fiction, autofiction, and creative non-fiction
- Creative ethnography
- Indigenous cultures of the Americas
- Literatures of resistance
- Feminist literature and culture
- Radical forms and texts
Post Doctoral Fellows / Research Team
Research Projects
| Title | Role | Description | Start date | End date | Amount | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IRC New Foundations | PI | There has never been a greater need to foster a literary culture that supports diversity of all kinds. While initiatives to support new writers and poets from underrepresented communities in Ireland are slowly emerging, there is no specific advocacy for new poetry critics from underrepresented ethnic communities. Through meaningful and lasting collaboration with Irish poets, critics, and poetry organisations, Dr Catherine Gander will work with Poetry Ireland, a registered charity and Ireland's premier organisation for the celebration and promotion of excellence in reading, writing, and performing poetry, to develop mentorship programme of emerging critics of colour in Ireland, where there is an urgent need for greater diversity in poetry reviewing, and in literary and cultural criticism more broadly. This mentorship programme will specifically focus on underrepresented ethnic groups whose access to critical culture might be hindered by factors like race, structural racism, and migration. The project’s ethos is that the role of the poetry critic and reviewer is a crucial point of access for literary culture and the on-going important discussion of the value society gives to the arts. Critical culture shapes and expands reading culture; hopefully, tis project can also invigorate the wider critical conversation about poetry and diversity. In sum, this project aims to 1) establish a mentoring scheme for poetry critics of colour in Ireland 2) establish lasting collaborations with publishers and editors to monitor the self-identified ethnicity of critics, and to work for change in overtly white critical practices 3) through (1) & (2), increase the publication of poetry criticism by critics of colour in Ireland 4) establish a wide-ranging dataset of poetry criticism published in Ireland in terms of ethnicity and gender 5) make measurable and lasting change to the culture of reviewing in Ireland 6) Work with Poetry Ireland, Ireland's premier organisation for the promotion and celebration of excellence in poetry, to undergo these researches and activities | 01/03/2021 | 01/12/2021 | 11278.38 | |
| Live Poetic Historiography: Performance and Documentary Poetics (Lily Ní Dhomhnaill) | PI | TBC | 01/09/2024 | 31/08/2026 | 112986.5 | |
| Hilary White | PI | 01/09/2023 | 31/08/2025 | 105604 | ||
| Andrew Clarke: “Describe the Problem Properly”: Hybridity and Ambiguity in the work of Teju Cole. | PI | [email protected] | 01/09/2021 | 31/08/2024 | 85333.33 | |
| LBGTQ+ Visions of Peace in a Society Emerging from Conflict | Co-I | During the Northern Irish peace process (1998 -) lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people have been excluded from participating in shaping visions of a peaceful future in both societal and political realms. The social, cultural and political import of this marginalisation remains under-examined, particularly within academic accounts of peace-building. This project seeks to redress the marginalisation of LGBTQ people in conflict transformation processes by providing them discursive and artistic fora to express their stories of political conflict, conflict transformation, and visions of peace. By analysing the processes, practices and outcomes of these expressions via the interdisciplinary application of methodologies across the arts, humanities and social sciences, the project seeks to address this critical gap in research and scholarship, at the same time generating an archive of reusable data and establishing transferable research models for use in other contexts wherein particular communities are marginalised in conflict transformation policies and processes. A core aim of the project is to investigate the potential effects on the wider public of the embodied and visualised articulation of these stories and visions in the creative forms of theatre and photography. Performative and photographic practices have recently been successfully employed in storytelling initiatives to enhance cross-community relations in societies emerging from conflict; this project extends these researches to explore how artistic, cultural interventions by a marginalised and silenced community can help shape imaginings of a shared peaceful and inclusive future. The twin objectives of the project are therefore recognition of the histories and visions of LGBTQ people by the wider public and by policy-makers, and participation of LGBTQ people in framing broader visions of peace. The project is unique in its cross-disciplinarity, bringing together experts and practitioners in the fields of literary and gender studies, politics and conflict transformation, visual culture, photography, curating, applied drama, social work and community-building to address these key concerns. The innovative and highly collaborative nature of the project aims to stimulate creative interventions in the Northern Irish peace-building context by piloting a co-designed methodology that challenges the dominant frameworks in conflict transformation processes and research. The project aims ultimately not only to effect public perceptions of the LGBTQ community and its role in envisioning a peaceful future, but to extend that impact to policy-makers in Northern Ireland. | 01/08/2016 | 28/02/2018 | 117779 |
