Dr Margaretta Jolly

Role

Margaretta Jolly is Reader in Cultural Studies with a specialism in Life Writing, Life History and Audio/Visual Life Story-telling, in the School of Media, Film and Music, University of Sussex. She is  Director of the University's Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research.

Community and Business

Consultancies    

I have undertaken a range of consultancies and training in oral history and life writing, including with the Open University and the International Labour Organisation.

Literary festivals and public lectures

I have worked as chair, interviewer and programmer for the Brighton Literary Festival, the Cheltenham Literary Festival, the Bath Literary Festival and Exeter's Text Festival, since 2004. I have also given public lectures including at The Women’s Library, London.

Television and radio

BBC Radio 4, 'Today Programme' on Mass Observation; Denham TV Productions for ITV, filmed for ‘Letters in the Attic’; Al-Jazeera TV, Filmed for ‘Everywoman’, on women’s social movements; Australian ABC Radio National, ‘The Book Show’, on the art of letter writing; Women’s Hour, Radio 4, on my book Dear Laughing Motorbyke: Letters from Women Welders; BBC Southern Counties Radio on the Mass-Observation Archive

Public bodies

2008-present       QueenSpark Books, Management Committee

2003-2007           Exeter Arts Council, Management Committee

Enjoying oral history, autobiography, biography, diaries, I specialise in the art and history of letter writing. Dear Laughing Motorbyke: Letters from Women Welders of the Second World War (Scarlet Press, 1997), presents letters from the extraordinary Mass-Observation Archive to explore war stories as well as arguments about women's roles. I designed my Encyclopedia of Life Writing (Routledge, 2001) to reflect the field's expansiveness, ranging from Scandinavian life-story competitions to American confessional television, African oral history to Arabic Medieval biographical dictionaries. (Recipient of Outstanding Reference Book Award, 2001, American Libraries Association. Reviewed by Margaret Drabble for Auto/Biography, Dec 2002). I explored fictions of memory, war and masculinity in my co-edited Critical Perspectives on Pat Barker (University of South Carolina Press, 2005). My most recent book is In Love and Struggle: Letters and Contemporary Feminism (Columbia University Press, 2008). This glimpse into intimate archives opens up feminist relationships as they have been expressed in letters and emails since the 1970s. Winner of the Feminist and Women's Studies Association Book Prize 2009. (Reviewed: Times Higher Education Supplement; Feminist Review; Contemporary Women's Writing; Biography; Chronicle of Higher Education; New York Sun; Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. Life Writing, Women: A Cultural Review.)

I am a core member of the International Association for Auto/Biography and on the editorial boards of Auto/biography; Life Writing, and Life Writing Annual.

I convene CCE's pioneering training programme in life history research and oral history. I teach on the MA in Life History Research: Oral History and Life Story Documents and contribute to the Centre for Continuing Education's culture and community studies. I have also taught contemporary culture, creative writing, critical theory, Women's Studies and Medical Humanities. 

Current doctoral students theses:

Digital life writing legacies

Bibliotherapeutic practice and Israeli-Palestinian contexts

Structure, organisation and identity in the Women's Liberation Movement in Britain

Documentary and auto/biographical performance [documentary practice]

Poetry, autobiography, transformational learning [creative writing]

British Asian writing and the challenge of representation [creative writing]

Biography and Family History [creative writing]

Doctoral student theses already completed:

Homage or Damage: The Scope and Limitation of Autobiographical Fiction PhD obtained 2011

Galleries and Drift: A Critical Creative Study of Cornwall PhD obtained 2011

Arab Women’s autobiography and objects relations theory PhD obtained 2005

Lesbian literatures of ageing PhD obtained 2007

Consumer relations and contemporary literature PhD obtained 2008

Feminist literature in Arab and Canadian contexts PhD obtained 2009

The anxiety of feminist influence: concepts of voice and correspondence Phd obtained 2009

Student Consultation

I am usually around Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays but contact me for specific hours or to arrange a meeting.

