Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Dr James McGrath
Senior Lecturer
Dr James McGrath is Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing. His scholarly, creative, and community work revolves around the value of interdisciplinary perspectives towards greater understandings of autism, with which he was diagnosed in adulthood.
James’ first scholarly monograph Naming Adult Autism: Culture, Science, Identity, combines academic and autobiographical writing to interrogate scientific, medical, and cultural misunderstandings around autism. Providing a rigorous and compelling argument for bringing humanities perspectives to discussions of autism, Naming Adult Autism explores autism depictions in cultural works, including novels by Margaret Atwood, Douglas Coupland, and E. M. Forster, poetry by Les Murray and Joanne Limburg, television series such as The Big Bang Theory and The Office, and music including The Who’s Tommy and covers of Roland Orzabel’s ‘Mad World’. He also read from the poetry and autobiographical footnotes of Naming Adult Autism on BBC Radio 3 flagship programme The Verb in 2018.
Serving the Leeds and York NHS Foundational Trust, James sits on selection committees for various roles with Leeds Autism Diagnostic Services. He is a longstanding steering group member of the project Improving Care for People with a Learning Disability and/or Autism within Mental Health Services and is on the advisory board for the medical humanities project ‘LivingBodiesObjects: Technology and the Spaces of Health’ at the University of Leeds.
Current Teaching
James has taught on the English Literature and Creative Writing modules Writers’ Workshop 1 and 2 (Year 1), Contemporary Literary Studies (Year 1), Poetry (Year 1), Theory into Practice (Year 2) Life Writing (Year 3), Narrative and Disability (Year 3), and Voice and Diversity (MA). He has previously taught extensively in History, Music and Media at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
James has supervised three PhDs to completion, and has externally examined doctoral theses by candidates in Sweden and Australia. He is currently supervising five doctoral students in various schools at Leeds Beckett University.
James is keen to serve as an external examiner for national and overseas doctoral students, and is interested in supervising the following areas:
- Autism and life writing
- Autism and contemporary literature
- Literature and science
- Creative practice PhDs
Research Interests
James is currently exploring autistic identity through a creative lens. His second book, for completion in 2023, is a collection of poems titled Autistic Figurations, which deploys poetic constraints to experiment with and challenge contemporary medical and cultural notions of autism.
James has given invited readings from Autistic Figurations at events including the Huddersfield Literature Festival; the Autism Arts festival at the University of Kent; Flock Festival (Northern School of Contemporary Dance); Word Vomit, an evening organised by students from Leeds Beckett University, and at the Interdisciplinary Autism Research Festival at the University of Leeds in June 2021. His poems have featured in publications including International Times, PN Review, DreamCatcher, Shadowtrain, Guardian Higher, The Interpreter’s House, and Smiths Knoll.
James also has a scholarly interest in the history of popular music. His AHRC-funded PhD examined themes of home and belonging in the work of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. He has contributed entries to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography on the Trinidadian-Liverpudlian calypso musician Lord Woodbine (Harold Phillips) and was invited by The Windrush Foundation to discuss Lord Woodbine’s relationship with and influence on The Beatles.
Combining his interest in music and disability, James’ essay ‘Doctor, I’m Damaged: Cultural and Medical Mythologies of Nicky Hopkins and the Rolling Stones’ (2019) explores the legacy of pianist Nicky Hopkins through the lens of disability studies, and confronts the uneasy relationship between disability studies, addiction and agency.
Ask Me About
- Autism
- Literature
- Music
- Neuroscience
- NHS
- Popular culture
- Writing
Selected Outputs
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Mcgrath JP (2010) Liverpool's black community and the Beatles: Black Liverpudlian angles on the Beatles' history. Soundscapes, 12
http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME12/Interview_McGrath.shtml
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Mcgrath JP (2007) Reading Autism. Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 8 (2), pp. 100-113.
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Mcgrath JP (2003) Like a Second Needs an Hour: Time and the Work of Paul McCartney. Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 4 (2), pp. 1-20.
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Mcgrath JP (2012) The Beatles' Uses of Literacy. In: Bailey M; Eagleton M ed. Richard Hoggart: Culture and Critique (International Cultural Studies). Critical, Cultural and Communications Press,
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Mcgrath JP (2011) John, Paul, George and Richard: The Beatles' Uses of Literacy. In: Bailey M; Eagleton M ed. Richard Hoggart: Culture and Critique. Critical, Cultural and Communications Press,
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Mcgrath JP (2010) Cutting Up A Glass Onion: Re-Reading The Beatles' History and Legacy. In: Jarniewicz J; Kwiakowska A ed. Fifty Years with the Beatles. University of Lodz Press, pp. 303-326.
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Mcgrath JP (2008) Belonging and Isolation in John Lennon and Paul McCartney's Songs. In: Ganis R ed. Displacement and Belonging in the Contemporary World. European Studies Research Institute (ESRI),
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Mcgrath JP (2007) Reading Post-War Britain in Lennon and McCartney's Imagined Communities. In: Crone R; Gange D ed. New Perspectives in British Cultural History. Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
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Mcgrath JP (2001) What Are we Going to Do Now it's All Been Said? Christian Perspectives in the Songs of U2. In: Research for a New Millennium. University College of Ripon & York St John,
News & Blog Posts
Autism Awareness Week
Autism Beyond Appearance
National Writing Day 2020 – a short guide to writing creatively
Autism, Systemising and Empathy: Some Inside-out Comments
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