Patrick Mullen
Associate Professor of English
Patrick Mullen works in Irish studies, sexuality studies, film studies, and critical theory. He is the author of: The Poor Bugger’s Tool: Irish Modernism, Queer Labor, and Postcolonial History (Oxford UP, 2012) and Queer Possessions: Creative Criticism and Modern Irish Literature (Syracuse UP, 2026). He appears in The New Joyce Studies (Cambridge UP, 2022). He co-organized two conferences on Joyce at the Embassy of Ireland in Paris: Joyce in Paris (2025) and Joyce et la créativité (2026).
- Fellow, National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar (2012): James Joyce’s Ulysses, Trinity College, Dublin.
- Queer Possessions: Creative Criticism and Modern Irish Literature (Syracuse UP, 2026)
- “The Epistemology of the Pantry: A Queer Inventory of James Joyce’s ‘The Dead.’” In The New Joyce Studies: 21-st-Century Revisions (Cambridge UP, 2022)
- “Queer Possession and the Celtic Tiger: Affect and Economics in Belinda McKeon’s Tender.” (2017). LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, 28(1), 75–95
- The Poor Bugger’s Tool: Irish Modernism, Queer Labor, and Postcolonial History (Oxford UP, 2012)
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Education
PhD, 2005, University of Pittsburgh
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Contact
617.373.3675 [email protected] -
Address
473 Holmes Hall
360 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115 -
Office Hours
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.
