Dr Lorna Burns

Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial Literatures

Researcher profile

Phone

+44 (0)1334 46 2675

Email

lmb21@st-andrews.ac.uk

Office

Room 203

Location

Kennedy Hall

 

Teaching

Culture and Conflict

Postcolonial Literatures and Theory

Caribbean Literature

MLitt in English Literature

Research areas

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 monograph, Postcolonialism After World Literature: Relation, Equality, Dissent (Bloomsbury 2019), for instance, 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.

Her most recent monograph is Engagements with Postcolonial Literature and Theory (Routledge 2026), which offers a detailed exploration of the debates, theories, texts, and themes that have shaped the evolution of postcolonial literary studies from anti-colonialism (Albert Memmi and Frantz Fanon) to the poststructuralist first wave (Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha), the Marxist counter-response (Aijaz Ahmad and Benita Parry), and new directions in postcolonial theory (Glissant, Deleuze and Guattari).

Lorna’s research interests span the fields of postcolonial studies; Caribbean literatures; contemporary global writing in English; continental philosophy; and critical theory. She welcomes graduate students who share any of her research interests.

PhD supervision

• Connor Mcgrath
• Esther Zitterl

Selected publications

• Postcolonialism after world literature: relation, equality, dissent

  Burns, L., 16 May 2019, London: Bloomsbury Academic. 255 p. (New horizons in contemporary writing)

  Research output: Book/Report › Book

• Contemporary Caribbean Writing and Deleuze: Literature Between Postcolonialism and Post-continental Philosophy

  Burns, L. M., 2012, London and New York: Continuum. 223 p. (Continuum Literary Studies)

  Research output: Book/Report › Book

• World Literature and Dissent

  Burns, L. M. (Editor) & Muth, K. R. (Editor), Sept 2019, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

  Research output: Other contribution

• Symptoms of a Malaise: Diagnosing Post-War Caribbean Identity in An Island is a World and I Hear Thunder

  Burns, L. M., 2016, Beyond Calypso: Re-reading Samuel Selvon. McIntosh, M. (ed.). Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

• Revisionary “-scapes” of globality in the work of Wilson Harris: introduction

  Burns, L. M. & Knepper, W., 3 May 2013, In: Journal of Postcolonial Writing. 49, 2, p. 127–132 1.

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• Open access

  Philosophy of the imagination: time, immanence and the events that wound us in Wilson Harris’s Jonestown

  Burns, L. M., 3 May 2013, In: Journal of Postcolonial Writing. 49, 2, p. 174–186

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• Beyond the Colonizer and the Colonized: Caribbean Writing as Postcolonial 'Health'

  Burns, L. M., 2012, Postcolonial Literatures and Deleuze: Colonial Pasts, Differential Futures. Burns, L. & Kaiser, B. (eds.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 144 164 p.

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed)

• Uncovering the marvellous: surrealism and the writings of Wilson Harris

  Burns, L. M., 6 Jan 2011, In: Journal of Postcolonial Writing. 47, 1, p. 52-64

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• Prophetic Visions of the Past: The Arrivants and Another Life

  Burns, L. M., 2011, The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature. Bucknor, M. & Donnell, A. (eds.). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, p. 181 190 p.

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed)

• Open access

  Becoming Bertha: Virtual difference and repetition in postcolonial 'writing back', a Deleuzian reading of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea

  Burns, L. M., Mar 2010, In: Deleuze Studies. 4, 1, p. 16-41

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

 

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