Dr Paul Fagan

    English

    Postdoctoral Researcher

    Iontas Building
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    Biography

    Paul Fagan is a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at Maynooth University, where he is working on the Irish Research Council project Celibacy in Irish Women's Writing, 1860s-1950s. He is a co-founder of the International Flann O’Brien Society, a founding general editor of the Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies, and an elected member of the International James Joyce Foundation Board of Trustees. Paul is the co-editor of Finnegans Wake: Human and Nonhuman Histories (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), Irish Modernisms: Gaps, Conjectures, Possibilities (Bloomsbury, 2021) and Stage Irish: Performance, Identity, Cultural Circulation (2021), as well as five edited volumes on Flann O’Brien with Cork University Press. He is currently finalizing a monographs on Irish Literary Hoaxes.

    Research Interests

    Irish Literature, Modernism, The Nonhuman Studies, Gender and Sexuality, Literary Hoaxes

    Research Projects

    Title Role Description Start date End date Amount
    Celibacy In Irish Women's Writing, 1860s-1950s Irish Research Council Fellow The proposed research challenges the conventional narrative of the aesthetic and political role of celibacy in Irish women’s writing from the 1860s–1950s, a period of profound change in Ireland’s political, social and literary history. Most studies of the period treat celibacy either as a closet for other sexualities, or an expression of reactionary religious and patriarchal values. My research will reveal a different social and literary history, in which the celibate was understood in turn-of-the-century Ireland as a coherent aesthetic, sexual and political identity with diverse manifestations, and celibacy was integral to Irish progressive, feminist, queer and modernist movements. First, I will research the emergence of feminist advocacy of celibacy as a rejection of oppressive marriage laws and a model of socialist politics in 19th-century Ireland and Britain. I will show how the embrace of celibacy as an alternative to oppressive marriage for 19th-century feminists is negotiated as a key theme in Irish New Woman writing and the celibate utopias of first- wave Irish feminist science fiction. Second, and inter-relatedly, I will research how Irish women modernist writers respond to the complex legacies of these feminist and aesthetic celibates, by utilising celibacy as theme through which to write about gender, sexuality, marriage, biopolitics in 20th-century Ireland.

    Book Chapter

    Year Publication
    2023 Fagan, P. (2023) 'Vivisections, Vaccinations, Revelations: Ecofeminist Satire and Biopolitical Dystopia in Frances Power Cobbe’s The Age of Science' In: Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature. [Link] [DOI]
    2022 Paul Fagan (2022) 'Biofiction, Compulsory Sexuality, and Celibate Modernism in Colm Tóibín’s The Master and David Lodge’s Author, Author' In: Imagining Gender in Biographical Fiction. Cham : Palgrave Macmillan. [Link] https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09019-6_8
    2024 Paul Fagan (2024) 'Wasting Timelessness: Lewis Carroll, Flann O'Brien and Modernist Temporality' In: Modernism in Wonderland: Legacies of Lewis Carroll. London : Bloomsbury. [Link]
    2023 Paul Fagan (2023) 'The Taxidermic Imaginary in Modernist Literature' In: Beastly Modernisms: The Figure of the Animal in Modernist Literature and Culture. Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press. [DOI]
    2023 Paul Fagan (2023) 'An Béal Bocht and the Ethics of the Modernist Laughing Apocalypse' In: Modernist Constellations. Clemson : Clemson University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.2862490.6
    2022 Fagan, P. (2022) 'Biofiction, Compulsory Sexuality, and Celibate Modernism in Colm Tóibín’s The Master and David Lodge’s Author, Author' In: Palgrave Studies In Life Writing. [Link] [DOI]
    2021 Paul Fagan (2021) 'Groves of Blarney: Fake Songs, Mock-Hoaxes, and Stage Irish Identity in William Maginn and Francis Sylvester Mahony' In: Stage Irish: Performance, Identity, Cultural Circulation. Trier : Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. [Link]

    Edited Book

    Year Publication
    2022 Paul Fagan (Ed.). (2022) Flann O'Brien: Acting Out. Cork: Cork University Press, [Link]
    2021 Paul Fagan;John Greaney;Tamara Radak (Ed.). (2021) Irish Modernisms: Gaps, Conjectures, Possibilities. London: Bloomsbury, [Link]
    2021 Paul Fagan;Dieter Fuchs;Tamara Radak (Ed.). (2021) Stage Irish: Performance, Identity, Cultural Circulation. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, [Link]
    2020 Paul Fagan;Ruben Borg (Ed.). (2020) Flann O’Brien: Gallows Humour. Cork: Cork University Press, [Link]
    2017 Paul Fagan;Ruben Borg;John McCourt (Ed.). (2017) Flann O'Brien: Problems with Authority. Cork: Cork University Press, [Link]
    2014 Paul Fagan;Ruben Borg;Werner Huber (Ed.). (2014) Flann O'Brien: Contesting Legacies. Cork: Cork University Press, [Link]

    Peer Reviewed Journal

    Year Publication
    2021 Fagan, P. (2021) 'The nonhuman skin of finnegans wake'. James Joyce Quarterly, 58 . [Link] [DOI]
    2021 Fagan, P. (2021) 'Silence, gender and metamorphosis in joanna walsh’s ‘worlds from the word’s end’'. Short Fiction in Theory and Practice, 11 . [Link] [DOI]

    Other Publication

    Year Publication
    2021 Fagan, P.; Walsh, J. (2021) ‘It is sound that lives in her’: An interview with Joanna Walsh. [Link] [DOI]

    Other Journal

    Year Publication
    2021 Paul Fagan (2021) 'Reflections on the First Decade of the International Flann O’Brien Society' The Journal of Flann O'Brien Studies, 5 (2) . [Link] https://doi.org/10.16995/pr.8367 [Full-Text]
    Certain data included herein are derived from the © Web of Science (2024) of Clarivate. All rights reserved.

    Teaching Interests

    Literature, Modernism, Irish Modernism, Irish Studies, Theory, Culture Studies, Film Studies