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Professor Jarlath Killeen

Professor in Victorian English (English)
ARTS BUILDING
      
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Professor Jarlath Killeen

Professor in Victorian English (English)
ARTS BUILDING


I was born in County Mayo and educated in Trinity College, Dublin, and University College Dublin. I have taught at Trinity College Dublin since 2006. My research focuses on the literature and culture of Victorian Britain and Ireland, though I also have a longstanding interest in eighteenth-century Ireland, especially the history and pre-history of Gothic literature on this island. To date, I have written six monographs. Two have focused on Oscar Wilde: The Faiths of Oscar Wilde (Palgrave, 2005); The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde (Ashgate, 2007). Three examine different aspects of Gothic literature: Gothic Ireland (Four Courts Press, 2005); Gothic Literature, 1825-1914 (University of Wales Press, 2009); The Emergence of Irish Gothic Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2013). I have also edited four collections of essays: Oscar Wilde (Irish Academic Press, 2010); Bram Stoker (Four Courts Press, 2013); Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, with Valeria Cavalli (Peter Lang, 2016); Irish Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, with Christina Morin (Edinburgh University Press, 2024). I also organized two major international symposia in Trinity College on Bram Stoker (2012) and Sheridan Le Fanu (2014). Prior to my appointment to Trinity College, I was Lecturer in Victorian Literature in Keele University, Staffordshire (2004-05). I have also lectured in Irish Studies, in both Ireland (in University College Dublin) and Canada (at the University of Toronto), I am convenor of the Senior Fresh module in Victorian Writing. Much of my teaching involves the study of popular literature, including Victorian Gothic and Victorian children's literature, and I am particularly interested in the intersection of religion and literature, the popular romance, the discourse of the child in literature and culture, and Gothic and horror in all their manifestations.
  18th Century literature   19th Century Irish cultural history   Anglo-Irish connections   Children's literature   Gothic Fiction   Gothic Literature   Humanities, General/Other   Irish Gothic   Irish political, intellectual and social history, 1660-1800   Oscar Wilde   Popular Romance and Chick Lit   Religion & Literature   Religion and Literature   Victorian Literature & Culture   Victorian Literature and Culture   Victorian studies, popular fiction
'Dealing with the Dead: Vampires, Corpses, and Serialisation' in, editor(s)Nick Groom and William Hughes , The Vampire: An Edinburgh Companion, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2025, pp216 - 233, [Jarlath Killeen], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Jarlath Killeen, Review, Review of The Necromantics: Reanimation, the Historical Imagination, and Victorian British and Irish Literature, by René Fox , Nineteenth-Century Literature, 80, (1), 2025, p67-70 , Review, PUBLISHED
'Afterlives I: The Victorian Vicar' in, editor(s)Michael Griffin and David O'Shaughnessy , Oliver Goldsmith in Context, Cambridge, 2024, pp289 - 297, [Jarlath Killeen], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Jarlath Killeen, Imagining the Irish Child: Discourses of childhood in Irish Anglican writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2023, 1-296pp, Book, PUBLISHED
Jarlath Killeen and Christina Morin, Irish Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2023, vii - 276pp, Book, PUBLISHED
Introduction: Exorcising the Dead, Summoning the Living in, editor(s)Jarlath Killeen and Christina Morin , Irish Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2023, pp1 - 26, [Jarlath Killeen and Christina Morin], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Bram Stoker, Dracula and the Irish Dimension in, editor(s)Jarlath Killeen and Christina Morin , Irish Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 2023, pp174 - 193, [Jarlath Killeen], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, Jarlath Killeen, (Oxford Sherlock Holmes), Oxford:, Oxford University Press, 2023, - 1-368, Critical Edition (Book), PUBLISHED
'Stoker, Dracula, and the Critics' in, editor(s)David J. Skal and John Edgar Browning , Dracula, New York, Norton, 2022, pp455 - 469, [Jarlath Killeen], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Jarlath Killeen, Review of Oscar Wilde and the Radical Politics of the Fin de Siècle, by Deaglán Ó Donghaile , Irish University Review, 52, (1), 2022, p156-162 , Review, PUBLISHED
  

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Jarlath Killeen, 'Foreword', Sheridan Le Fanu: Horror Stories, 2025, - 6-7, Miscellaneous, PUBLISHED
Jarlath Killeen, 'Nation of the Damned: Evil Irish Children in 1641', Gothic Presence., Sӧdertӧrn University, Stockholm, 17th May, 2023, Mattias Pirholt and Claudia Lindén,, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Jarlath Killeen, Contemporary Irish Folk Gothic and the Search for Meaning, 16th International Gothic Association Conference, Trinity College Dublin, 29th July, 2022, Invited Talk, PRESENTED
Jarlath Killeen, Gothic Ireland Becomes Irish Gothic, Honest Ulsterman, (February), 2022, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
Jarlath Killeen, Irish Children's Literature: Oscar Wilde, The Irish Seminar, Dublin, 18th June, 2021, University of Notre-Dame, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Jarlath Killeen, Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales, Children's Literature Summer School, Trinity College Dublin, 23rd July, 2021, School of English, Trinity College Dublin, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Jarlath Killeen, 'Gothic Literature and Its Cultural Impact'. Keynote Lecture. , Congreso Internacional Sobre Novela Gótica. , CEU, Universidad San Pablo, Madrid., 19 February, 2019., 2019, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Jarlath Killeen, 'Understanding Bram Stoker and the Perils of Biography'. Plenary Lecture., The Gothic, School of Culture and Education, Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden, 13 February, 2019, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Jarlath Killeen, 'Le Fanu's Carmilla'. Plenary Lecture., Irish Gothic Symposium, School of Culture and Education, Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden, , 12 February,, 2019, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Jarlath Killeen, 'Torture Pornography and the Victorians' and 'The Corpse in Victorian Pulp Fiction'. Plenary Lectures. , Victorian Literature Symposium, Marii Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland, 17th-18 April, 2018, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED

  


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My research focuses on the literature and culture of Victorian Britain and Ireland, though I also have a longstanding interest in eighteenth-century Ireland, especially the history and pre-history of Gothic literature on this island. At the moment, I am writing articles on theology and Irish Anglican gothic fiction, the relationship between Ireland and Oscar Wilde, plants in The Picture of Dorian Gray, and true life crime fiction in the eighteenth century. I have supervised PhDs in many areas, including: Thomas Hardy and the Law; Theodicy and the Victorian Novel; Cannibalism in Twentieth Century Culture; Beauty and the Nineteenth-Century Novel; Sheridan Le Fanu and Female Insanity; Christmas in Early Nineteenth-Century British Literary Culture; Islands in Contemporary Popular Culture; Food in the Children's Literature of Roald Dahl; American Versions of Cinderella; Jane Austen and Fan Fiction; Sheridan Le Fanu and Settler Gothic; Dead Children in the work of Charles Dickens; Extraordinary Bodies in the work of Wilkie Collins