Co-Director (Literary Criticism)
Dr Jeannette Baxter is a leading scholar on the work of J.G. Ballard, and has published extensively on his fictional and non-fictional writings as they intersect with post-war science fictions, surrealism, neuroscience, literary historiography, and sound studies. Her broader research interests into the historical and political import of science fiction extend to modern and contemporary writers, including Katherine Burdekin, Anna Kavan, Michael Moorcock, Alan Burns, Angela Carter, Doris Lessing and China Mieville.
Jeannette’s research on the visuality of Ballard’s science fiction has led to invited collaborations with visual artists in the curating and staging of public exhibitions and sound events. With Phil Goss and Fay Ballard, she worked on ‘The Drowned World’, an exhibition of drawings and writings (Aldeburgh, May 2015), which were in dialogue with some of the key themes of Ballard’s novel The Drowned World (1962). In August 2016, she collaborated with Henna-Riike Halonen in the production of a radio collage based on Ballard’s 1960s science fictions and her own critical interpretations of that work.
In 2017, Jeannette organised and hosted the Centre For Science Fiction’s inaugural conference: J.G. Ballard and the Sciences. With the award-winning novelist, Christopher Priest, giving the keynote, this one day, international event brought scholars and members of the public together for the first time to discuss intersections between J.G. Ballard’s writings and the sciences (biology, chemistry, zoology, medicine, botany, neuroscience, bioethics, anatomy, biotechnology and psychology, to name just a few). A special issue of Humanities based on the conference proceedings is forthcoming.
Selected Publications:
With Fay Ballard, ‘Ballard/Baxter/Ballard: In Conversation’, a creative/critical collage. In: R. Magrath. ed. Deep Ends: The J. G. Ballard Anthology. Toronto: The Terminal Press. ISBN 978-0-9940982-5-2. pp. 8-21, 2017.
Baxter, J., 2017. ‘Post/Colonial Perspectives: Surrealisms, Fascisms and the Persistence of Colonialism in Angela Carter’s 1970s Writings’. In: P. Flajsarova and J. Flajsar, eds. 2016. Anglophone Culture Across Centuries and Borders (Searching for Culture EU-funded Innovation of Cultural Studies Project). Olomouc: University of Palacky Press. ISBN 978-80-244-4732-2. pp. 37-50, 2017.
‘Sounding Surrealist Historiography: Listening to Concrete Island‘, Literary Geographies, (forthcoming special journal issue, 2016).
‘Don’t Confuse the Map with the Territory’, ‘The Drowned World’ exhibition catalogue with illustrations by Phil Goss and Fay Ballard, 2015.
‘Accident and Apocalypse in the Writing of Alan Burns’, in Surrealism, Science Fiction and Comic Books, ed. Gavin Parkinson. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015.
‘Encountering the Holocaust in J. G. Ballard’s Post-War Short Stories’, Textual Practice, Vol. 26, Issue 3, pp. 379-398, 2012.
Visions and Revisions: Essays on J. G. Ballard, with an introduction and essay. London: Palgrave. ISBN 9780230278127 (co-edited with Rowland Wymer). 2011.
G. Ballard’s Surrealist Imagination: Spectacular Authorship (Ashgate, 2009), ISBN 9780754662670.
Contemporary Critical Perspectives: J. G. Ballard, with an introduction, interview and essay, (London: Bloomsbury, 2008), ISBN 9780826497260.