In Radio Empire, Daniel Ryan Morse demonstrates the significance of the Eastern Service for global Anglophone literature and literary broadcasting. He traces how modernist writers used radio to experiment with form and introduce postcolonial literature to global audiences. While innovative authors consciously sought to incorporate radio's formal features into the novel, literature also exerted a reciprocal and profound influence on twentieth-century broadcasting. Reading Joyce and Forster alongside Attia Hosain, Mulk Raj Anand, and Venu Chitale, Morse demonstrates how the need to appeal to listeners at the edges of the empire pushed the boundaries of literary work in London, inspired high-cultural broadcasting in England, and formed an invisible but influential global network.

Adding a transnational perspective to scholarship on radio modernism, Radio Empire demonstrates how the history of broadcasting outside of Western Europe offers a new understanding of the relationship between colonial center and periphery.

Daniel Ryan Morse specializes in 20th century British, Irish and Indian anglophone literature, with additional interests in radio studies, transnational modernisms, media studies, critical theory, disability studies and sound studies. After earning his B.A. from the George Washington University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Temple University, Morse taught at the University of Delaware before joining the University of Nevada, Reno faculty in 2015.

Morse is the author of Radio Empire: The BBC’s Eastern Service and the Emergence of the Global Anglophone Novel(Columbia, 2020). The book, published in the Modernist Latitudes series, demonstrates the significance of the Eastern Service for global Anglophone literature and literary broadcasting. It traces how modernist writers used radio to experiment with form and introduce postcolonial literature to global audiences. While innovative authors consciously sought to incorporate radio’s formal features into the novel, literature also exerted a reciprocal and profound influence on 20th century broadcasting. Reading Joyce and Forster alongside Attia Hosain, Mulk Raj Anand, and Venu Chitale, Morse demonstrates how the need to appeal to listeners at the edges of the empire pushed the boundaries of literary work in London, inspired high-cultural broadcasting in England and formed an invisible but influential global network.

At the University of Nevada, Reno, Morse teaches courses on global modernism, the history and future(s) of the book and troubled youth in Ireland. He has won a number of teaching awards, including the English Graduate Organization’s prize for Best Graduate Mentor (in 2017 and again in 2019) and the Fitzgerald Distinguished Professor of the Humanities (2019-21).

Source: University of Nevada, Reno