Bleakley, Alan and Jolly, Margaretta (2012) Writing out prescriptions: hyper-realism and the chemical regulation of mood. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 17 (5). pp. 779-790. ISSN 1382-4996

Jolly, Margaretta (2012) Biography and autobiography. [Dataset]

Jolly, Margaretta (2012) Assessing the impact of women's movements: Sisterhood and After. Women's Studies International Forum, 35 (3). pp. 150-152. ISSN 0277-5395

Jolly, Margaretta (2012) Recognising place, space and nation in researching women's movements: Sisterhood and After. Women's Studies International Forum, 35 (3). pp. 144-146. ISSN 0277-5395

Jolly, Margaretta and Roseneil, Sasha (2012) Researching women's movements: FEMCIT and Sisterhood and After. Women's Studies International Forum, 35 (3). pp. 125-128. ISSN 0277-5395

Jolly, Margaretta, Russell, Polly and Cohena , Rachel (2012) Sisterhood and After: Individualism, Ethics and The Oral History of Women's Liberation. Social Movement Studies, 11 (2). pp. 211-226. ISSN 14742837

Jolly, Margaretta (2011) Life writing as critical creative practice. Literature Compass, 8 (12). pp. 878-889. ISSN 17414113

Jolly, Margaretta (2011) Consenting voices? Activist life stories and complex dissent. Life Writing, 8 (4). pp. 363-374. ISSN 1448-4528

Jolly, Margaretta (2011) Perversity to match the curtains: Queering the life story with Grayson Perry. In: Bodies, Sex and Desire from the Renaissance to the Present. Genders and Sexualities in History . Palgrave, Basingstoke, pp. 118-130. ISBN 9780230283688

Jolly, Margaretta (2011) Life writing as intimate publics. Biography, 34 (1). v-xi. ISSN 01624962

Jolly, Margaretta (2011) Lamenting the Letter and the Truth About Email. Life Writing, 8 (2). pp. 153-167. ISSN 14484528

Jolly, Margaretta (2011) What I never wanted to tell you: Therapeutic letter writing and the cultivation of vulnerability in an Uncertain Age. Journal of Medical Humanities, 32 (1). pp. 47-59. ISSN 10413545

Jolly, Margaretta (2010) Anne Severson's Near the Big Chakra. Women: A Cultural Review, 21 (1). pp. 41-43. ISSN 09574042

Jolly, Margaretta (2009) On Burning, Saving and Stealing Letters. New Formations, 67. pp. 25-34. ISSN 0950-2378

Jolly, Margaretta (2008) Twenty-first Century Epistolarity and The Truth About Email. In: Escrever A Vida: Verdade e Ficcao [Autobiography: Truth or Fiction?]. Campo Das Letras Press, pp. 115-138. ISBN 9789896253073

Jolly, Margaretta (2008) In Love and Struggle: Letters in Contemporary Feminism. Gender and Culture List . Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231137928

Jolly, Margaretta and Hunt, Celia (2008) Paul John Eakin and the Psychology of English. Auto/Biography Studies, 23 (1). pp. 11-24. ISSN 0898-9575

Jolly, Margaretta (2008) Three Ways To End a Relationship: Letter writing and the Dialectics of Political Separatism. In: Last Letters. Cambridge Scholars Press, Cambridge, pp. 111-125. ISBN 9781847184016

Jolly, Margaretta (2008) Pedagogy and Life Writing Inside and Outside the University: Teaching Jo Spence's Putting Myself in the Picture. In: Teaching Life Writing Texts. Modern Language Association of America, New York, pp. 327-335. ISBN 9780873528207

Jolly, Margaretta (2007) Speaking Personally, Academically. Feminist Theory, 6 (2). pp. 213-220. ISSN 1464700

Jolly, Margaretta (2006) Every Secret Thing: An Interview with Gillian Slovo. In: Selves in Question: Interviews on Southern African Auto/biography. University of Hawai`i Press, pp. 315-328. ISBN 9780824830045

Jolly, Margaretta (2006) Nuclear Nights: The Women's Peace Movement and the History of Dreaming. Women: A Cultural Review, 17 (1). pp. 1-25. ISSN 09574042

Jolly, Margaretta (2006) A Word is a Bridge: Death and Epistolary Form in the Correspondence of Sylvia Townsend Warner and David Garnett. In: Critical Essays on Sylvia Townsend Warner: English Novelist 1893-1978. Women's Studies . Edwin Mellen Press, New York, pp. 11-28. ISBN 9780773458734

Jolly, Margaretta (2005) Feminist Heterosexuality. Critical Quarterly, 47 (3). pp. 17-29. ISSN 00111562

Jolly, Margaretta (2005) But the Author is Dead! Life Writing in English Studies.

