Lauryn Anderson

PhD thesis: Documentary Writing in the Long 1930s and Beyond (working title)

In 1939, the film-maker and critic John Grierson remarked that, ‘the documentary film movement might, in principle, have been a movement in documentary writing’. My PhD traces this ‘principle’ by addressing the various ways in which early 20th c. documentary theory played out in – and inflected – Anglophone literary forms of the time, and beyond. I am interested in what we might theorise documentary writing as (a ‘movement’, a tradition, a genre, or a mode), its relationship to poetry and prose, the politics and political contexts of documenting, and the status of ‘the document’ itself.

Who or what inspired you to pursue your research interests?

My research was inspired by two strands of my final-year undergraduate work: my dissertation, on contemporary American documentary poetics, and my optional module, ‘Prose Forms 1936-1956’. The link between the two emerged whilst working on an essay about 1930s British documentary realism, and at the same time, in my dissertation, contending with the relatively untraced genealogy of documentary writing outside of the US. I am grateful to Dr Deborah Bowman for helping me to bring these two former projects together, and for continuing to inspire and support my current research.