Patrick Mullen
Associate Professor of English
Patrick Mullen is the author of The Poor Bugger’s Tool: Irish Modernism, Queer Labor, and Postcolonial History (Oxford, 2012), which is soon to be released in paperback. He has also written articles on Edith Wharton, James Joyce, and Roger Casement that have appeared in Novel, Critical Quarterly, and Public Culture. He teaches courses in the areas of modernism, the history of the novel, critical theory, queer theory, Irish studies, and film. He regularly leads one of Northeastern’s summer Dialogue of Civilizations to Ireland that focuses on Irish literature and cinema. He was a fellow with the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar (2012) on James Joyce’s Ulysses at Trinity College, Dublin. He currently serves on the editorial board for Signs. He is working on a manuscript that addresses representations of managers and management in modernist fiction.
- Fellow, National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar (2012): James Joyce’s Ulysses, Trinity College, Dublin.
- The Poor Bugger’s Tool: Irish Modernism, Queer Labor, and Postcolonial History (Oxford University Press, 2012)
- “The Aesthetics of Self-management: Intelligence, Capital, and the House of Mirth.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction (2009).
- “Ruling Passion: James Joyce, Roger Casement, and the Bugger’s Tool.” Critical Quarterly (2004).
- “Roger Casement’s Global English: From Human Rights to the Homoerotic.” Public Culture (2003).
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Education
PhD in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies, Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh
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Contact
617.373.3675 p.mullen@northeastern.edu -
Address
473 Holmes Hall
360 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115 -
Office Hours
W, 10:30-11:30 (zoom preferred, by appointment)
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Dialogues
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Introduction to Literary Studies
ENGL 1400
Offers a foundational course designed for English majors. Introduces the methods and topics of English literary and textual studies, including allied media (e.g., film, graphic narrative). Explores strategies for reading, interpreting, and theorizing about texts; for conducting research; for developing skills in thinking analytically and writing clearly about complex ideas; and for entering into written dialogue with scholarship in the diverse fields that comprise literary studies.
Writing Crime and Comedy in Irish Literature
ENGL 4060
Ireland has rich comedy and gothic traditions in which humor and violence are closely connected. Both comedy and horror are modes through which writers have addressed the country’s oftentimes difficult history. We will read six works: Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, Claire Kilroy’s Tenderwire, Paul Murray’s Skippy Dies, Lisa McInerny’s The Glorious Heresies, and Tana French’s The Witch Elm. For the critical component, you will read about the scholarly reception of these works and about theories of comedy and the gothic, and you will write brief analyses. For the creative component, you will write imitations in which you try to master the style of the novels. In the end, you will have a richer understanding of the place of comedy and crime in Irish literature.
