Matthew Oliver
Matthew Oliver
Professor of English
Phone
Location
Campbellsville Campus
UPO
844

Matt Oliver has taught at Campbellsville since 2009. He received his Ph.D. from the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, his M.A. from Missouri State University, and his
B.A. from Evangel University in Springfield, Missouri. He teaches and researches twentieth-
and twenty-first-century British literature, the fantastic (with a focus on epic fantasy),
and the grotesque. He has recently published Magic Words, Magic Worlds (McFarland,
2022), a stylistic analysis of epic fantasy, and has also published research about
writers such as Joseph Conrad, Angela Carter, Steven Erikson, Stephen R. Donaldson,
and Robin Hobb. In his spare time, he runs the CU Board Game Club and enjoys spending
time with his wife, Natalie, and his two daughters, Lucy and Maggie.
Publications
Books
Magic Words, Magic Worlds: Form and Style in Epic Fantasy. McFarland, 2022.
Scholarly Journal Articles
鈥淐onrad鈥檚 Grotesque Public.鈥 Twentieth-Century Literature, Vol. 55, No. 2, Summer
2009, pp. 209-231.
鈥淚ron(ic) Ladies: Thatcherism, Primitivism, and the Post-Imperial Grotesque in Angela
Carter鈥檚 Nights at the Circus.鈥 Contemporary Women鈥檚 Writing, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2010,
pp. 237-253. doi: 10.1093/cww/vpp039
鈥淐onrad鈥檚 Grotesque Public.鈥 Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Vol. 293: The Secret
Agent by Joseph Conrad. Gale, 2014.
鈥溾楾he Riotous Conflagration of Beauteous Language鈥: Flowery Style, Defamiliarization,
and Empathic Imagination in Epic Fantasy.鈥 Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, vol.
29, no. 3, 2018, pp. 355-379.
鈥淗istory in the Margins: Epigraphs and Negative Space in Robin Hobb鈥檚 Assassin鈥檚 Apprentice.鈥
Mythlore, vol. 41, no. 1, Fall/Winter 2022, pp. 45-66.
鈥溾楢 duet, in which your goal is to kill your partner鈥: Aggressive Empathy and Visceral
Reading in Fantasy Action Scenes.鈥 Extrapolation, forthcoming in vol. 64, no. 1.