Spotlight on Research: Professor Adam Barrows
In the Fall of 2024 Professor Adam Barrows taught a graduate seminar on the topic of madness and time in 20th-century literature. This will be the topic of a book-length project that Professor Barrows is beginning to write, with the seminar creating an opportunity for a small group of MA and PhD students to workshop the primary texts, arguments, and theoretical approaches that will be central to the book.
The seminar examined characters from a range of 20th-century novels whose deviation from accepted norms of behaviour, speech, and thought places them in a unique and radical relationship with time. Texts such as Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Bessie Head’s A Question of Power dove into topics of madness in a deeply personal context, while Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and others opened up discussions on what it means to write from the mad perspective and how authors have used this perspective to critique what is considered ‘sane’ in our society.
Professor Barrows’s intention was to create a knowledge community that would help him shape and refine his approach to the material, with the concluding project being an opportunity for every student to promote a contemporary work of mad literature that they felt belonged in the course selection. Professor Barrows reports that he has learned a lot from the seminar discussions and final projects, and when the book is published all eight students will be formally thanked for their contributions.
