Dr Lois W. McFarland (MA, MScR, PhD, AFHEA)

Lecturer in Religion and Literature

  • School of Divinity

Contact details

Address

Street

School of Divinity, Mound Place

City
Edinburgh
Post code
EH1 2LX

Biography

Background

Dr Lois McFarland is a lecturer in Religion and Literature. Her research focuses on biblical re-vision in contemporary speculative fiction, asking how technology, societal change and climate crisis can trouble what it traditionally means to be human. Her work highlights feminist and womanist re-vision and theory, queer theory, postcolonial theory, ecocriticism, and affect theory. She is the co-director of the New College Festival of Books and Belief and current chair of the Scottish Network for Religion and Literature.

 

Publications: 

  • Creation and Apocalypse in Feminist Speculative Fiction. Bloomsbury Academic, forthcoming. 
  • ‘“Lesbians at the End of the World” in Naomi Alderman’s The Future (2023) and Gabrielle Korn’s Yours for the Taking (2023)’, forthcoming Foundation special issue.
  • “Suspicion Is More Likely To Keep You Alive Than Trust:” Affective Relationships with the Bible in Octavia Butler’s Parables.” Journal for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2021, pp. 95–121, https://doi.org/10.17613/f3wp-m042. 

Qualifications

PhD in Literature and Religion (2023)

MScR in English Literature (2018)

MA in English Language and Literature (2013)

Responsibilities & affiliations

Affiliate of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities 

Director of the Scottish Network for Religion and Literature 

Co-Director for the New College Festival of Books and Belief

Undergraduate teaching

Ethical Encounters with the 'Other' In Speculative Fiction

The Bible in Literature 

Religion, Violence and Peacebuilding

Religion and Ethics in Literature 

Postgraduate teaching

Ethical Encounters with the 'Other' In Speculative Fiction

Science, Religion and Literature

Issues of Religion and Ethics in Literature 

AI and Theology

Religion and Literature: Exploring the Connections

Religion and Literature: Approaches to Research 

 

 

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Affiliated research centres

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