UMass Boston

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Hugh O'Connell

Department:
English
Title:
Associate Professor

Area of Expertise

Science fiction; Postwar and 21st century British literature; Anglophone postcolonial literatures; critical theory

Degrees

PhD, Michigan State University

Professional Publications & Contributions

Additional Information

Book Reviews and Encyclopedia Entries

  • “On Humanist Handmaidens and Posthumanist Possibilities,” A Review of Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First Century Speculative Fiction by Sherryl Vint, Science Fiction Studies vol. 49, no. 3, 2022, pp. 598-602.
  • “A Revolutionary Hate to Salvage Utopian Love: On China Miéville’s A Spectre, Haunting.” The Los Angeles Review of Books. Feb. 18, 2023. Available online. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-revolutionary-hate-to-salvage-utopian-love-on-china-mievilles-a-spectre-haunting/
  • “Banking on the Future: Ian McDonald’s Luna: Moon Rising.” The Los Angeles Review of Books. Sept. 16, 2019. Available online. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/banking-on-the-future-ian-mcdonalds-luna-moon-rising/
  • “The Earth Strikes Back! Post-Thatcherite Neoliberalism in Ian McDonald’s Luna: Wolf Moon.” The Los Angeles Review of Books. June 9, 2018. Available online. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-earth-strikes-%20%20back-post-thatcherite-neoliberalism-in-ian-mcdonalds-luna-wolf-moon/
  • “‘Erring on the Side of Democracy’ Nations, Modernities and Disputations” A Review of Partha Chatterjee’s Empire and Nation in Reviews in Cultural Theory 2.1 (2012).
  • “The Moon is an Even Harsher CEO.” The Los Angeles Review of Books. July 7, 2016. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/moon-even-harsher-ceo/#.
  • “Destroying Utopia to Preserve utopianism: Tom Moylan’s Critically Utopian Dialectics.” A Review of Tom Moylan’s Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination.  Extrapolation 58.2-3 (2018): 306-11.

Edited Books & Special Issues

Courses Taught

  • ENGL 200: Understanding Literature
  • ENGL 273G: The Art of Fiction
  • ENGL 337: The Short Novel: Empire’s Aftermath
  • Honors 101: Understanding  Global Culture: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
  • ENGL 334: Science Fiction: Genre, Tradition, and Global Reboot
  • ENGL 646: Literature & Society: Postcolonial and Postimperial Science Fictions

Current Projects

I’m currently working on a couple of projects that interrogate the intersections between Speculative Finance and Speculative Fiction, including working on a book manuscript and guest-editing with David Higgins a forthcoming issue of CR: The New Centennial Review that includes twelve essays exploring different facets of this relationship.