Christopher Cusack

Dr Chris Cusack (he/him) is a researcher, writer, teacher, and literary critic. He is Assistant Professor of English and American Literature and Culture at Radboud University in the Netherlands. Previously, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Wageningen University and Radboud University. He has also been a lecturer and teacher educator at HAN University of Applied Sciences, as well as an instructor at the University of Groningen, the University of Amsterdam, and Emerson College European Center.

Chris was awarded his PhD cum laude in 2018 for a thesis on fiction about the Great Irish Famine, and has since worked on a range of topics, including famine heritage, Irish- and German-American local colour writing, and death in literature and culture. His research has appeared or is forthcoming in a range of books, and in journals such as Atlantic Studies, Irish Studies Review, New Hibernia Review, Breac, Symbiosis, and Open Library of Humanities. He has also (co-)edited several books and a special issue of Religion & Literature. As a teacher, he enjoys writing about literature pedagogies.

In addition to his work on the Great Famine and local colour writing, Chris is currently co-editing a book on Irish literary corpses and mulling over the cultural history of the coffin. He has been the recipient of a number of scholar- and fellowships. By night, he moonlights as a poet, with big words but only fair to middling success. His creative work has appeared in various places, including Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, The Honest Ulsterman, Hinterland, Ink Sweat & Tears, Abridged, 3:AM, and The Manchester Review. His literary criticism appears in venues such as the Times Literary Supplement, the Irish Times, De Nederlandse Boekengids, Poetry London, and Poetry Review.

He likes books, cats, and T. rexes, and believes that Wikipedia is wrong in classifying the Godzilla franchise as dinosaur flicks.