Faculty & Staff

Department of English Language and Literature
Professor
Phone: (902) 420-5714
Office: MN 304
Email: Russell.Perkin@smu.ca

Overview

Russell Perkin received an honours BA in English from Acadia University, a BA and MA in English from Oxford University, and a PhD in English from the University of Toronto. He also studied law at the City of Birmingham Polytechnic, where he passed the Common Professional Examination and the Law Society Final Examination of the Law Society of England and Wales.

Dr. Perkin specializes in British literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His first book, which has been continuously in print since 1990, was A Reception-History of George Eliot’s Fiction. His research interests mainly focus on two interdisciplinary topics: the relationship between religion and literature, and the expression of social and political issues in literature. His second book was Theology and the Victorian Novel (2009). Since 2010, his research has concentrated on the post-1945 British novel, and his third book, David Lodge and the Tradition of the Modern Novel (2014), was a study of David Lodge within the horizons of post-war British fiction. He published Politics and the British Novel in the 1970s in 2021.

He retains a strong interest in the Victorian period, especially in Matthew Arnold, the Brontës, Victorian faith and doubt, “condition of England” writing, and life writing.  His current research focusses on Christianity and British literature in the mid-twentieth century.

Teaching

As an instructor, Dr. Perkin endeavours to find a balance among the co-ordinates of close reading, historical contextualization, and ethical and political engagement. He regularly teaches the following courses:

• at the 1000 level: ENGL 1220 Literature and Science
• at the 2000 level: ENGL 2205 Practical Criticism; ENGL 2327 The Bible and English Literature; ENGL 2328 The Catholic Tradition in Modern British Literature; ENGL 2827 Special Topic: Spy Novels
• at the 3000 level: ENGL 3460 British Literature 1900-1945 and ENGL 3461 British Literature 1945-2000; ENGL 3483 Victorian Poetry and Prose I
• at the 4000 level: ENGL 4488 The Post-1945 British Novel; ENGL 4826 Special Topic: British Literature and World War II

Recent Honours Seminar topics include “British Literature in the 1970s” (2019) and “Victorian Lives” (2022).

Publications

Books 

• Politics and the British Novel in the 1970s.  Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021.
• David Lodge and the Tradition of the Modern Novel.  Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014.
• Theology and the Victorian Novel.  Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009.
• A Reception-History of George Eliot’s Fiction. Ann Arbor, MI.: UMI Research Press, 1990.  Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1995 and 2010.

Selected Book Chapters and Journal Articles

• “Fictional Country Houses of the 1980s: Isabel Colegate, Kazuo Ishiguro, and V. S. Naipaul.”  University of Toronto Quarterly 92.1 (2023): 55–75.
• “John Lanchester’s Capital: A Dickensian Examination of the Condition of England.”  jml: Journal of Modern Literature 41.1 (2017): 100-17.
• “Matthew Arnold, the Oxford Movement, and the ‘Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse.’”  Christianity and Literature 65.2 (2016): 131-50.
• “Margaret Drabble’s Wordsworth.”  The Wordsworth Circle 46.3 (2015): 197‑201.

• “Aesthetics, Politics, and the Interpretation of Mansfield Park.” Jane Austen and the Arts: Elegance, Propriety, and Harmony.  Natasha Duquette and Elisabeth Lenckos.  Lanham, MD: Lehigh University Press in association with Rowman and Littlefield, 2014.  149-62.

• “Imagining Henry: Henry James as a Fictional Character in Colm Tóibín’s The Master and David Lodge’s Author, Author.”  jml: Journal of Modern Literature 33.2 (2010): 114-30.
• “Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley as a Novel of Religious Controversy.”  Studies in the Novel 40.4 (2008): 389-406.
• “The Pilgrimages of David Lodge.”  Christianity and Literature 57.3 (2008): 419‑42.