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Dr Jo Metcalf's Outputs (36)

‘Strengthen Them Inside’: Supporting Prison Staff Wellbeing in England through Creative Writing (2025)
Journal Article
Nichols, H., Metcalf, J., Earle, F., & Fréour, L. (2025). ‘Strengthen Them Inside’: Supporting Prison Staff Wellbeing in England through Creative Writing. Incarceration, 6, https://doi.org/10.1177/26326663241310334

Prison staff experience multiple stressors in the course of their working lives and existing literature consistently emphasises the negative wellbeing implications of prison work. There is a gap in existing research regarding the types of wellbeing s... Read More about ‘Strengthen Them Inside’: Supporting Prison Staff Wellbeing in England through Creative Writing.

Reading Isolation, Writing Loneliness; Book Groups and Creative Practice in Prison (2025)
Journal Article
Metcalf, J., & Burkinshaw, L. (in press). Reading Isolation, Writing Loneliness; Book Groups and Creative Practice in Prison. Critical Survey,

This article discusses the need for discursive reading and creative writing practices aimed towards capable readers in prisons. It contends that prison book groups, particularly those with an embedded creative writing component and themed in consider... Read More about Reading Isolation, Writing Loneliness; Book Groups and Creative Practice in Prison.

Words Behind Walls: A Creative Writing Project with Prison Staff (2024)
Journal Article
Metcalf, J., & Westoby, C. (2024). Words Behind Walls: A Creative Writing Project with Prison Staff. Lapidus International Research and Innovation Community Journal, 4(1), 30-51

Research from the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge recognises that prison officers are productive role models for prisoners and that the pop-cultural stereotype of the officer beating the inmate into submission has diminished. Yet a report publi... Read More about Words Behind Walls: A Creative Writing Project with Prison Staff.

Queer Flowers: Queer Erotics, Mourning, and Utopias in the Art of Flowers from the 1920s to the 1980s (2024)
Thesis
Li, W. Queer Flowers: Queer Erotics, Mourning, and Utopias in the Art of Flowers from the 1920s to the 1980s. (Thesis). University of Hull. https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4867124

“The analogies between women and flowers have a long history in sex ideology” (Pollock: 2007: 106). Yet queer readings of flowers are sometimes different from heterosexual and patriarchal perspective. Some gender-queer artists have refused to see flo... Read More about Queer Flowers: Queer Erotics, Mourning, and Utopias in the Art of Flowers from the 1920s to the 1980s.

(In)Human Entity: A Study of the ‘Living’ Doll in Contemporary Horror (2024)
Thesis
Mills, S. (2023). (In)Human Entity: A Study of the ‘Living’ Doll in Contemporary Horror. (Thesis). University of Hull. https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4963735

This thesis, as the first full length study of dolls and horror, provides an extensive examination of the ‘living’ doll figure in contemporary horror narratives. Dolls have been a significant feature of the horror genre for decades and their prevalen... Read More about (In)Human Entity: A Study of the ‘Living’ Doll in Contemporary Horror.

Surveillance, State Violence and Resistance: A History of “Dangerous Incidents” between Police Officers and Black Individuals in the United States (2024)
Thesis
Blance, K. Surveillance, State Violence and Resistance: A History of “Dangerous Incidents” between Police Officers and Black Individuals in the United States. (Thesis). University of Hull. https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4587924

[From the introduction]:
This thesis will seek to explore racialised surveillance and Black resistance to this surveillance in both historical and contemporary forms in the United States. At its core, this research will argue that racialised surveil... Read More about Surveillance, State Violence and Resistance: A History of “Dangerous Incidents” between Police Officers and Black Individuals in the United States.

Reading America, Reading Rodriguez: Exploring American Literature at an English Prison Book Group (2023)
Journal Article
Metcalf, J., & Skinner, L. (2023). Reading America, Reading Rodriguez: Exploring American Literature at an English Prison Book Group. Journal of American Studies, 57(5), 700-724. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875823000579

This article details a cutting-edge Knowledge Exchange initiative which advanced the ongoing partnership between the University of Hull and HMP Hull, and stemmed from the annual BAAS conference, held in Hull in April 2022. The purpose of the article... Read More about Reading America, Reading Rodriguez: Exploring American Literature at an English Prison Book Group.

