dr. C.T. Cusack (Christopher)

Chris Cusack (he/him) is Assistant Professor of English and American Literature and Culture. He mainly teaches in the English Language and Culture and American Studies BA programmes, and the English track of the two-year educational MA programme.

Chris has a PhD from Radboud University (cum laude), an MA (distinction) from University College London, and a BA (cum laude) also from Radboud. He wrote a PhD on representations of the Great Irish Famine in Irish and North American literature. Since then, his work has covered a range of themes and their (sometimes oblique) interconnections, including the transatlantic memory of famine, local colour in transatlantic contexts, and religion in Irish American writing. As a member of the Heritages of Hunger research group, he co-developed educational materials about famine for primary and secondary education.

His work has appeared in a wide range of journals and edited books, and his first monograph is under contract with Liverpool University Press. For the same press, he recently co-edited, with Bridget English and Matthew Reznicek, The Corpse in Modern Irish Literature. With Sophie Cooper, he is finalising a special issue of Éire-Ireland on death and the Irish diaspora.

His current research mainly develops two areas of interest: the representation of death in Irish and American literature and culture, and apocalypticism in (contemporary) literature and culture, on which he also teaches an MA course. He is slowly – all too slowly – devising a cultural history of the coffin, and is working on articles on a range of topics, including the eschatology of Tove Jansson's Moomin books, because why not, and the novels of Barbara Comyns. He occasionally writes about literary pedagogy.

Chris has been the recipient of multiple scholarships and awards. As a literary critic, he writes for publications such as the Irish Times, the TLS, the Irish Literary Supplement, de Nederlandse Boekengids, Poetry London, and Poetry Review.