Kevin Mills

My main research interests lie in the exploration of language and representation. My doctoral research and the book based on it (Justifying Language) extrapolated from the writings of Saint Paul a theory of interpretation formulated in dialogue with the work of modern theorists and philosophers including Mikhail Bakhtin, Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas.

In Approaching Apocalypse my focus shifted to Victorian literature in order to examine the persistence and transformation of an ancient literary mode during a period characterised by literary realism, utilitarian thought, demythologising of the bible, technological progress and Darwinism.

My third book contributed to the highly praised ‘Critical Inventions’ series published by Sussex Academic Press. The Prodigal Sign combines traditional modes of critical writing with dramatic monologues, parables, autobiography and less-easily defined modes of writing, in order to characterise the critical enterprise as a set of prodigal procedures and practices.

My poetry collection Stations of the Boar draws on the eleventh-century life of St Cadoc. I collaboratied with my brother, Vic Mills, on a theatrical production based on the research that underpinned that collection. The play Cadoc and the Drowned Boys was performed in Churches named after the saint around south east Wales.

I am currently working on another collection of poems based on the hymns of an ancient Mesopotamian priestess, and on a novel set in the 1590s.

I teach undergraduate modules on Nineteenth-Century and English Renaissance Literature, and a third-year module on Myth and Narrative.

I serve as course leader for the MPhil in Writing.