Staff Profile

Background

I completed my PhD in 2010 and joined the School in 2013 having been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard in 2012.

Qualifications

University of Glasgow: MA (Hons), MLitt, PhD

Research Interests

My research focuses upon the developmental history of Freudian psychoanalysis and the application of psychoanalytic theory across contemporary culture. My first monograph, Re-Imagining the 'Dark Continent' in fin de siècle literature, canvassed the importance of European colonial expansionism on the development of Freudian theory and was published by EUP in 2012.

My second monograph, Late Capitalist Freud in Literary, Cultural and Political Theory, was co-authored with Dr Maria-Daniella Dick (University of Glasgow) and published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2020. We propose that Freudian theory has had an historical influence on the configuration of contemporary life – group psychology in an age of mass democracy, the charismatic figure of the leader, and in governmental/financial institution – and also on the broader realization of certain concepts within the late Freudian corpus as they have become manifest within late capitalist culture. This book investigates how we continue to live in the Freudian century, turning its attentions to specific crisis points within neoliberalism – the rise of figures like Trump, the development of social media as a new superego force, the economics that underpin the wellness and self-care industries, as well as the contemporary consumption of popular culture – to maintain the continued historical importance of Freudian thought in all its dimensions. We assess the contribution that an historical and theoretical consideration of the late Freud can make to analyzing certain aspects of late capital.

I would be interested in supervising prospective doctoral students on any of the following topics:

- Psychoanalysis

- Capitalism

- Literary Theory

SEL2205 - Fictions of Migration

SEL1003 - Introduction to Literary Studies I

SEL1030 - Approaches to Reading

SEL2204 - Victorian Passions

SEL 3390 - The Literature of Capitalism

SEL8187 - MA in English Literature, 1500-1900

SEL8357 - MA in Modern and Contemporary Studies

• McLaughlan R. Re-Imagining the 'Dark Continent' in fin de siècle Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012.
• McLaughlan R. The Rossettian Formula: No Love Without Suffering. Victoriographies 2015, 5(3), 251-268.
• McLaughlan R. The Trauma of Form: Death Drive as Affect in À la recherche du temps perdu. In: Julie Taylor, ed. Modernism and Affect. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015, pp.39-56.
• McLaughlan R, Srivastava N. Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory. Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory 2014, 22(1), 240-270.
• Dick MD, McLaughlan R. Late Capitalist Freud in Literary, Cultural and Political Theory. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
• McLaughlan R. Connolly, Gandhi and anticolonial (non) violence. Irish Studies Review 2016, 24(4), 430-440.