Dr Andrew Tate (Lancaster University), ‘Margaret Atwood’s Apocalypse: A Contemporary Novelist at the End of the World’

About the speaker:

Andrew Tate is Senior Lecturer in English at Lancaster University. His research focuses on the intersections between literature, theology and aesthetics, and he has two primary historical interests: nineteenth-century writing and its relationship with theological debates; and contemporary fiction in relation to the sacred. Recent publications include journal articles on Ruskin and the Psalms and a chapter on Decadence and the Bible.

Two books, Contemporary Fiction and Christianity (Continuum, 2008) and, co-authored with Arthur Bradley, The New Atheist Novel: Fiction, Philosophy and Polemic After 9/11 (Continuum, 2010), focus on late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century narratives. Andrew has edited a special double issue of The Year Book of English Studies on religion and literature (2009) and co-edited Literature and the Bible: A Reader (Routledge, 2013). Other publications include Douglas Coupland (Manchester University Press, 2007) and, edited with Jo Carruthers, Spiritual Identities: Literature and the Post-Secular Imagination (Peter Lang, 2010).

Andrew is currently working on two book-length projects: one on twenty-first-century apocalyptic fiction, the other on the figure of Jesus/Christ in post-millennial narratives.