Gabriel Williams, Peterhouse

Biographical Information

Prior to my PhD, I studied for a BA in English Literature at the University of Manchester, followed by an MA in English Literature and American Studies. Laying the groundwork for my current research, my MA Dissertation on temporality in works of contemporary petrofiction won the Margaret Johnson (Yates) Prize. My PhD is funded by the Peterhouse Postgraduate Studentship and my supervisor is Professor Robert Macfarlane.

Research Interests

I am primarily interested in the intersection between Gothic aesthetics and capitalist economics in contemporary literature and film. Specifically, my doctoral thesis takes a Marxist approach to representations of oil and traces how the material becomes an abstraction in its commodity-form. Centring the debts, deeds, and fictitious capitals surrounding the oil-commodity, I frame petrofiction as a driving force in its expansion. Positioning the thesis against New Materialist modes of petrocriticism, I argue that the representation of oil is a discrete and autonomous force, separate from oil in itself.