Postgraduate research students

• Dr Sophie Vlacos
• Professor Faye Hammill

My research seeks to define post-truth literature by studying a mixture of fiction and nonfiction, novels, screenwriting et al. Works are selected from a time period spanning 9/11 (the beginning of the end of postmodernism) to the present, with the assumption that the post-truth era of the western canon formally begins with Brexit and the 2016 United States presidential election. Post-truth literature is a post-postmodernism that elaborates on its predecessor’s idea of relativity by treating truth as not only relative, but a commodity to be purchased or willed into being. Post-truth literature explores a worldview where objective reality is subverted by the desires and biases of the beholder. Breaking from the apathy of postmodernism, the post-truth era’s relativity is characterised by extreme passion and devotion to chosen beliefs, even nihilism. Truth and belief are conflated, and function less as a response to circumstances than a component of personal identity. In novels such as Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam trilogy, TaNehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, and The Power by Naomi Alderman, common motifs include the collapse of irony, the pervasive nature of the internet, corruption and the fracturing of the post-WWII New World Order, which collectively display the hallmarks of post-truth fanatic belief, eschewing the indifference of postmodernism while preserving its absurdism.

• Dr Sophie Vlacos
• Professor Faye Hammill

Franks, N. L. (2019). “Send In the Trolls: The Weaponization of Irony Within the AltRight Movement” PAMLA: Send in the Clowns. “Owning, Despising, Joking.” Wyndham San Diego Bayside Hotel, San Diego. November 14-17, 2019.

Franks, N. L. (2016). “Doom on Our Terms: Planned Obsolescence in Don Delillo’s Zero K and Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake” Planned Obsolescence: Texts, Theory and Technology. University de Liege, Belgium. December 8-9, 2016.

Franks, N. L., (2016). “Belief Rather Than a Memory: Trauma’s Effects on the Gender Binary in Don Delillo’s Falling Man and Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake” Midwest Popular Culture Association Conference: Contemporary Studies. Hilton Rosemont (O’Hare) Chicago, IL. October 6-9, 2016.

Adjunct Lecturer
August 2017 – December 2021
California Polytechnic University Pomona
Freshman Composition (English 1103), Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021
Pomona, CA, USA

Adjunct Lecturer
January 2020 – February 2020
Norco College
Critical Thinking and Essay Writing (English 1B) Winter 2020
Norco, CA, USA