Jolly, Dr Margaretta, Monteith, S, Paul, R and Yousaf, N, eds. (2005) Critical Perspectives on Pat Barker. University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 9781570035708

Jolly, Margaretta and Stanley, Liz (2005) Letters As/Not A Genre. Life Writing, 2 (2). pp. 91-118. ISSN 1448-4528

Jolly, Margaretta (2005) Myths of Unity: Remembering the Second World War through Letters and their Editing. In: Arms and the Self. Kent State University Press, pp. 144-170. ISBN 9780873388122

Jolly, Margaretta (2005) E-mail in a Global Age: The Ethical Story of Women on the Net. Biography, 28 (1). pp. 152-165. ISSN 01624962

Jolly, Margaretta (2004) Corresponding in the Sex and Gender Revolution: Desire, Education and Feminist Letters 1970-2000. In: Gender and Politics in the Age of Letter Writing, 1750-2000. Ashgate, pp. 253-270. ISBN 9780754638513

Jolly, Margaretta (2004) Censored/Uncensored: Lovers in Dialogue. Auto/Biography, 12 (2). pp. 147-166. ISSN 08989575

Jolly, Margaretta (2003) We Are the Web: Letter-Writing and the 1980s Women's Peace Movement. Prose Studies, 26 (1-2). pp. 196-218. ISSN 0144-0357

Jolly, Margaretta (2003) After the Seventies: Greenham Common Women and Dreams of a Common Language. In: The Feminist Seventies. Raw Nerve Press, York, pp. 173-186. ISBN 9780953658558

Jolly, Margaretta (2003) Writing the Web: Letters from the Women's Peace Movement. In: The Feminist Seventies. Raw Nerve Books, York. ISBN 0953658554

Jolly, Margaretta (2001) Coming out of the Coming Out Story: Writing Queer Lives. Sexualities, 4 (4). pp. 475-497. ISSN 13634607

Jolly, Margaretta (2001) Historical Entries: Mass-Observation Diarists 1937-2001. New Formations, 44. pp. 110-127. ISSN 09502378

Jolly, Margaretta (2001) Beyond Hagiography: New Books on Lesbian and Gay Life Writing. Women's History Review, 10 (4). ISSN 09612025

Jolly, Margaretta, ed. (2001) The Encyclopedia of Life Writing. Fitzroy Dearborn/Routledge. ISBN 9781579582326

Jolly, Margaretta (2000) Feminism and After: Pat Barker, Penelope Lively and Contemporary Women's Writing. In: British Culture of the Post-War: An Introduction to Literature and Society 1945-1999. Routledge, London, pp. 58-82. ISBN 9780415128117

Jolly, Margaretta (2000) The Exile and the Ghost-Writer: East-West Biographical Politics and The Private Life of Chairman Mao. Biography, 23 (3). pp. 481-503. ISSN 01624962

Jolly, Margaretta (1999) Defining a Field: The Encyclopedia of Life Writing. Auto/Biography Studies, 14 (2). pp. 309-316. ISSN 0898-9575

Jolly, Margaretta (1999) Between Ourselves: Letters as Propaganda in the Second World War. In: Propaganda: political rhetoric and systems of beliefs. Sutton Publishing, pp. 239-61. ISBN 0750920289

Jolly, Margaretta (1997) Love Letters vs. Letters Carved in Stone: Gender, Memory and the Forces Sweethearts Exhibition. In: War and Memory in the Twentieth Century. Berg. ISBN 9781859731994

Jolly, Margaretta (1997) The Welders' Reunion: Diary of an Oral Historian. Auto/Biography. pp. 105-112. ISSN 08989575

Jolly, Margaretta (1997) Dear Laughing Motorbyke: Letters from Women Welders of the Second World War. Scarlet Press. ISBN 1857270142

Jolly, Margaretta (1997) "Life has done almost as well as art": Deconstructing The Maimie Papers. In: Women's Lives, Women's Times. SUNY Press, New York, pp. 9-22. ISBN 9780791433973

Jolly, Margaretta (1995) Letters, Morale and Gender: Discourses of Letter-writing in the Second World War. In: Andere Helme - Andere Menschen? Heimaterfahrung und Frontalltag im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Ein internationaler Vergleich. Klartext, pp. 173-204.

Jolly, Margaretta (1995) Dear Laughing Motorbyke: Gender and Genre in Women's Letters from the Second World War. In: The Uses of Autobiography. Taylor & Francis, London, pp. 45-55. ISBN 0748403655

Jolly, Margaretta (1992) Between Images and Acts: The Epistemology of Pornography. Women: A Cultural Review, 3 (2). pp. 167-180. ISSN 09574042

Jolly, Margaretta, ed. Special Issue: Epistolarity in the Twenty-First Century. Auto/Biography Studies, 21 (1-2). The Autobiography Society, Chapel Hill.