Dr Will Atkin

Teaching Fellow in Modern and Contemporary Art

Teaching

I teach a range of topics spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Key subjects and themes of my teaching have included: Romantic art and literature, early photography, artistic and literary depictions of industrialisation, Symbolist art and poetry, twentieth-century avant-gardism, and the history of the Surrealist Movement, which is the principal focus of my research.

Research

Exhibitions/Displays:

> (with Kirstie Meehan) ‘Rebel Presses: Resistance in Print During the Second World War’, Modern Two, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, June 2025-January 2026.

Books:

&²µ³Ù;ÌýSurrealist Sorcery: Objects, Theories, and Practices of Magic in the Surrealist MovementÌý(Bloomsbury, 2023).

&²µ³Ù;ÌýHistorical Dictionary of SurrealismÌý(Rowman & Littlefield / Bloomsbury, 2021).

Book/catalogue chapters:

> ‘Césaire’s Surrealism (1941-45): Plenitudes of Consciousness’, Aimé Césaire in Context (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

> ‘Morphologies of Death: Revivification of the Tarot, Alchemy and Heraldry in the Art of Jorge Camacho’, Surrealism and the TarotÌý(Fulgur, 2025).

> ‘Die Romantik des Surrealismus: Über Träume, Widerstand und die poetische Fülle des Lebens’, Rendezvous der Träume: Surrealismus und Deutsche RomantikÌý(Hatje Cantz / Hamburger Kunsthalle, 2025).

> ‘Hommagen’, Rendezvous der Träume: Surrealismus und Deutsche RomantikÌý(Hatje Cantz / Hamburger Kunsthalle, 2025).

> ‘Appreciating Magic Art Today: On the Terrain, Reception and Resonances of Breton’s Project’, Magic Art Redux, companion volume to André Breton, Magic Art, trans. Michael Richardson, Krzysztof Fijalkowski & Dawn Ades (Fulgur, 2024).

> ‘Endless Metamorphosis: Surrealism and Alchemy’, Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted ModernityÌý(Prestel / Peggy Guggenheim Collection / Museum Barberini, 2022).

Articles:

> ‘Demonic Surrealism in Bucharest: Black Magic, Gothicism and Nihilism in Gherasim Luca’sÌýThe Passive Vampire (1941-1945),ÌýDada/SurrealismÌývol. 24 (April 2023).

> ‘Oceanic Metamorphoses: Easter Island, Paul Gauguin and “Magic Artâ€� through the Eyes of the Surrealists’,ÌýJournal of Postcolonial WritingÌývol.54 no.5 (February 2019).

> ‘Supernatural Beings, Shamans and Dream-places: Jules Monnerot and the Native American Touchstones of Surrealism’s Mythological Realignment, 1939-1945’,ÌýThe Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-45Ìývol.14 (December 2018).

> ‘Crystalline Thought: Alchemy and “Visionary Mineralogyâ€� in the Writings of André Breton’, immediations: The Âé¶¹TVÍøÕ¾ of Art Journal of Postgraduate Research vol.4 no.1 (December 2016).

Education

PhD – Âé¶¹TVÍøÕ¾ of Art (2017)

MA – Âé¶¹TVÍøÕ¾ of Art (2013)

BA – Âé¶¹TVÍøÕ¾ of Art (2012)

Postdoctoral

Henry Moore Foundation Research Fellowship (2019)

Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2020-2023)

Professional qualifications

Accredited FHEA

Citations