Dr Ahmed Honeini

I was educated at King’s College London (BA English with Film Studies, 2013), University College London (MA English: Issues in Modern Culture, 2014), and Royal Holloway (PhD English, 2018). My doctoral thesis was on the work of William Faulkner.

Contact me at ahmed.honeini.2015@live.rhul.ac.uk

My primary research interests are: 

• Twentieth-century American literature, culture, and film;

• Modernist literature and culture; 

• William Faulkner (1897-1962);

• Tennessee Williams (1911-1983);

• Representations of death throughout literary history, from the ancient to the contemporary;

• The home and family on the American stage, from Eugene O'Neill to Suzan-Lori Parks.

Alongside publishing my first book, William Faulkner and Mortality: A Fine Dead Sound (under contract with Routledge [forthcoming, late 2021]), I am currently working on a new major project: a book on homes, homelessness, and exile in the plays of Tennessee Williams.

I am also writing a quartet of journal articles examining the influence of Edgar Allan Poe, Joseph Conrad, and Ernest Hemingway (respectively) upon Faulkner’s life and work. The first of these, on Faulkner, Hemingway, and World War One, will be published by The Mississippi Quarterly in 2020.

I also have strong secondary research interests in the following areas: 

• The history of the novel, from Defoe to the present; 

• Shakespeare's influence upon Faulkner and the literature of the US South; 

• American Romanticism: Washington Irving; Edgar Allan Poe; Nathaniel Hawthorne; Herman Melville; Walt Whitman; and Emily Dickinson.

I am the founding director of Faulkner Studies in the UK, a research network devoted to Faulkner established in 2017. The Network's endeavours have been made possible with the generous support of the Department of English at Royal Holloway. The Network has also benefited from the support of the British Association of American Studies (BAAS) and the US Embassy, London. Our efforts have been officially recognised by both the Estate of William Faulkner and the William Faulkner Society. Follow us on Twitter, @Faulkner_UK.

Finally, I am Mentor to the Student Ambassadors of the Florida Hemingway Society.

I have been a Visiting Tutor in the Department of English since 2017, where I teach the history of the novel, literary theory and criticism, and American literature. 

I was invited to create teaching materials and a short video lecture on Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (1929) for the Department's TeacherHub>English initiative for KS4 and KS5 English Literature teachers. 

I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA). 

From 2018 to 2020, I was the Department of English's Non-Established Teachers' Representative. 

Conference presentations

Since 2016, I have disseminated my research at numerous conferences:

• 'Hemingway, Faulkner, and Suicide: The Issue of Tolerance', the Faulkner and Hemingway Conference, organised by the Center for Faulkner Studies in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, October 2016.

• '"Ah aint tryin' to git away": Whiteness as a Form of Death in William Faulkner"s "Pantaloon in Black" (1942)', the 62nd Annual BAAS (British Association for American Studies) Conference at Canterbury Christ Church University, April 2017.

• 'The Education of a Personage: Academia, Affluence, and Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise', the 14th International F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference in St. Paul, Minnesota, June 2017. I was awarded a John Kuehl Fellowship in recognition of this paper.

• 'Tales of Dead Men Talking: Conrad's Mr. Kurtz and Faulkner's Colonel Thomas Sutpen', the 43rd Annual Joseph Conrad Society (UK) Conference in London, July 2017.

• 'Wash Jones, gift-giving, and the murder of Thomas Sutpen in Absalom, Absalom!', the first Southern Studies in the UK Network colloquium, University of Hertfordshire, August 2017.

• 'Wounded Soldiers Seeking Home: Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and Faulkner's Soldiers' Pay', 18th International Hemingway Conference: Hemingway in Paris, July 2018. I was awarded a Jim and Nancy Hinkle Grant in recognition of this paper. 

• 'Saying No to Death? Mortality, Voice, and the Work of William Faulkner', Scottish Association for Modernist Studies New Works conference, the University of Glasgow, December 2018. I was awarded partial travel funding to attend the conference and present the paper. 

• 'Heroes and Monsters: The Southern Gothic of Poe, Faulkner, and Williams', Royal Holloway English Department Research Lunch series, March 2019 (Invited talk). 

• 'An American trait: "Pantaloon in Black", lynching, and William Faulkner's troublesome letter of 1931', Troublesome Modernisms: the 19th International Conference from the British Association for Modernist Studies (BAMS), King's College London, June 2019.

• '"Ah'm goan home": Spirituality, "homegoing", and the African-American dwelling space in William Faulkner's "Pantaloon in Black"', Modernism in the Home conference, University of Birmingham, July 2019. 

• 'Faulkner Across the Pond: Researching, Studying, and Teaching "The Bard of Oxford" in Britain', “The father of the text”: Continuities and Ruptures of Faulkner’s Legacy in Contemporary Literatures. Roundtable discussion. University of Picardy Jules Verne, Amiens, France, September 2019 (Invited by Peter Lurie, the co-editor of the Faulkner Journal).

• 'Long Live the New Flesh? Bodily Autonomy and Technological Domination in Cronenberg's Videodrome', the London Science Fiction Research Community's Work in Progress conference, April 11th, online. 

• 'Quentin, Caddy, and the Kingdom by the Sea: William Faulkner, Edgar Allan Poe, and Transgressive Desires', the 3rd Faulkner Studies in the UK Colloquium: Faulkner, the Twenties, and Modernism, May 28th-29th, online. 

 In 2021, I will be giving the following papers: 

• 'Deathly plans and designs: Power, ambition, and futility in “Heart of Darkness” and Absalom, Absalom!', special panel on Conrad and Faulkner, organised by the Joseph Conrad Society of America and the William Faulkner Society, MLA Convention 2021, Toronto, Canada. 

• 'The word that Quentin cannot say: Evasion and the linguistics of suicide in The Sound and the Fury', the Second Faulkner Conference in Amiens, Spring.

Event organisation 

I have also been involved with the organisation of several scholarly events: 

2020- Lead organiser: The 3rd Faulkner Studies in the UK Colloquium: Faulkner, the Twenties, and Modernism.

2019- Lead organiser: The 2nd Faulkner Studies in the UK Colloquium.

2019- Member of organising committee: Corroding the Now: Poetry + Science|SF.

2018- Lead organiser: Faulkner Studies in the UK: A Colloquium.

2017- Member of organising committee: Radical Cities, Radical Narratives.

2016-18 Lead organiser: RHUL English Department Research Conferences, Colloquia, and Seminars.

The William Faulkner Society.

The British Association for American Studies (BAAS).

The British Association for Modernist Studies (BAMS).

The Scottish Association for the Study of America (SASA).

The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society.

The Hemingway Society.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK).

The Florida Hemingway Society.

Funding awards

2018: British Association for Modernist Studies (BAMS) partial travel award.

2018: British Association for American Studies (BAAS)/US Embassy Small Grant.

2018: Jim and Nancy Hinkle Grant (The Hemingway Society).

2017: John Kuehl Fellowship (The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society).

2017-2020: RHUL English Department conference organisation grants.

2015-2018: RHUL English Department conference travel grants.