Dr Jay PARKER

Jay Parker received his undergraduate degree from the University of Cambridge and his MA and PhD from the University of Leeds. Previously, he was Head of Theory of Knowledge at Sha Tin College, and before that was an English teacher at Trinity School in London. He has taught at the University of Leeds, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and The University of Hong Kong. In 2019, he received the HSUHK Teaching Excellence Award. 

An internationally recognized scholar in Conrad studies, Dr Parker has been awarded both the Juliet McLauchlan Prize (Joseph Conrad Society UK, 2012) and the Bruce Harkness Young Scholar Award (Joseph Conrad Society of America, 2015). He has published in international journals, including Textual Practice and Law and Literature, and his work also examines Walter Benjamin, Richard Rorty, and world-ecology theory. Based on the premise that literature embodies and enables distinctive forms of philosophical thinking, he researches the novel in relation to political theory, law and the environment. 

Current research projects include an examination of poetic justice in the Anglophone novel, funded by the Hong Kong SAR Research Grants Council (2023/24). He is also working on a monograph on Conrad and Liberalism, which challenges current understandings of Conrad’s politics and argues there is a significant engagement with the liberal tradition in his political novels. 

Edited Books

• Jay Parker and Joyce Wexler (eds). Joseph Conrad and Postcritique: Politics of Hope, Politics of Fear. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). 

Journal Articles

• Jay Parker. “Divine violence, ironic silence and poetic justice in Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent.” Law and Literature. DOI: 10.1080/1535685X.2020.1800313
• Jay Parker. “‘He was one of us’: Rortyian liberal ethnocentrism and ironic narrative voice in Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim.” Textual Practice, 31.4 (2017): 823–838, DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2016.1237993
• Jay Parker. “Rortyian Contingency and Ethnocentrism in Chance.” The Conradian, 39.1 (2014): 17–35., www.jstor.org/stable/24614142.

Book Chapters

• Jay Parker. “Quixotic Conrad: Betrayal, Conversion, and Flight”. In Parker, Jay & Joyce Wexler. Joseph Conrad and Postcritique: Politics of Hope, Politics of Fear (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), pp. 19–41. 
• Jay Parker. “Rortyian Contingency and Ethnocentrism in Chance”. Contemporary Literary Criticism: Rorty, edited by Laurence Trudeau, Gale, 2019 [Reprinted from The Conradian].
• Jay Parker. “Nostromo and world-ecology”. In Schneider-Rebozo, L. et al. (eds.). Conrad and Nature: Essays, (London: Routledge, 2019).

Selected Prizes, Awards and Grants

• Poetic Justice and the Anglophone Novel, 1678–1928. Faculty Development Scheme, Research Grants Council, 2023 (Primary Investigator).  
• Joseph Conrad and Postcritique. Faculty Development Scheme, Research Grants Council, Hong Kong, 2020 (Primary Investigator).
• Bruce Harkness Young Scholar Award, Joseph Conrad Society of America, 2015.
• Juliet McLauchlan Prize, Joseph Conrad Society (UK), 2012.