Participating in the MaRGAN project has been a unique opportunity for me to reconsider the importance of religion in novels. The project – titled “Mapping Religion in the Anglophone Novel, 1890-1980” – seeks to further expand our knowledge of literary representations of religion while also questioning the idea that the novel is an inherently secular format: that there is no room for religion in literary fiction. Practically speaking, MaRGAN is categorising approximately 400 novels, all written in English, to feed a database that will support research within studies of both literature and religion.
I first engaged with the project in the autumn of 2025 alongside two other English MA students. Back then, I largely engaged in independent analysis of two twentieth century novels, but I also attended meetings with my fellow students and our project leader, Jamie Christopher Callison, to properly discuss the work being done. Callison assigned the three of us two novels each, all of which we had some familiarity with beforehand. Given that it was our first time participating, we were given a strict timeline including deadlines and multiple group meetings. This semester’s work was much more independent, with only one group meeting to discuss our research. We were also given much more freedom in picking out novels, with the option to replace one novel with administrative work.
For our first task, we received a list of ten novels to choose from. I picked James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as I wanted to become more familiar with Joyce as a writer. In that sense, the work was flexible enough that I could choose something that I felt would benefit my own education. The next step was to create data on the book in relation to certain keywords. As I read the novel, I made note of every mention of religion, keeping in mind the list of keywords we had been given. Upon finishing the book, I chose the relevant keywords – “Arts”, “Body”, “Critique”, “Holy people”, and “Institutions” – and wrote short summaries connecting the keywords to the novel. I also researched the novel outside of the actual text, such as where the author is from, what religion(s) the novel depicts, etc. The data I gathered will eventually be put into the MaRGAN database so that someone looking to explore, for example, religious critiques in novels might search for “Critique” and find my summary of Joyce’s novel listed alongside other novels. Likewise, someone searching for Irish novels on religion would find Joyce’s novel listed among them, with my summaries listed under that again.
After we (the research assistants) had finished our work on our separate novels, we had a meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to look over each other’s work and to discuss the process. On top of that, we also compiled a guide for future research assistants participating in the project based on our own experiences of the process. While we did keep in contact throughout the semester, this was the most teamwork we did, as we had already learned in the previous semester how to do the work properly.
For the final task, we were given the choice between creating data on a second novel of our choice, or to do administrative work related to the MaRGAN project. Out of the three of us, I was the only one to choose to do a second novel. My reasons related to my then-ongoing MA project, where I was analysing Mark Hyatt’s Love, Leda – a recent publication of a previously unpublished novel. Given the absence of critical attention to the book, I made it my job to include it in the MaRGAN database, hoping that its inclusion might spark more discussions regarding the novel’s critique of both religion and secularism. I wrote about five keywords – “Arts”, “Body”, “Critique”, “Enchantment”, and “Sexuality” – and used my knowledge from my MA research to fill in other relevant details, like the author’s nationality and similar. Being able to involve my own research in the project was probably my favourite part of being a research assistant, as it allowed me to explore aspects of the novel that were not immediately relevant my own thesis. It also let me prove the novel’s relevance to recent studies within literature and religion. That I was allowed to include the novel at all speaks to MaRGAN’s openness to both famous and obscure texts; it is not just regurgitating past scholarship on famous novels, but open to exploring works that have received very little critical attention previously.
On a personal level, participating in the MaRGAN project has helped me develop as an academic. Through my independent work, I have found myself engaging critically (and enthusiastically) with important issues within studies of literature and religion. This semester in particular has allowed me a great deal of freedom in my research; I have been able to expand my own knowledge and use my own research, all for the benefit of a larger project: the creation of an international database. I hope that my work is of use to other scholars in the future, as MaRGAN has certainly been useful in my own research and overall education.