Adam Barrows

Research Interests

• Time and Temporality
• Twentieth-Century Anglophone Literature
• Disability and Mad Studies
• Globalization and Postcolonial Studies
• Ecology and Culture

Current Research

My research focuses on the experience and expression of time and temporality in creative writing of the twentieth-century. I am interested in viewing time in literature through diverse and eclectic theoretical and philosophical lenses including, but not limited to: globalization and postcoloniality; disability and madness; ecology and the environment; and childhood and youth studies. I have written two books on time and literature: The Cosmic Time of Empire (University of California, 2011) and Time, Literature, and Cartography After the Spatial Turn (Palgrave, 2016) as well as numerous articles and book chapters on the subject in such venues as Literary and Cultural Studies of Disability, James Joyce Quarterly, Modern Fiction Studies, and Modern Language Quarterly. In addition to a range of advanced undergraduate courses in the English Department, I regularly teach for the Childhood and Youth Studies Program. I am a published creative writer, with short pieces in The New York Times and Santa Monica Review, as well as a conservatory trained actor, with extensive experience in stage, screen, and voice acting.

Awards

• 2018: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Research Excellence Award, Carleton University
• 2015: Canadian Association of University Teachers Dedicated Service Award
• 2012: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Teaching Award, Carleton University
• 2012: New Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award, Carleton University
• 2011: Margaret Church Memorial Prize for best essay of the year, Purdue University, for “‘The Shortcomings of Timetables’: Greenwich, Modernism, and the Limits of Modernity” in Modern Fiction Studies (Summer 2010).

Publications

“Literature, Nonhuman Temporality, and the Philosophy of Time.” Alternative Temporalities: The Emancipatory Power of Narrative. Ed. Teresa Valentini, Angela Weiser and John Zilcosky Toronto: University of Toronto Press (in press).

“‘His Numbering Clock’: Clockwork Men in Literary and Popular Culture.” Kronoscope: Journal for the Study of Time 23.2 (2023): 201-216.

“Temporal Otherness and the ‘Gifted Child’ in Fiction.” Time in Variance. Ed. Arkadiusz Misztal, Paul A. Harris & Jo Alyson Parker. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2021. 97-111.

“I Wanted to Love Her, Not Save Her.” Modern Love. The New York Times, 21 Feb. 2021, p. ST6 (creative nonfiction).

“Marrow.” Santa Monica Review 32.2 (Fall 2020): 88-100 (fiction).

“Spastic in Time: Time and Disability in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies of Disability 12.4 (2018): 391-405.

“Time and the Literature of Globalization” in Time and Literature. Ed. Thomas Allen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 242-256.

“Living the rhythms of the global: Time, globalization discourse, and rhythm-analysis” in Time, Globalization and Human Experience. Ed. Paul Huebener, Susie O’Brien, Tony Porter et.al. London: Rutgers, 2017. 174-190.

Time, Literature, and Cartography after the Spatial Turn: The Chronometric Imaginary. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

“Joyce’s Panarchy: Time, Ecological Resilience, and Finnegans Wake.” James Joyce Quarterly 51.2-3 (Winter-Spring 2014): 333-352.

“Chinese Eyes and Muddled Armenians: The Hogarth Press and British Racial Discourse” in Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary Woolf: Selected Papers from the 22^nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf. Ed. Ann Martin and Kathryn Holland. Clemson, S.C.: Clemson University Digital Press, 2013. 237-242.

“Eastward Journeys: Literary Crossings of the International Date Line.” Modern Language Quarterly 73.2 (June 2012): 157-174.

“Time Without Partitions: Midnight’s Children and Temporal Orientalism.” ARIEL: a review of international English literature 42.3-4 (July-October 2011): 89-101.

The Cosmic Time of Empire: Modern Britain and World Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

“‘The Shortcomings of Timetables’: Greenwich, Modernism, and the Limits of Modernity.” Modern Fiction Studies 56.2 (Summer 2010): 262-289 (winner of the Margaret Church Memorial Prize for best essay of 2010).

“Heidegger the Vampire Slayer: The Undead and Fundamental Ontology” in Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy: New Life for the Undead. Ed. Richard Greene and K.Silem Mohammad. Chicago: Open Court, 2010. 69-80.

“Teaching the Literature of Revolution.” Radical Teacher 85 (August 2009): 29-38.

“The Static Clock and the Old Manchild: Temporality in Twentieth-Century African Literature.” Literature Compass 5.3 (2008): 633-644.

Graduate Supervisions

Hannah Kieft, “Re-Thinking: Understanding Trauma and Unreliable Narration in 20^th Century Literature” (PhD, in progress)

Olivier Jacques, “Bolshevizing Britain in the Postwar Imagination: Popular Fiction and Discourse in Britain, 1917-1921” (PhD, 2021)

Kim Sigouin, “Re-writing ‘the little coloured ball of earth entirely’: Embodied Language and Ecology in Gertrude Stein, H.D., and Virginia Woolf” (PhD, 2018)

Bridget Rielly, “Brecht in Contemporary Political Documentary” (MRP, 2024)

McKenzie McDonald, “Beyond Mad: Mentally Ill Women’s Life Writings’ Influence on Authority and Creative Practices” (MRP, 2023)

Colin Sostar, “After the Foundation: A Comparative Look at the Practicalities and Pitfalls of Foundation’s Psychohistory and the Modern Ethics of AI” (MRP, 2023)

Marika Brown, “Everything speaks in its own way”: Exploring Nonhuman Ontology in James Joyce’s Ulysses (MRP, 2017)

Kyle Murdock, “Shell Shock Induced Amnesia and Modernist Literature” (MRP, 2013)

Jesse Butler, “Gerard Manley Hopkins and Tragedy” (MRP, 2010)