Specialisms

• English Literature
• Environmentalism
• North American Literature Studies
• Scottish Literature
• Women's Studies

Research Overview

Dr Baker specialises in Scottish and contemporary literature (mainly fiction). He is the author of George Mackay Brown and the Philosophy of Community (2009), Contemporary Scottish Gothic: Mourning, Authenticity, and Tradition (2014), and Writing Animals: Language, Suffering, and Animality in Twenty-First-Century Fiction (2019). Other research and teaching interests include genre and space in twentieth-century women's fiction, climate change and the Anthropocene, and contemporary posthuman, queer, and feminist theories. Recent and forthcoming articles and papers include discussions of authors such as Elspeth Barker, Shirley Jackson, Dorothy K. Haynes, Michel Faber, Dodie Smith, Sara Baume, and Ian Stephen. Current and recent PhD supervision includes projects on George MacDonald, Barbara Kingsolver, Nan Shepherd, feminist science fiction, third-generation Nigerian fiction, American suburban Gothic, and contemporary nature writing. He welcomes inquiries from potential research students interested in working in any of these areas, or connected areas; he is especially interested in supervising projects on contemporary and experimental literature (including poetry), mid-twentieth-century British fiction, and modern Scottish literature.

Current Research

Dr Baker's current research interests include projects on emotion in children's animal stories, representations of climate change and the natural environment in contemporary women's writing, and twentieth-century school stories.

Supervision

Completed PhD Supervision:

Pimpawan Chaipanit, ‘A Spatial Analysis of British Women’s Domestic Fiction from Jane Austen to Helen Fielding’ (2019)

Hyginus Eze, 'Social Space in Third-Generation Nigerian Novels’ (2019)

Rebecca Langworthy, 'Genre and Audience: The Development of Adult Fantasy in the Work of George MacDonald' (2018)

Rachel Smillie, 'The Lady Vanishes: Women Writers and the Development of Detective Fiction' (2014)

Brenda Ebersole, 'The Novels of Barbara Kingsolver: A Case Study in Transnational American Literature' (2014)

Current PhD Students:

Christina Connors

Ines Kirschner

Marlene Ferreira Simoes

Graham Stephen