Words Behind Walls: Prison Staff Writing (2023)
Book
Metcalf, J., Nichols, H., Westoby, C., & Clement, J. (Eds.). (2023). Words Behind Walls: Prison Staff Writing. Butcher's Dog Publishing

This anthology of writings stemmed from a University of Hull project that offered bespoke creative writing workshops to staff at both HMP Hull and HMP Manchester. The team wanted to support employees in a role that government and academic research re... Read More about Words Behind Walls: Prison Staff Writing.

The Literary and Activist Works of Luis J. Rodríguez (2020)
Book Chapter
Metcalf, J. (2020). The Literary and Activist Works of Luis J. Rodríguez. In L. G. Mendoza (Ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latina and Latino Literature. Oxford University Press

Luis J. Rodríguez is a Chicano memoirist, novelist, poet, children’s author, and activist. Born in 1954 in Mexico, his family migrated to the United States when he was young. As a youth, he spent many years immersed in the street gangs of Los Angeles... Read More about The Literary and Activist Works of Luis J. Rodríguez.

“ ‘O Prison Darkness … Lions in the Cage’; The ‘Peculiar’ Prison Narratives of Guantanamo Bay” (2020)
Book Chapter
Metcalf, J. (2020). “ ‘O Prison Darkness … Lions in the Cage’; The ‘Peculiar’ Prison Narratives of Guantanamo Bay”. In M. Harmes, M. Harmes, & B. Harmes (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture (67-87). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7_5

Prison memoirs often consider the author’s life of crime prior to incarceration and reflect on the behaviors (e.g., greed) or structural violence (e.g., poverty, racism) that led them to the prison. But what happens then, when as in the case of Guant... Read More about “ ‘O Prison Darkness … Lions in the Cage’; The ‘Peculiar’ Prison Narratives of Guantanamo Bay”.

Hope Walks by Me: Justice & Liberty in the Lands of the Free: Poetry & Prose by Ex-Offenders (2019)
Book
Litten, R., & Metcalf, J. (Eds.). (2019). Hope Walks by Me: Justice & Liberty in the Lands of the Free: Poetry & Prose by Ex-Offenders. Barbican Press

Ex-prisoners in Hull joined together with writer Russ Litten and academic Josephine Metcalf for a series of writing workshops.

Hope Walks By Me gathers the fruits of those months – individual poems by men and women, prose pieces, and ‘Group Poems’... Read More about Hope Walks by Me: Justice & Liberty in the Lands of the Free: Poetry & Prose by Ex-Offenders.

Foreword to Coventry (2019)
Book Chapter
Metcalf, J. (2019). Foreword to Coventry. . Livingston Press

A foreword to the 2019 re-released novel Coventry by Joseph Bathanti which won the Novello Literary Award in 2006.

'It's my destiny': Narrating prison violence and masculinity in the Shaun Attwood trilogy (2018)
Book Chapter
Metcalf, J. (2018). 'It's my destiny': Narrating prison violence and masculinity in the Shaun Attwood trilogy. In C. Bielby, & J. S. Murer (Eds.), Perpetrating Selves : Doing Violence, Performing Identity (133-154). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96785-1_7

Metcalf engages with a trilogy of memoirs written by Shaun Attwood, a UK citizen who spent six years in the US prison system. Utilising the burgeoning field of narrative criminology to frame her study of Attwood’s books, Metcalf addresses the fascina... Read More about 'It's my destiny': Narrating prison violence and masculinity in the Shaun Attwood trilogy.

African American culture and society after Rodney King: Provocations and protests, progression and 'post-racialism' (2016)
Book
Metcalf, J., & Spaulding, C. (Eds.). (2016). African American culture and society after Rodney King: Provocations and protests, progression and 'post-racialism'. Ashgate. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315565989

© Josephine Metcalf and Carina Spaulding 2015. 1992 was a pivotal moment in African American history, with the Rodney King riots providing palpable evidence of racialized police brutality, media stereotyping of African Americans, and institutional di... Read More about African American culture and society after Rodney King: Provocations and protests, progression and 'post-racialism'.