Personal statement

My main interests lie in nineteenth and twentieth century African American literature and culture. I'm particularly interested in representations of what Fanon calls 'lived experience' and am currently engaged in drawing on philosophies of embodiment in order to investigate how this experience is represented in diverse literary texts.

Professional qualifications

  • BA 黑料正能量
  • MA UCL
  • PhD Warwick University.

Teaching specialism

I currently teach the following undergraduate modules:

  • EN4001: Critical Reading 1
  • EN5001: Critical Reading 2
  • EN6001: The English Project

Current scholarship

I am currently working on a series of articles that attempt phenomenological analyses of Frederick Douglass's slave narratives.

Research outputs

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Lewis, J (2009) '鈥淪ympathetic travelling鈥�: horizontal ethics and aesthetics in Paco Ignacio Taibo鈥檚 Belascoar谩n Shayne novels.' In: Pearson, N and Singer, M, eds. Detective fiction in a postcolonial and transnational world. Ashgate, Farnham, pp. 135-155. ISBN 9780754668480

article

Lewis, J (2019) '鈥淔rom the slave鈥檚 point of view鈥�: towards a phenomenology of witnessing in Frederick Douglass鈥� 1845 'Narrative'.' ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, 65 (2). pp. 257-291. ISSN 0093-8297

article

Lewis, J (2019) ''Careful living': Frederick Douglass's phenomenology of embodied experience.' Textual Practice, 33 (10). pp. 1657-1672. ISSN 0950-236X

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Lewis, J (2025) Under pressure and still inclusive: what can you co-create in 15 minutes? In: ExperiencED Festival: Empowering Education Through Experience, 11 June 2025, Northeastern University London, London, UK.

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Lewis, J (2021) Getting to the root of the matter: what Frederick Douglass can tell us about extended corporeality. In: British Association for American Studies 66th Annual Conference, 5-11 April 2021, online.

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Lewis, J (2017) 鈥淭aking care of the philosophy鈥�: Frederick Douglass鈥檚 phenomenological interventions. In: American Literature and the Philosophical, 23-25 March 2017, Paris, France.

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Lewis, J (2013) Toward a phenomenology of literacy: the rhetoric of embodiment in Frederick Douglass鈥檚 'Narrative'. In: British Association for American Studies 58th Annual Conference, 18-21 April 2013, University of Exeter.

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Lewis, J (2007) Thinking about the body in Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington and Zora Neale Hurston. In: South West American Studies Forum, 19鈥�20 May 2007, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.

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Lewis, J (2007) The insurgent body in Zora Neale Hurston鈥檚 'Mules and men'. In: British Association for American Studies 52nd Annual Conference, 19-22 April 2007, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK.