Paul Jenner undertook his postgraduate studies at Nottingham University, completing his MA in 1996. His D. Phil (awarded 2001) focused on the work of the American philosopher Stanley Cavell, taking an intellectual historical approach to Cavell’s negotiations with analytic philosophy and comparing his work with the philosophers Thomas Kuhn and Richard Rorty. He has been a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy since 2015.
Paul is co-lead of the Contemporary Research Group at Loughborough.
Paul’s current monograph project argues for important affinities between Stanley Cavell’s philosophical explorations of ordinariness and the approach to the ordinary found in Marilynne Robinson’s fiction and non-fiction.
Paul has expertise in fiction, philosophy, and critical theory and his teaching reflects this. He convenes a core first year (Part A) module introducing students to the relevance of theoretical questions for the study of literature. Paul’s second year (Part B) optional module focuses on non-human animals in literature, philosophy and film. He convenes and co-teaches an optional third year (Part C) module exploring the globalisation of U.S. fiction and film and supervise final year student dissertation projects on a broad range of topics (typically focussing on theory, literature and film). At taught postgraduate level, Paul contributes to the English Department’s MA in Contemporary Literature and Culture, teaching sessions on contemporary U.S. literature.
Recent Postgraduate Research Students
- Amanda Bigler (2017) Fragmented Perspectives: Creating Empathy Through Experiments in Form and Perspective in Short Fiction. Co-supervised by Kerry Featherstone.
- Amani Abdu (2019) The South’s “Negligible Minorities”: The Influence of Whiteness s on the Southern Construction of Race, Gender, and Class in Ellen Glasgow’s Novels. Co-supervised by Mary Brewer.
- Ichrak Dik (2022) Native Americans and questions of violence in nineteenth-century US literature, 1827-1884. Co-supervised by Andrew Dix.
- Alex Boyd (2024) Cormac McCarthy: Style, Allegory and the Problem of Affect. Co-supervised by Brian Jarvis.
Current Postgraduate Research Students
- Haneen R. Neamah, A Comparative Analysis of the Representation of Shame in Contemporary Plays in English. Co-supervised by Siân Adiseshiah.
- Jenner, P. ‘A Willingness for Crisis: Cavell and Kuhn’ in Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies 10, ‘Cavell and Kuhn’, University of Ottawa, January 2023, 80-97.
- Jenner, P. and B. Tabas, Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies 10, ‘Cavell and Kuhn’ special issue, University of Ottawa, January 2023, 1-157.
- Jenner, P. ‘Philosophy as a Kind of Writing’ in C. Wampole and J. Childs, eds., The Cambridge History of the American Essay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 490-508.
- Jenner, P. ‘Acknowledging a Numinous Ordinary: Marilynne Robinson and Stanley Cavell’ in R. Sykes, A. Eliott, and J. Daly, eds., Marilynne Robinson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022), 97-114.
- Jenner, P. ‘Free Will and Determinism’ in Clare Hayes Brady, ed., David Foster Wallace in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 159-168.
- Jenner, P. ‘Plights of Mind and Circumstance: Cavell and Wallace on Scepticism’ in G. L. Hagberg, ed., Fictional Worlds and the Moral Imagination (London: Palgrave, 2021), 97-113.
- Jenner., P. ‘Response to Stanley Cavell’s The World Viewed’, Journal of Contemporary Painting, Volume 1, Issue 1, April 2015, 19-26.
- Jenner, P., A. Dix, and B. Jarvis, The Contemporary American Novel in Context (London: Bloomsbury, 2011)