Photo of Matthew FeldmanDr Matthew Feldman

Telephone: 01604 892575
Email: matthew.feldman@northampton.ac.uk

Having obtained my degrees and initial teaching experience at Oxford Brookes University, I moved to the University of Northampton in 2004, was appointed HEFCE Promising Research Fellow award in 2005/6, and am currently a Senior Lecturer in Twentieth Century History, as well as the History Division's Senior Admissions Tutor. I also co-edit the online Wiley-Blackwell's journal Compass: Political Religions and have co-convened the annual Samuel Beckett: Debts and Legacies Seminar at the University of Oxford since 2004.

Research interests

My ongoing research interests include 'political religions' and the role of the sacred in the modern world; revolutionary violence and extremist ideologies, and revolutionary modernism more generally. This extends to a large cultural inflection in my research, extending to the literary history of figures such as Martin Heidegger, Ezra Pound, and especially Samuel Beckett. Recent research has extended this scope of inquiry to US 'civil religion', media representations of the Holocaust, fascist ideology, and my current monograph, modernist propaganda during the interwar years.

Recent publications

Books

  • Fascism: Critical Concepts, 5 Vols. (Routledge, 2004) - ed. with R. Griffin
  • Beckett's Books: A Cultural History of Samuel Beckett's 'Interwar Notes (Continuum Books, 2006;revised and reissued, 2008)
  • Samuel Beckett's Literary Legacies (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007) - ed. with M. Nixon
  • Fascism's Century': Essays by Roger Griffin (Palgrave, 2008)- ed. M. Feldman
  • 'Clerical Fascism' in Interwar Europe (Routledge, 2008) - ed. with M. Turda
  • Beckett and Phenomenology (Continuum, 2009) - ed. with Ulrika Maude
  • Beckett and Death (Continuum, 2009) - ed. with Steve Barfield and Philp Tew
  • The International Reception of Samuel Beckett (Continuum, 2009) - ed. with Mark Nixon

Recent Articles and Book Chapters

  • '“Choose Definitively Between Hell and Reason”', Third Text, 61, (2003)
  • '“I Inquired into Myself”: Beckett, Interpretation. Phenomenology?', Samuel Beckett Today, Aujourd'hui, 12 (2003)
  • 'Beckett's Poss and the Dog's Dinner: An empirical survey of 1930s Philosophy and Psychology Notes', Journal of Beckett Studies, 13, 2 (2005)
  • 'Between Geist and Zeitgeist: Martin Heidegger as ideologue of metapolitical fascism', Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 6, 2 (2005)
  • 'Popper and Beckett: or, On Falsifiability, 'What stink of Artifice', Samuel Beckett Today, Aujourd'hui, 16 (2006)
  • 'Conclusion', translated in Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.), Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska, 1941-1945 (Alinea, 2008)
  • 'A “suitable engine of destruction”? Samuel Beckett and Arnold Geulincx's Ethics', in Beckett and Ethics, ed. Russell Smith, (Continuum, 2008)
  • '“Agnostic Quietism” and Samuel Beckett's Early Development', in History, Memory, Archive, eds. Sean Kennedy and Katherine Worth (Palgrave, 2009)
  • 'In defence of empirical knowledge: Rejoinder to 'A critique of “Excavatory Reason”', Samuel Beckett Today, Aujourd'hui, 20, (2009)
  • 'Ezra Pound's Anti-Semitic Propaganda for the PNF and BUF', Journal of Holocaust Studies (forthcoming, 2009)

Online Texts and Media:

Teaching

  • Empires Through History
  • Fascism's Century: Fascism 1919-Present
  • The Holocaust and its Histories
  • The Holocaust
  • Research Skills: What is Propaganda?

PhD supervision

I am interested in supervising PhD research on a wide variety of topics within socio-political modernism in the twentieth century, especially revolutionary modernism.

Back to top