Dr. Mark Yates
School of Arts and Media
Current positions
Lecturer in C 18th/19th English Literature
BIOGRAPHY
I am a Lecturer in C 18th/19th English Literature, working within the School of Arts & Media at the University of Salford.
After gaining a BA (hons) in English Literature and an MA in Literature, Culture, and Modernity from the University of Salford between 2006 and 2010, I completed a joint-doctorate in English Literature at the University of Salford and Ghent University in 2014.
I taught English Literature as a Doctoral Research Fellow at Ghent University in 2013 and, alongside working as an Associate Lecturer for the University of Salford between 2014 and 2019, I worked as a trustee for the Book-Cycle Charitable Trust—a volunteer run charity which seeks to empower communities both in the UK and in developing countries through the provision of free books and educational resources. I acted as the director on several Book-Cycle projects such as the Library Build Project (2016) and the Build a Book Pallet Project (2017). As a part of these projects, I helped to ship containers of 50,000 books to Ghana in West Africa, travelling to the region to help to build libraries in schools.
I have received specialised training in printmaking and, in addition to presenting conference papers in both Europe and America, I have published several articles on William Blake and Twin Peaks.
I am the module convenor for The Romantic Period (Level 5), Victorian Literature: Progress and Panic (Level 5), and The Female Gothic (Level 5).
I teach, or have taught, lectures and seminars for Introduction to Poetry (Level 4), Narrative, Fiction, and the Novel (Level 4), Theory & Practice (Level 4), The Romantic Period (Level 5), Victorian Literature (Level 5), The Female Gothic (Level 5), Modernism (Level 6), and Postmodernism (Level 6).
My research focuses on paratexts, iconotexts, intertexts, and transmedia storytelling.
I explore the materiality of William Blake’s illuminated books by using an interdisciplinary methodological framework to highlight the pedagogical functions of illuminated printing, investigating the relationships between materiality, images, and text. In unravelling the pedagogical potential of Blake’s works, I promote an understanding of a material medium which has remained largely unexplored in terms of its print culture contexts, revealing how Blake’s unique position as an engraver, artisan, and educator was hinged upon the materiality of his prints.
Additionally, I work on David Lynch’s and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks, considering the ways in which this franchise made familiar conventions seem unfamiliar in an intertextual pastiche of soap opera, detective story, science-fiction, and horror, using but, at the same time, subverting a number of established television tropes. Further, I have explored the transmedia approaches of Twin Peaks, uncovering the transmedia storytelling strategies that not only promoted Twin Peaks but also created an immersive narrative experience that both reinforced and complicated the show’s supernatural mythologies.
Qualifications
- PGCAP. University of Salford, 2020.
- PhD: Illuminated Instruction: A Paratextual, Intertextual, and Iconotextual Study of William Blake. University of Salford and Ghent University, 2014.
- MA: Literature, Culture, and Modernity. University of Salford, 2010.
- BA (hons): English Literature. University of Salford, 2009.