Dr. Katie Harling-Lee
Dr. Katie Harling-Lee (née Harling-Challis) completed her PhD in 2022 in the Department of English Studies at Durham University, UK, funded by The Wolfson Foundation. Her primary research is in musico-literary studies, exploring the thematic use of music in the contemporary novel with a particular focus on Western classical music and its significance in armed conflict situations. You can read more about her research here.
Katie has an additional interest in Old Norse and Medieval Studies, the subject of her first publication and MA research. Her Old Norse research has informed her job as a Teaching Assistant on Medieval undergraduate modules in the Durham English Department.
At Durham, Katie co-founded and co-ran ModCon: Modern and Contemporary Literature Network, which is aimed at post-graduate and early career researchers focused on modern and contemporary literary studies at Durham and further afield, including research seminars, literary events, and structured writing sessions. The network promotes the sharing of research in both formal and sociable sessions.
Between 2016-22, Katie co-edited the blog Object, writing fortnightly on the significance and influence of objects in her day-to-day life. She plays the violin, viola, and piano, and also sings across a variety of genres, and these musical experiences inform her musico-literary research. Katie also endeavours to find time for ‘fun reading’ alongside her work, and she tweets on the academic and non-academic world as @KatieOsha.
Contact: k.o.harling-lee@durham.ac.uk
Funding
October 2018-21 | Wolfson Foundation Doctoral Scholarship, Durham University
Academic Publications
2021 | 'Caught in the Regime: Classical Music and the Individual in the Contemporary Novel', Open Library of Humanities 7.2, 1–23.
2021 | Review of Snaith, ed., Sound and Literature (2020), Modernist Cultures, 16.2, 289–94
2021 | ‘Écouter pour survivre: musique classique et conflit dans le roman musico-littéraire’, in Luis Velasco-Pufleau and Laëtitia Atlani-Duault, eds, Lieux de mémoire sonore. Des sons pour survivre, des sons pour tuer (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme)
2020 | 'Listening to Survive: Classical Music and Conflict in the Musico-literary Novel', Violence: An International Journal, 1.2 (2020), 371–388
2018 | 'The Mediation and Re-creation of Guðrún Gjúkadóttir in English Translations of the Poetic Edda in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries', PG English, 37 (2018), 1-33
Conference & Symposium Papers and Public Lectures
Sept 2021 | 'The Transgressive Terror of Music in Orfeo (Powers, 2014)' | at BACLS-WHN 2021 (online)
Sept 2021 | 'Listening to Survive: Classical Music and Conflict in the Musico-Literary Novel' | at Rewriting War and Peace in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: Contemporary British and American Literature (Barcelona, Spain)
May 2021 | ‘"Learn to Live with the Unimaginable": Mortality in Hamilton: An American Musical', at Music, Mortality, and Ritual Symposium (Durham, UK, hosted online)
May 2021 | Participant at Symposium: Representation in/of Classical Music, part of the AHRC-funded project 'Representing Classical Music in the Twenty-First Century' (Birmingham, UK, hosted online)
March 2021 | Co-Chair of the roundtable 'Examining Contemporary Representations of Armed Conflict', at NeMLA (Philadelphia, PA, USA, hosted online)
March 2021 | 'Listening to Survive: Sound and Music in the Literary Soundscape of Conflict' | 'Global Soundscapes' roundtable at NeMLA (Philadelphia, PA, USA, hosted online)
Sept 2020 | 'The Marginalised Operatic Voice in Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto' | Words, Music and Marginalisation: Forum of the International Association for Word and Music Studies (St Andrews, Scotland, hosted online)
March 2020 | 'Defining the Contemporary Musico-Literary Novel in Times of Conflict' | Music in Literature panel, at NeMLA (Boston, USA)
September 2019 | 'Classical Music, Conflict, & Identity in the Contemporary Novel' | Late Summer Lectures (Durham UK) . Listen to the Podcast here.
April 2019 | 'The Creative Possibilities of Guðrún’s Emotional Ambiguity in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century English Translations of the Poetic Edda' |13th Bergen International Postgraduate Symposium in Old Norse Studies, (Bergen, Norway)
July 2018 | 'The Mediation and Creation of Emotion, Endurance, and World-Views in Translations of Eddic Poems Relating to Guðrún Gjúkadóttir' | Norse in the North (Durham, UK)
April 2017 | 'Music, Identity, and the Self in Three Contemporary Novels: "Does it alter us more to be heard, or to hear? Is it better to have been loved, or to love?"' | Josephine Butler Research Forum (Durham, UK)