DrMaria Stuart

Early research focused on Emily Dickinson and nineteenth-century biblical culture as it responded to the challenge of German 'Higher Criticism'. Subsequent work on Dickinson has focused on reception studies (with particular emphasis on her reception in England and Ireland) and the dysfluency of her poetic voice. Ongoing teaching in African-American Literature and Critical Race Studies led, in 2013, to co-organising a conference at UCD on 'Ireland, Slavery, Anti-Slavery and Empire, and co-editing of the subsequent special issue of Slavery Abolition (2014) and book (2018).

Current research is in the emergent field of Dysfluency Studies, exploring the interface between cultural and clinical practice in relation to the stammering voice, with particular interest in cultural representations of the embodied experience of dysfluency. In 2018, I organised the first conference to bring together clinical, cultural and creative approaches to stammering (Humanities Institute, UCD), contributing interdisciplinary work on auditory interventions in the therapeutic treatment of speech 'disorders' and their representation on film. I was Principal Investigator for the Wellcome-funded project 'Metaphoric Stammers and Embodied Speakers: connecting clinical, cultural and creative practice in the area of dysfluent speech' (2019-2022), an international and interdisciplinary group of 15 practitioners and scholars. The Wellcome project culminated in the launch of The Stammering Collective website (thestammeringcollective.org). On the basis of this work, I was keynote speaker at the European Clinical Specialisation in Fluency Disorders (ECSF) conference in 2023, introducing Dysfluency Studies to student and practicing clinicians, and have contributed to publications and events embracing new initiatives in speech and language therapy. I am currently Co-Director of the international project Stuttering Commons (stutteringcommons.org), led by the University of Alberta and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The aim of the project is to construct (in the broadest sense) a 'curriculum' for Dysfluency Studies, one that is inclusive of interdisciplinary strands and perspectives, and open/accessible to the diverse groups of 'stakeholders' that constitute the stammering community.

I am currently Co-Lead on the Health, Medicine and Wellbeing Research Strand, College of Arts and Humanities, UCD.

My other area of interest is crime fiction, in particular the relationship between genre and affect in the work of Asa Larsson, Karin Fossum and Arnaldur Indridason.

Publications include:

M. Stuart, 'Dysfluency Studies: Rewriting Cultural Narratives of Stammering', Clinical Cases in Dysfluency, eds. Kurt Eggers and Margaret Leahy (Routledge 2022).

M. Stuart, 'The Poetics of Dysfluency: Emerson and Dickinson', Maintaining a Place: Conditions of Metaphor in American Literature, eds. M. Stuart, F. Dillane and F. Sweeney (UCD Press 2014).

'Metaphoric Stammers and Embodied Speakers', Special Issue of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies, eds. Maria Stuart and Daniel Martin (volume 5, number 1, 2021)

Ireland, Slavery, Anti-Slavery and Empire, eds., Fionnuala Dillane, Maria Stuart and Fionnghuala Sweeney (Routledge, 2018).
'Modern American Literature