Aran Ward Sell

Dr. Aran Ward Sell specializes in contemporary modernist, experimental, and “weird” fiction, as well as the aftermaths of economic and environmental crises.

As the W.B. Yeats Fellow in Irish Literature, Ward Sell examines emergent authors such as Danny Denton, Paul Lynch, Sarah Davis-Goff, and Oisín Fagan, who imagine Irelands so devastated by destruction that the transactional structures of capitalism become inoperable. This work treats environmental crises caused by anthropogenic climate change as a mode of neoliberal capitalist collapse. It draws on theories of weirdness in contemporary speculative fiction, including the “New Weird” movement and Mark Fisher’s theorization of “weird” and “eerie” modes of writing.

This project builds upon his 2020 doctorate from the University of Edinburgh, which focused on Irish contemporary modernism in the wake of the 2008–09 financial crisis. His research analyzed 2010s authors such as Eimear McBride, Mike McCormack, Anna Burns, Kevin Barry, and Anakana Schofield as writing a “stream of damaged consciousness,” a mode that built upon and complicated stream-of-consciousness modernism, particularly through the legacy of James Joyce. He is developing this thesis into a monograph.

Ward Sell’s academic work has appeared in Irish Studies Review, C21 Literature, Alluvium, HJEAS, Antae, and other publications. He has presented conference papers at the University of Malta, the University of Leeds in England, and KU Leuven in Belgium. In 2024, he will present at the American Conference for Irish Studies at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, Ireland, the Canadian Association of Irish Studies conference at the University of Galway in Ireland, and at a Notre Dame symposium on “British Literature and the Art of Failure” in London.

He has taught English and Scottish literature at the University of Edinburgh, where he also earned a Master of Science in literature and modernity and a Master of Arts in English language and literature. Outside Scotland, he has lived and worked in London and Brisbane before coming to Notre Dame. He has also worked extensively as a learning technologist in digital resources and public libraries. In addition to his academic pursuits, he is a keen traveler, guitar player, and writer of reviews and fiction.