Curriculum Vitae
(Revised 1 September 2017)
+44 (0)7971 451458
http://jamesemmott.org
Research Interests
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary, cultural, and philosophical history; media, science, and technology; voice and language; scholarly communication
Education
2014. PhD, English, Birkbeck, University of London
‘Composite Objects: Recording and Analysing the Voice and Face, c. 1850–1910’
2008. MA, Cultural and Critical Studies, Birkbeck, University of London
2003. BA, Linguistics, University College London
Appointments
Oxford Brookes University
Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Department of English and Modern Languages, 2016–2017
Queen Mary University of London
Lecturer in Victorian Studies, Department of English, 2014–2016
Goldsmiths, University of London
Associate Lecturer, Department of English and Comparative Literature, 2013–2014
University of Sussex
Associate Tutor, School of English, 2013–2014
Birkbeck, University of London
Associate Research Fellow, School of Arts (Department of English and Humanities), 2013–2014
Teaching Assistant, Department of English and Humanities, 2010–2013
Grants and Awards
2016. Faculty Research Funding, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes
2015. Visiting Fellow, John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress
2013. Conference Bursary, British Association for Victorian Studies
2012. Travel Grant, North American Victorian Studies Association
2011. Graduate Student Paper Prize, North American Victorian Studies Association
2011. British Research Council Fellow, John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress
2010. Sally Ledger Memorial Travel Bursary, British Association for Victorian Studies
2010. Full Colours, Birkbeck College Students’ Union
2010. Collaborative Research Training Student-Led Initiative Scheme funding, AHRC (for Angles interdisciplinary postgraduate conference on cultural history, and network)
2009, 2010, 2011. Multiple awards, Department of English and Humanities and Central Research Training (Roberts) Fund, Birkbeck (for Angles)
2009. Doctoral Studentship, Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Publications
Edited
With Tom F. Wright, Orality and Literacy, special issue of 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, 18 (2014), incl. co-authored introduction, 3 pp.
With Rachel Richardson and Thomas Turner, Angles, special issue of Dandelion, 2.2 (2011)
Essays
‘Performing Phonographic Physiology’, in Strange Science: Investigating the Limits of Knowledge in the Victorian Age, ed. by Shalyn Claggett and Lara Karpenko (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2017), pp. 125–44
‘On Academic Integrity and the Right to Copy’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 18.4 (2013), 528–35
‘Parameters of Vibration, Technologies of Capture, and the Layering of Voices and Faces in the Nineteenth Century’, Victorian Studies, 53.3 (2011), 468–78
Reviews
Review of Reading Victorian Deafness: Signs and Sounds in Victorian Literature and Culture by Jennifer Esmail, in Victorian Studies, 57.1 (2014), 133–35
Presentations
Invited
‘On the Stratification of Language’, Science, Medicine and Culture in the Nineteenth Century seminar series, St Anne’s College, Oxford, 24 May 2017
With Matthew Ingleby and Juliet John, panel discussion for postgraduates on employability and the job market, London Victorian Studies Colloquium, Royal Holloway, University of London, 11 April 2015
‘Some Origins of Modern Audiovisuality’, MA Modern and Contemporary Literature/MA Contemporary Literature and Culture Summer Programme, Birkbeck, 26 June 2013
‘“A Most Beautiful Kind of Lace-Work Pattern”: The Networked Voice’, English Research Forum (‘Literature and Sound’), Royal Holloway, University of London, 25 October 2012
With Ivan Kreilkamp and Melissa Purdue, panel discussion on publishing at the professionalization forum for graduate students, North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) conference, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 29 September 2012
With Gemma Briggs, Ruth Livesey, Allison Neal, Helen Rogers, and Mary L. Shannon, panel discussion for postgraduates on the value of publishing, British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS) conference, University of Sheffield, 30 August 2012
‘Universal Alphabetics’, Weather Reports: A Symposium on the Work of Steven Connor, Birkbeck, 6 July 2012
‘Working with Sound’, research skills panel for MA Cultural and Critical Studies students, Department of English and Humanities, Birkbeck, 16 February 2009
Delivered
‘On the Stratification of Language’, Strata Conference, University of Birmingham, 8 May 2015, and North American Victorian Studies Association/Australasian Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA/AVSA) supernumerary conference, NYU Florence, 17 May 2017
‘Seeing Statistically’, British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS) conference (‘Nineteenth-Century Numbers’), Royal Holloway, University of London, 31 August 2013
‘Mapping the Voice’, North American Victorian Studies Association/British Association for Victorian Studies/Australasian Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA/BAVS/AVSA) supernumerary conference (‘The Global and the Local’), in a panel entitled ‘Global Phonograph Forms and Cultures’, co-organized with Jason Camlot and Matthew Rubery, Venice, 4 June 2013
‘“A Most Beautiful Kind of Lace-Work Pattern”: The Networked Voice’, North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) conference (‘Victorian Networks’), University of Wisconsin–Madison, 28 September 2012
‘“You Can Turn Her On as Often as You Like”: Performing Phonographic Physiology’, North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) conference (‘Performance and Play’), Vanderbilt University, 6 November 2011 (awarded the North American Victorian Studies Association Graduate Student Paper Prize)