Book
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | Catherine Gander (2013) Muriel Rukeyser and Documentary: the Poetics of Connection. UK and US: Edinburgh University Press. [Link] |
Edited Book
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Catherine Gander (Ed.). (2023) The Edinburgh Companion to Don DeLillo and the Arts. UK and US: Edinburgh University Press, [Link] | |
| 2016 | Catherine Gander and Sarah Garland (Ed.). (2016) Mixed Messages: American Correspondences in Visual and Verbal Practices. UK and US: Manchester University Press, [Link] |
Peer Reviewed Journal
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Catherine Gander (2020) '‘Black and White Landscapes: Topographies of Disorientation in the Works of Carrie Mae Weems and Claudia Rankine''. Journal of American Studies, 53 (3):517-540. [DOI] [Full-Text] | |
| 2018 | Gander C. (2018) 'Poetry as embodied experience: the pragmatist aesthetics of Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry'. Textual Practice, :1-25. [DOI] [Full-Text] | |
| 2018 | Catherine Gander (2018) '‘Re-reading Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry’'. Textual Practice, 32 (7):1097-1102. [DOI] [Full-Text] | |
| 2013 | Catherine Gander and Sarah Garland (2013) 'The American Imagetext Special Issue'. European Journal of American Culture, 32 (2). [Full-Text] | |
| 2013 | Catherine Gander (2013) '‘Facing the Fact: Word and Image in Muriel Rukeyser’s “Worlds Alongside”’'. JNT-Journal of Narrative Theory, 42 (3):288-328. [Link] [Full-Text] | |
| 2013 | Catherine Gander (2013) 'Review essay: Touching Photographs by Margaret Olin'. European Journal of American Culture, 32 (3):205-208. | |
| 2011 | Catherine Gander (2011) '‘The Senses of Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead’'. European Journal of American Culture, 30 (3):175-194. [Full-Text] | |
| 2010 | Catherine Gander (2010) 'Muriel Rukeyser, America, and the “Melville Revival”'. Journal of American Studies, 44 (4):759-775. [Full-Text] | |
| 2010 | Catherine Gander (2010) 'Review essay: Peter Conn, The American 1930s, A Literary History'. Journal of American Studies, 44 (2):466-468. |
Book Chapter
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Catherine Gander (2024) 'The strength of the gesture to move like a poem: Layli Long Soldier’s poetics of relationality' In: Gestures: A Body of Work. Manchester, UK : Manchester University Press. [Link] | |
| 2023 | Catherine Gander (2023) 'Poetry' In: The Edinburgh Companion to Don DeLillo and the Arts. UK : Edinburgh University Press. | |
| 2023 | Catherine Gander (2023) 'Ways of Seeing / Don DeLillo and the Arts' In: The Edinburgh Companion to Don DeLillo and the Arts. UK : Edinburgh University Press. | |
| 2022 | Catherine Gander (2022) ''Time: Still Life'' In: Don DeLillo in Context. Cambridge and New York : Cambridge University Press. | |
| 2018 | Catherine Gander (2018) ''The Art of Being Out of Time in Don DeLillo's Point Omega'' In: Contemporary Critical Perspectives on Don DeLillo. UK and US : Bloomsbury Academic. [Link] | |
| 2016 | Catherine Gander (2016) '‘“Twenty-six things at once”: Pragmatic perspectives on Frank O’Hara and Norman Bluhm’s Poem-Paintings’' In: Mixed Messages: American Correspondences in Visual and Verbal Practices. UK and US : Manchester University Press. | |
| 2016 | Catherine Gander and Sarah Garland (2016) '‘To fasten words again to visible – and invisible – things’' In: Mixed Messages: American Correspondences in Visual and Verbal Practices. UK and US : Manchester University Press. | |
| 2016 | Catherine Gander and Sarah Garland (2016) '‘The idea, the machine and the art: word and image in the twenty-first century’' In: Mixed Messages: American Correspondences in Visual and Verbal Practices. UK and US : Manchester University Press. |
Other Journal
Invited Lectures
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Catherine Gander (2022) Extending the document: the transmedial poetics of Layli Long Soldier. University of Strasbourg, France: [Invited Lectures] | |
| 2022 | Catherine Gander (2022) Being a good relative: Layli Long Soldier’s transmedial poetics of relation. Uppsala University, Sweden: [Invited Lectures] | |
