Alan Gibbs

After completing BA Hons (2000) and MA (2001) degrees in English at the University of the West of England, Bristol, I studied for a PhD at the University of Nottingham, in the School of American and Canadian Studies. The PhD was on the life and works of Jewish American novelist, Henry Roth, and was passed in 2005. Following a year teaching in Nottingham, I became a Lecturer in American literature in the Department of English, University College Cork, where I am now a Senior Lecturer.

I have published two monographs, one a biocritical study of Henry Roth, and the other a book on trauma in contemporary American literature. I am currently working on another monograph, due for publication in 2028, on naturalism in contemporary American literature. I have published extensively on the representation of trauma and on naturalism in contemporary American literature, and have presented on those subjects at numerous international conferences.

I am a member of the Irish Association for American Studies, and served as the organisation's Chair 2015-16. I am also an active member of an international group of scholars dedicated to the study of naturalism in American literature and culture, connected to the journal, Studies in American Naturalism.

My research interests are in contemporary American literature, with a particular interest literary naturalism, as well as trauma theory and representations of trauma. I am the author of Contemporary American Trauma Narratives (Edinburgh UP, 2014), which won the Irish Association for American Studies' 2015 Peggy O'Brien Book Prize and has been cited (as at May 2026) over 300 times. I also published the monograph, Henry Roth’s Semi-Autobiographical Tetralogy, Mercy of a Rude Stream (1994-1998): The Second Career of an American Novelist (Mellen, 2008), plus articles and book chapters on crime fiction, trauma in popular culture, and naturalism in contemporary American culture. I have published articles on contemporary literary naturalism in journals including the Journal of American Studies, Studies in American Naturalism, the Cormac McCarthy Journal, and The Canadian Review of American Studies. I am currently researching naturalism in contemporary American literature for a monograph contracted to Edinburgh University Press (due for publication in 2028).

I have been teaching in the English Department since 2006 and am currently employed as a Senior Lecturer. I teach predominantly in American Literature, but also in areas such as narrative theory and postmodernism.