Ben Carver's recent publications include work on invasion fiction, conspiracy theories (and their relation to literature), alternate history, and TV realism. He teaches English for academic purposes at the European University Institute, Florence, and publishes research on literatures of speculation.

2013: Doctor of Philosophy in English (University of Exeter) Thesis title: Arranging the Past, Reconsidering the Present: The Emergence of Alternate History in the Nineteenth Century

2009: Master of Arts, English Studies (University of Exeter, Distinction with Dean’s commendation)

2004: Postgraduate Certificate in Education (Plymouth University)

1996: MA (Hons) English Literature and Language (University of St Andrews)

Monograph

Alternate Histories and Nineteenth-Century Literature: Untimely Meditations in Britain, France, and America (Palgrave 2017: Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture series, 300pp) [link]. Reviewed in Science Fiction Studies (46.2) and Victorian Studies (forthcoming).

Forthcoming / in press

‘“Strangely Inorganic Patriotism”: Serializing Invasion Fiction at the Turn of the Century’ forthcoming (contract signed), in English Literary History (ELH) (c.8,000 words), 2021

‘“The Cash-Nexus”: Realism and Conspiracy in Balzac and Dickens’ (forthcoming), in Plots: Literary Form and Cultures of Conspiracy (Routledge, eds. Dana Crăciun, Todor Hristov, and Ben Carver), forthcoming 2021, contract signd (c.8,000 words)

Published essays, articles, & chapters

‘Genres of conspiracy in nineteenth-century British writing’, in Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories, Ed. Michael Butter, 2020 (c.6,500 words)

‘An Entangled Forest: Evolutionary Theory and Speculative Fiction’, Urbanomic online, May 2018

‘“All good earthly things are in Utopia also”: Familiarity and Irony in News from Nowhere and A Modern Utopia’. In Utopias and Dystopias in the Fiction of H. G. Wells and William Morris: Landscape and Space, ed. Emelyne Godfrey (Palgrave, 2016)

‘“A Gleaming and Glorious Star”: Rethinking History in the Plurality-of-Worlds Debate’, Journal of Victorian Culture 18.4 (December 2013) [open access link]

Reviews

Maps of Utopia: H. G. Wells, Modernity, and the End of Culture (Simon James, 2012) for Victoriographies 4.1 (2014)

The Spectre of Utopia (Matthew Beaumont, 2012) for Literature & History: 21.2

Another Earth (dir. Mike Cahill, 2011) for the New York Review of Science Fiction: May 2012

2018-2020: External lecturer, Aarhus University (Denmark)

‘Literature in English 1: Form and Genre’ (1^st-year course, lecturer and seminar tutor)

‘Science Fiction, Technology, & Society’ (2^nd-year elective, course convenor)

‘Film Culture’ (2^nd-year elective, course convenor)

2014-2018: Lecturer in English, Falmouth University

‘Introduction to Cultural Studies’ (1^st-year module, lecturer and seminar tutor)

‘The Knowing Self: Literature and Culture 1540-1688’ (1^st-year module)

‘Literature and Screen’ (2^{nd -}year module, convenor and seminar tutor)

‘Cultural Theory and the Politics of the Popular’ (2^nd-year module, lecturer and seminar tutor)

‘Making Nations: Literature and Culture (1832-1914)’ (2^nd-year module, lecturer and tutor)

‘Representing Utopia’ (2^nd-year module, convenor and seminar tutor)

‘Monarchy and Dissent’ (1516-1688) (2^nd-year module, lecturer and seminar tutor)

‘Modernisms’ (2^nd-year module, lecturer and seminar tutor)

‘Re-Inventing the Victorians’ (2^nd-year module, lecturer and seminar tutor)

‘Aftermaths: Literature and Culture 1914-1968’ (3^rd-year module, lecturer and seminar tutor)

‘To The Millennium: Literature and Culture 1968-Present’ (3^rd-year module, lecturer and seminar tutor)

Final-year undergraduate dissertation supervision (supervision of literature dissertation prize-winners in 2017 & 2018

2010-2013: Graduate teaching assistant, University of Exeter

‘Academic Literacies I & II’ (1^st-year modules, convenor)

‘From Modernism to the Contemporary’ (2^nd-year tutor, seminar tutor)

‘Literature and the Environment’ (3^rd-year module, convenor and seminar tutor)

Seminar teaching on MA Literature, Place and Identity

Assistant supervision of MA dissertations

2004-2009

Academic Skills Coordinator, Falmouth University. In this role I designed and delivered workshops on academic writing across a range of Arts, Media and Design courses. I also supported students individually with their essays and dissertations. From 2004–2007 I coordinated the EAP (English for Academic Purposes) programme.