| 2019 | Catherine Gander (2019) An Aesthetics of Displacement: Lecture and Response to IMMA exhibition, Doris Salcedo, Acts of Mourning. [Invited Lectures] [Link] | |
| 2019 | Catherine Gander (2019) Topographies of disorientation in the work of Carrie Mae Weems and Claudia Rankine (Trinity College Dublin). [Invited Lectures] | |
| 2015 | Catherine Gander (2015) ‘“Twenty-six things at once”: Pragmatic perspectives on Frank O’Hara and Norman Bluhm’s Poem-Paintings’. [Invited Lectures] |
Conference Contribution
Book Review
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Catherine Gander (2021) Her Living Voice: On The Essential Muriel Rukeyser. Los Angeles: [Book Review] [Link] | |
| 2020 | Catherine Gander (2020) The Silence by Don DeLillo: Review in the Irish Times. [Book Review] |
Invited papers
Film or Broadcast
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Catherine Gander (2021) #Poetrytown Naas: Interview with poet laureate Mary O'Donnell. [Film or Broadcast] [Link] |
Media
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Catherine Gander (2019) An Aesthetics of Displacement. [Media] [Link] |
Blog
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Catherine Gander (2023) The Edinburgh Companion to Don DeLillo and the Arts: Q&A with the Author. UK: [Blog] [Link] | |
| 2014 | Catherine Gander (2014) Muriel Rukeyser and Other Writers. USA: [Blog] [Link] | |
| 2013 | Catherine Gander (2013) Crisis, hope, and the life of poetry. USA: [Blog] [Link] | |
| 2013 | Catherine Gander (2013) On the centenary of Muriel Rukeyser’s birth: the lives of a poet. USA: [Blog] [Link] |
Webinar
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Catherine Gander, Karl O'Hanlon (2021) Vahni Capildeo: A Poetry Reading and Discussion. [Webinar] [Link] | |
| 2021 | Catherine Gander, Karl O'Hanlon (2021) Ishion Hutchinson: A Poetry Reading and Discussion. [Webinar] [Link] | |
| 2021 | Catherine Gander, Karl O'Hanlon (2021) Sean Hewitt: A Poetry Reading and Discussion. [Webinar] | |
| 2020 | Catherine Gander, Karl O'Hanlon (2020) Philip Metres: A Poetry Reading and Discussion. [Webinar] [Link] | |
| 2020 | Catherine Gander, Karl O'Hanlon (2020) Carolyn Forché: A Poetry Reading and Discussion. [Webinar] [Link] |
Professional Associations
Honors and Awards
Committees
Editorial / Academic Reviews
Outreach Activities
| Organisation | Type | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Poetry Ireland | Civic Society | Talks at events: Poetry Ireland. Diversity in poetry and criticism publishing: consulting and facilitating: Poetry Ireland | |
| Irish Museum of Modern Art | Civic Society | Public talks alongside exhibitions: IMMA | |
| Norfolk Wildlife Trust | Civic Society | Ecopoetry in Schools was an outreach programme initiated by the American Studies and Literature and Creative Writing departments at the University of East Anglia, and supported by CUE East, the Norfolk Wildlife Trust and Norfolk County Council. Targeting primary school children (years 5 and 6), ecopoetry workshops were designed by Dr Catherine Gander in collaboration with David North to support children’s engagement with the natural landscape as a means to develop imaginative and creative thinking and writing, and to demonstrate how these skills can in turn develop a sustainable relationship with nature and the outdoors. [Link] |
Teaching Interests
I teach modern and contemporary American literature and culture.
I convene the Stage 2 elective module: EN242: Introduction to American Literature
I convene the Stage 2 core module: EN204: Literatures of Place
I convene the Stage 3 seminar: EN382: Picturing America: Shaping the States in Word and Image.
I convene the Stage 3 seminar: EN362: Research Seminar. Poetry, Witness, Resistance (2019-)
I convene the MA module 'The Political is Personal: Radical Contemporary Literatures'.
TEACHING AWARDS:
SPARK Teaching and Learning Funding Award, 2024-2025.
QUB student-nominated, 2016 awardee.
MU student-nominated: 2021 finalist.
Digital badges:
Podcasting. All Aboard Digital Skills in Higher Education. The National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.
Design Thinking. All Aboard Digital Skills in Higher Education. The National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.
Flipped Classroom. All Aboard Digital Skills in Higher Education. The National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.
Disability 101: Awareness, Inclusion, and Equity. Digital accessibility course. AHEAD Ireland: Creating Inclusive Environments in Education and Employment for People with Disabilities.
Universal Design for Learning. Digital accessibility course. AHEAD Ireland: Creating Inclusive Environments in Education and Employment for People with Disabilities.
Designing Course Layouts for Learner Success. Digital accessibility course. AHEAD Ireland: Creating Inclusive Environments in Education and Employment for People with Disabilities.