Department of English

Jack Quirk

M.A. English, Brown University, 2022., M.A. Literary and Cultural Studies, Carnegie Mellon University, 2018., B.A. English (Hons), University of Melbourne, 2013., B.A. English, University of Western Australia, 2012., L.L.B. University of Western Australia, 2012.
Jack_Quirk@brown.edu
Research Interests Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Literary and Cultural Theory, Studies in the Novel, 20th-Century and Contemporary, Law and Literature, Jurisprudence, Race and Ethnicity, Legal Theory, Social Epistemology

Biography

I am a Ph.D. candidate in English at Brown University (expected May 2026) and Assistant Editor of NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction. My research brings together modernist and contemporary Anglophone literature, postcolonial and settler-colonial studies, and the legal humanities, with particular attention to how novels register and rework legal concepts of personhood, property, rights, and sovereignty.

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Articles

“Gerald Murnane’s Terra Nullius.” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 71, no. 4, 2025, pp. 813–839.

“Color Bar Forms in Sam Selvon’s Windrush Novels.” European Journal of English Studies, vol. 29, no. 1, 2025, pp. 107–128. (Special issue: The Place of Race in Law and Literature.)

“The Potentiality of Paralysis in Joyce’s ‘Counterparts.’” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 45, no. 2, 2022, pp. 136–157.

“Zadie Smith's Novel History” Under review.

Book Chapters & Reference Works

“Postcolonial Studies.” In Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Law and Literature, edited by Robert Spoo and Simon Stern, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025, pp. 360–363.

(with Julian R. Murphy) “Whose Country? Colonialism and the Rule of Law in Sweet Country and Charlie’s Country.” In Law, Lawyers and Justice: Through Australian Lenses, edited by Karen Crawley, Kieran Tranter, and Kim D. Weinert, Routledge, 2020, pp. 42–58.

Reviews & Shorter Work

Review of Modernism and the Meaning of Corporate Persons, by Lisa Siraganian. Law, Culture and the Humanities, vol. 18, no. 1, 2022, pp. 252–255.

Review of Metaphors of Confinement: The Prison in Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy, by Monika Fludernik. Law, Culture and the Humanities, vol. 16, no. 3, 2020, pp. 501–503.

Review of A Death of One’s Own: Literature, Law, and the Right to Die, by Jared Stark. Law & Literature, vol. 32, no. 2, 2020, pp. 303–306.

“Adverse Possessions: Legal Representation and the Settler-Colonial Image.” Modernism/Modernity Print Plus, September 2021.

Teaching

As Instructor

ENGL 0200D Literature and the Social Contract (S22)

ENGL 0900 Critical Reading and Writing (F21)  

As Teaching Assistant

ENGL0511C Fantastic Places, Unhuman Humans (S21)

ENGL0101A Independence and Modern Literature (F20)

Awards

Albert Spaulding Cook Prize in Comparative Literature (“Literary Entitlement”), 2024

Rebecca Summerhays Graduate Student Essay Prize, 2024

English Graduate Student Essay Prize, 2021