Staff Profile

I received my PhD in English Literature from the University of Sheffield in 2015. After previously teaching at Sheffield and Bishop Grosseteste University, I've taught at Newcastle since 2016.

My primary research specialism is the American Beat writer, William S. Burroughs. I'm currently working on a chapter for the edited collection, William S. Burroughs in Context (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press), as well as a monograph on Burroughs and nostalgia. Examples of my Burroughs work can be read online at RealityStudio.org, most recently an article on Burroughs' relationship with the work of the English writer and painter, Denton Welch.

Recent publications include a chapter in What Goes On: The Velvet Underground and After (ed. Sean Albiez and David Pattie), in which I examine literary influences on the songwriting of Lou Reed through two controversial novels of the '60s: John Rechy's City of Night and Hubert Selby Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn.

My interests are broad, but include mid-century American novels, postwar subcultures, and intersections between literature and popular music.

SEL1003: Introduction to Literary Studies 1

SEL1004: Introduction to Literary Studies 2

• Article

  • Robinson Thom. Rub Out the Past: Nostalgia and the Cut-Up Works of William S. Burroughs. Comparative American Studies 2016, 14(2), 109-125.

• Book Chapter

  • Robinson Thom. “The Riskiest Kind of Writing Available”: Lou Reed, Grove Press, and the Literary Underground. In: Sean Albiez and David Pattie, ed. What Goes On: The Velvet Underground and After. Bloomsbury, 2022. Submitted.

• Online Publications

  • Robinson T. Writing Beyond the Grave: William Burroughs and Denton Welch. RealityStudio, 2021. Available at: https://realitystudio.org/scholarship/writing-beyond-the-grave-william-burroughs-and-denton-welch/.
  • Robinson Thom. Thoughts on the Burroughs Archive. RealityStudio, 2011. Available at: https://realitystudio.org/scholarship/thoughts-on-the-burroughs-archive.
  • Robinson Thom. In Cold Blood: William Burroughs' Curse on Truman Capote. RealityStudio, 2011. Available at: https://realitystudio.org/biography/in-cold-blood-william-burroughs-curse-on-truman-capote.
  • Robinson Thom. Burroughs' Library: An Exercise in Biographical Minutiae. European Beat Studies Network, 2011. Available at: https://ebsn.eu/scholarship/articles/thomas-robinson-burroughs-library.

• Reviews

  • Robinson T. Melancholy Blue Child : The enduring appeal of a gay bohemian author: William S. Burroughs. Times Literary Supplement 2020.
  • Robinson T. William Solomon, Slapstick Modernism, Chaplin to Kerouac to Iggy Pop [Book review]. Journal of American Studies 2019, 53(1), E10.
  • Robinson Thom. Review essay: Beat Generation criticism (The Cambridge Companion to the Beats. Kerouac: Language, Poetics, and Territory. Beat Drama: Playwrights and Performances of the "Howl" Generation). Twentieth-Century Literature 2017, 63(4), 499-506.