Dr Michelle Deininger

Biography

I returned to education as a mature student, having completed part of my undergraduate studies at Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education – Oxford’s equivalent to Cardiff’s Continuing and Professional Education.

I undertook my AHRC funded PhD at Cardiff University, completing my thesis in the field of Welsh women’s short fiction in English.

I have worked in a range of educational settings, from widening access to a gifted and talented sixth form programme.

My higher education roles include Postgraduate Tutor for first year undergraduates at Cardiff University (2009-2013), University Teacher at Cardiff University’s Continuing and Professional Education (2014-17), Lecturer in English at Cardiff Metropolitan University (2014-15), and University Teacher in English Literature at Cardiff University’s School of English, Communication and Philosophy (2015-16).

I became Co-ordinating Lecturer in Humanities at CPE in October 2017. My research interests include the short story, women’s writing, feminist theory, ecocriticism, nineteenth-century newspapers, literary networks, literature and higher education, and widening access.

Honours and awards

Nomination for a Student-Led Teaching Fellowship (2016): Nominated by level 4 students for teaching excellence at Cardiff Metropolitan University.

Teacher Hero (2015): Awarded by Aberystwyth University for excellent teaching, inspiration and support between FE and HE.

Best Postgraduate Paper, British Association for Victorian Studies (2013): ‘Uneasy Neighbours’ Conference, University of Southampton.

Sir Julian Hodge Prize in English Literature, Cardiff University (2007): £1,000 awarded to the student with the highest overall mark at undergraduate level.

Teaching

I currently co-ordinate the Inside Narratives Pathways to a Degree in English literature, English Language and Communication, and Philosophy.

I teach on several modules on Inside Narratives including the core module, Inside Literature, and New Ways of Reading: Ideology and the Text.

I also teach on the Our Media, Our World Pathway, on The Media and Me: Gender, Sexuality, and Identity.

Environmental Humanities

Deininger, Michelle, ‘Protecting the Land, Safeguarding the Future: Ecofeminism, activist women’s writing, and contemporary publishing in Wales’, in The Routledge Companion to Literature and Feminism, edited by Rachel Carroll and Fiona Tolan (Routledge, 2023)

Deininger, Michelle, “Welsh Literature and Ecofeminism” in The Routledge Handbook of Ecofeminism and Literature, ed Douglas A. Vakoch (Routledge, 2022)

Deininger, Michelle, “Young Adult Fiction and Ecofeminism” in The Routledge Handbook of Ecofeminism and Literature, ed Douglas A. Vakoch (Routledge, 2022)

Deininger, Michelle and Gemma Scammell, ‘Extinction is Forever: Ecofeminism and Apocalypse in Louise Lawrence’s Young Adult Fiction’, in Dystopias and Utopias on Earth and Beyond: Feminist Ecocriticism of Science Fiction, ed Douglas A. Vakoch (Routledge, 2021)

Cox, Natalie, and Deininger, Michelle, ‘“Different shades of green”: Elizabeth Gaskell’s EcoGothic Short Fictions’,in Victorian Ecocriticism: The Politics of Place and Early Environmental Justice, ed Dewey W. Hall (Lexington, 2017)

Deininger, Michelle, ‘Pylons, Playgrounds and Power Stations: Ecofeminism and Landscape in 1970s Women’s Short Fiction from Wales’, Ecofeminism in Dialogue, ed. Douglas A. Vakoch and Sam Mickey (Lexington, 2017)

Feminist and Short Fiction Scholarship

Deininger, Michelle, ‘The Short Story in the Twentieth Century’, Cambridge History of Welsh Literature, ed Geraint Evans and Helen Fulton (Cambridge University Press, 2019)

Deininger, Michelle, ‘“I remember these things”: Memory, Misrepresentation and Cultural Tradition in Lynette Roberts’ ‘“Seven Stories”’, in Locating Lynette Roberts: ‘Always Observant and Slightly Obscure’, ed Siriol McAvoy (University of Wales Press, 2019)

Deininger, Michelle, ‘“Life in our villages is practically no life at all”: Sketching the rural-urban shift in nineteenth-century depictions of Wales’, Rural-Urban Relationships in the Nineteenth-Century: Uneasy Neighbours?, ed Barry Sloan and Mary Hammond (Routledge, 2016)

Deininger, Michelle, ‘Legacies of Recuperation: Feminism, Suffrage and the New Woman in the Honno Classics Series’, Latchkey, IV (Spring, 2012)

Deininger, Michelle, ‘“It was forbidden, strictly forbidden”: Contesting Taboo in I Sent a Letter to My Love’, in Mapping the Territory: Critical Approaches to Welsh Fiction in English, ed Katie Gramich (Cardigan: Parthian, 2010)

Education and Class

Deininger, Michelle, ‘Working Class Voices’, Wales Arts Review, 8 April 2018

Deininger, Michelle, ‘From Council Estate to a PhD’, Times Higher Education, 18 April 2018

Modernist Women’s Networks

Deininger, Michelle and Claire Flay-Petty, ‘University Connections and Professional Lives’, New Welsh Reader, 119 (Winter 2018)

Deininger, Michelle, and Flay-Petty, Claire, ‘The Cash-Box and The Specimen Tin’, Planet: The Welsh Internationalist (May/June 2017)

Higher Education Publications

‘Case study: Having the Difficult Conversation: How Retention is being Addressed at Cardiff Met’, with Claire Morgan and Sophie Leslie, Higher Education Academy Strategic Enhancement Programme: Transition, Retention and Attainment, 2016. Available here.

Selected Reviews

Deininger, Michelle, ‘Review: Tales of the Brothers Grimm at the Sherman’, Wales Arts Review, 3^rd December 2022. Available at https://www.walesartsreview.org/tales-of-the-brothers-grimm-at-the-sherman-review/

Deininger, Michelle, ‘Review: Conception: A Novel by Ozgür Uyanik’, Wales Arts Review, 7^th December 2020. Available at https://www.walesartsreview.org/books-conception/

Deininger, Michelle, ‘Review: Shards of Light by Emyr Humphreys and Emyr Humphreys by M. Wynn Thomas’, Planet (235), Autumn 2019.

Deininger, Michelle, ‘Review: Ironopolis by Glen James Brown’, Wales Arts Review, 23^rd August 2018. Available at https://www.walesartsreview.org/books-ironopolis-by-glen-james-brown/

Beeston, Alix et al, ‘Roundtable: The Problems with Rhondda Rips it Up!’, Wales Arts Review, 5^th July 2018. Available at https://www.walesartsreview.org/the-problems-with-rhondda-rips-it-up/

Work in Development

Monograph: Code Red for Humanity: Environmental Catastrophe in Young Adult Fiction (Lexington, 2024)

Deininger, Michelle, ‘Young Adult Literature as Trans Literature’, The Routledge Handbook of Trans Literature (2023/24)

Deininger, Michelle, ‘Rachel Carson: Scientist, Writer, Activist, Ecofeminist’, Handbook of Ecofeminism (2024)

Deininger, Michelle, ‘Zoë Brigley: “A gaze not cruel but without pity”: Landscape, Violence, and Ecopoetry’, Handbook of Ecofeminism (2024)

Supervision

Past projects