Lorna Margaret Burns

Postcolonial literature and theory; Caribbean writing; Black British and British Asian literature and poetry; Contemporary literary theory and continental philosophy, especially Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, and Jacques Rancière.

Lorna’s research interests lie in postcolonial literatures and theory, contemporary world literature and continental philosophy, focussing, in particular on the points of intersection between literature and philosophy. Her most recent monograph, Postcolonialism After World Literature: Relation, Equality, Dissent (Bloomsbury 2019), explores a wide range of contemporary writers (Roberto Bolaño, J. M. Coetzee, Kamel Daoud, Dany Laferrière, Pauline Melville, Arundhati Roy and Kamila Shamsie) in relation to the philosophies of Bruno Latour, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Rancière in order to argue the case for rethinking world literature in light of the legacies of postcolonialism and for reshaping postcolonial studies in an era of world literature.  

She is also the author of Contemporary Caribbean Writing and Deleuze: Literature Between Postcolonialism and Post-continental Philosophy (Continuum, 2012), and is co-editor of the collection World Literature and Dissent (forthcoming, Routledge 2019), Postcolonial Literatures and Deleuze (Palgrave 2012), and a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing on the author Wilson Harris. She has written numerous articles on Caribbean writing, postcolonialism and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, and theories of world literature that have appeared in journals such as Angelaki, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Deleuze Studies and Textual Practice.

Current research projects are focused on rights, recognition and the role of equality and inequality in postcolonial literature and theory. Drawing on the philosophy of Jacques Rancière, current work considers how a focus on the demonstration of equality in postcolonial writing offers an alternative to the poststructuralist lexicon of difference. In addition, current work continues to explore the relationship between aesthetics and politics in the context of globalization, postcolonialism and theories of world literature.

Lorna’s research interests span the fields of postcolonial literatures and theory; comparative Caribbean literatures; twentieth- and twenty-first-century Black British and British Asian writing; global writing in English; continental philosophy; and critical theory. She welcomes graduate students who share any of her research interests.

PhD in English Literature (University of Glasgow); MA (hons) in English Literature and Politics (University of Glasgow).

EN1003 Culture and Conflict

EN3213 Postcolonial Literatures and Theory

EN4244 Nationalists and Nomads: Contemporary World Literature

EN4433 Black and Asian British Writing

MLitt in Modern and Contemporary Literatures and Culture

MLitt in Postcolonial and World Literatures