Dr Matthew Leggatt

Biography

Dr Matthew Leggatt is Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature. He is author of the monograph Cultural and Political Nostalgia in the Age of Terror (Routledge, 2018) and editor of the collection Was it Yesterday? Nostalgia in Contemporary Film and Television (SUNY Press, 2022). He has also published a number of journal articles and book chapters (see below for details). Matthew teaches primarily in the fields of 20^th and 21^st century culture, specialising in popular American literature, film, and television. He received his PhD from the University of Southampton in 2013 and has experience teaching English as a foreign language and English for Academic Purposes at the University of Southampton before he joined Winchester.

His current research projects relate primarily to utopian and dystopian fiction. He co-hosts a podcast series dedicated to utopian and dystopian fiction.

Areas of expertise

9/11, Terror, Nostalgia, Utopia and Dystopia, Postmodernism and Modernism, 20th and 21st Century American Popular Culture, Literature, Film, and Television.

Publications

Monographs

Cultural and Political Nostalgia in the Age of Terror: The Melancholic Sublime (Routledge, 2018).

Edited collections

Was it Yesterday? Nostalgia in Contemporary Film and Television (SUNY Press, 2022).

Journal articles

"'Another World Just out of Sight': Remembering or Imagining Utopia in Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven" Open Library of Humanities: Vol. 4.2 Aug 2018. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.256

Deflecting Absence: 9/11 Fiction and the Memorialization of Change Interdisciplinary Literary Studies Journal: Vol. 18.2 June 2016.

"You’ve Gotta Keep the Faith: Making Sense of Disaster in Post 9/11 Apocalyptic Cinema" Journal of Religion & Film: Vol. 19.2 Oct 2015.

Book chapters

"Fungal Imaginaries: The Reconfiguration of Post-Pandemic Society in Severance and The Last of Us," in:  Utopian and Dystopian Explorations of Pandemics and Ecological Breakdown: Entangled Futurities, edited by Heather Alberro, Emrah Atasoy, Norah Castle, Rhiannon Firth and Conrad Scott, 69-80 (Routledge, 2024). DOI: 10.4324/9781003345770-7. Read it online.

"It's All Fun and Games: Countering the Boring Dystopia with the Exciting Utopia," in: Utopian Possibilities: Methods, Theories, Critiques, ed. Liam Benison, 209-216 (University of Porto Press, 2023).

"The Pencil is Mightier Than the Kalashnikov: What Cartoons Can Tell Us About Our (Mis)understanding of Terrorist Acts in the Wake of the Charlie Hebdo Massacre," Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century, eds. Elena Caoduro, Karen Randell, and Karen Ritzenhoff, 159-179 (Palgrave, 2021).

"Introduction: History in Reverse," Was it Yesterday? Nostalgia in Contemporary Film and Television, ed. Matthew Leggatt, 1-11 (SUNY Press, 2021).

""Why Can't We Go Backwards, for Once?" Nostalgia, Utopia, and Science Fiction in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One," Was it Yesterday? Nostalgia in Contemporary Film and Television, ed. Matthew Leggatt, 179-195 (SUNY Press, 2021).

""We Delivered the Bomb": On Jaws, Guilt, and the Atomic Myth," The Jaws Book: New Perspectives on the Classic Summer Blockbuster, ed. IQ Hunter and Matt Melia, 161-172 (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Melancholic and Hungry Games: Post 9/11 Cinema and the Culture of Apocalypse, Popping Culture 7th Edition, ed. Murray Pomerance and John Sakeris, (Boston: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2012).

Recent conference/symposium papers

Association of Adaptation Studies Annual Conference, Birmingham University, UK, "Daughters of the Dust - Rephrasing the African American Experience in Julie Dash's Movie and Novel of the Same Name," June 2023.

Utopian Studies Society Europe Annual Conference (online), "It’s All Fun and Games: Countering the Boring Dystopia with the Exciting Utopia," December 2021.

UDC annual conference (online), Mask the Past, Mask the Future: The Dangers of Prosthetic Memory and Nostalgia in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One, June 2021.

SCMS annual conference (online), A Stranger Sort of Nostalgia: Texture, Prosthesis, and Politics, March, 2021.

SCMS annual conference, Toronto, CA. "Utopia and Matriarchy in an Exhausted Future: Ben Wheatley's High-Rise (2015), March, 2018.

Symposium on Terror, War, and Trauma (London). Panel chair and gave paper: The Architecture of Terror: From the Rubble of the World Trade Center to the Ruins of Palmyra, May 18, 2017.

SCMS annual conference, Chicago, IL. Panel chair and gave paper: Cold War Nostalgia in Contemporary Television Series (and why it’s not all just politics), March 22, 2017.

JAWS symposium at De Montfort University, Leicester. Staring into those Black Eyes: Jaws and Nostalgia for the Mechanical Sublime 17/6/2015.

SCMS annual conference, Boston, MA. The Culture of Apocalypse in Post 9/11 Cinema, March 25, 2012.