Student profiles
Charlotte Shevchenko Knight
Bluesky: shevchenkoknight.bsky.social
Instagram: @lottieshevchenko
Email: charlotte.shevchenko-knight@stu.mmu.ac.uk
Thesis Title
Institution
Supervisors
Professor Andrew McMillan
Professor Antony Rowland
Dr Kim Moore
Research Summary
My research probes the limitations of language to authentically capture embodied experiences, taking a personal narrative of anorexia as its starting point. I ask what a writer should do if words are not enough, what a writer should do when confronted with the inexpressible. Using autotheory to navigate the inexpressibility of anorexia – blending creative work (writing in the lyric mode, alongside endurance art performances) and feminist theory – I explore what it means to authentically write the body. My methodology is deeply informed by both the feminist art movement of the 1970s and the works of Margrit Shildrick, whose writing on leaky bodies and boundaries has been hugely influential in my practice-based approach.
Research Interests
- Autotheory
- The history of anorexia nervosa
- The lyric essay
- Medical humanities
- Endurance art
- The feminist art movement of the 1970s
- Trauma studies
- Embodied practice
Publications
Collection: Food for the Dead (Jonathan Cape, February 2024)
[https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/459762/food-for-the-dead-by-knight-charlotte-shevchenko/9781787334892]
Pamphlet: Ways of Healing (The Poetry Business, 2022)
[https://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/products/ways-of-healing-by-charlotte-shevchenko-knight]