‘Alexander Graham Bell and Vocal Physiology’, John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 17 May 2011
‘Parameters of Vibration, Technologies of Capture, and the Layering of Voices and Faces in the Nineteenth Century’, North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) conference (‘Victorian Scale and Perspective’), Montreal, 12 November 2010, and British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS) conference (‘Composition and Decomposition’), University of Birmingham, 2 September 2011
‘Face-Making, Vocal Impersonation, and the Construction of Character in the Nineteenth Century’, Instruction, Amusement and Spectacle: Popular Shows and Exhibitions 1800–1914, University of Exeter, 17 April 2009
‘“The Melody of Speaking”: Music and Morality in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Elocutionism’, 2nd Annual Work in Progress Conference, Department of English and Humanities, Birkbeck, 7 February 2009
Teaching
Postgraduate
Queen Mary
Victorian Print Culture (2014–2016, convenor)
The Production of Texts in Context (2014–2016, session contributor)
Birkbeck
Victorian Society and Culture (2012–2013, session contributor)
Undergraduate
Oxford Brookes
Human–Animal (2016–2017, convenor)
Landscapes and Mindscapes (2016–2017, convenor)
Crime, Culture and Transgression (2016–2017)
Culture, Criticism, Literature 1 (2016–2017)
Culture, Criticism, Literature 2 (2016–2017)
English Dissertation (2016–2017, supervisor)
Interdisciplinary Dissertation (2016–2017, supervisor)
Queen Mary
Victorian Sensation Fiction (2014–2016, convenor)
Victorian Fictions (2014–2015; 2015–2016, co-convenor)
Reading, Theory and Interpretation (2014–2016)
English Dissertation (2014–2016, supervisor)
Goldsmiths
Explorations in Literature (2013–2014)
Approaches to Text (2013–2014)
Engaging Poetry / Introduction to Poetry (2013–2014)
Introduction to Literature of the Victorian Period (2013–2014)
Sussex
Period of Literature: 1860–1945 (2013–2014)
Texts in Time 1: Nineteenth Century to Contemporary (2013–2014)
Birkbeck
The Novel (2011–2012)
Reading Literature (2011–2012)
Critical Methods (2011–2012)
Literatures in Context: Literary London (2010–2011)
Service
Department and University
Oxford Brookes
Grade-Related Criteria redevelopment working group (2016–2017)
Outreach and Schools Programme development (2016–2017)
Queen Mary
Co-convenor with Tessa Whitehouse, QMUL Digital Humanities Seminar (2015–2016)
Member, Steering Group, QMUL Digital Initiatives Network (2015–2016)
Assistant Secretary, Queen Mary UCU Branch (2014–2016)
Member, Senior Common Room Committee (2014–2016)
Library Liaison Officer, Department of English (2014–2016)
Birkbeck
Postgraduate Members’ Officer, Students’ Union Council (2009–2011), in which capacity serving on the Research Committee and Research Students Sub-Committee (2009–2011), Teaching and Quality Enhancement Committee (2009–2011), Academic Board Executive Committee and Academic Board (2010–2011)
Member, Student Library Forum (2008–2009)
Organizer, MA Cultural and Critical Studies Reading Group, Department of English and Humanities, Birkbeck (2006–2008)
Student Representative, MA Cultural and Critical Studies (2006–2008)
Profession
Representation and Administration
Membership Secretary, and member of Executive Committee, British Association for Victorian Studies (2012–)
Events Officer, Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, Birkbeck (2012–2013)
With Cathryn Setz, development and maintenance of the British Association for Modernist Studies website (2012–2013)
Coordinator of postgraduate network, and Committee member, International Society for Cultural History (2010–2013)
Consultant, British Library Digital Research Project (2008–2009)
Editing
Editorial Intern, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century (2011–2012)
Subject Editor for English and Humanities, Dandelion (2009–2011)
Colloquia and Conference Panels Organized
Co-leader with Sophie Gilmartin, Matthew Ingleby, Juliet John, and Ruth Livesey, London Victorian Studies Colloquium residential postgraduate weekend, Royal Holloway, University of London, 10–12 April 2015
Co-organizer with Jason Camlot and Matthew Rubery, panel on ‘Global Phonograph Forms and Cultures’, North American Victorian Studies Association/British Association for Victorian Studies/Australasian Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA/BAVS/AVSA) supernumerary conference (‘The Global and the Local’), Venice, 4 June 2013
Chair of the organizing committee for the London Nineteenth-Century Studies Seminar postgraduate day, 20 April 2013
Co-convenor with Tom F. Wright, series of talks on the theme of Orality and Literacy, for the London Nineteenth-Century Studies Seminar, January to March 2012, and for the Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies, June 2012 (supported by the British Association for American Studies)
Co-convenor with Jonathan Tee, panel on Sound and Textuality, Department of English and Humanities Graduate Lecture Series, Birkbeck, 22 March 2012
Co-organizer with Rachel Richardson and Thomas Turner, Angles interdisciplinary postgraduate conference on cultural history, 2009 and 2010 (supported by by the School of Arts and the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, in association with the London Consortium, Birkbeck, and by the AHRC)
Conference Panels Chaired
‘Technology, Sound and Vision’, British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS) conference, Royal Holloway, University of London, 29 August 2013
‘Psycho-Physiological Touch’, The Victorian Tactile Imagination, Birkbeck, 19 July 2013
‘Topos and Utopos’, North American Victorian Studies Association/British Association for Victorian Studies/Australasian Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA/BAVS/AVSA) supernumerary conference (‘The Global and the Local’), Venice, 3 June 2013
Closing panel, 6th Annual Work in Progress Conference, Department of English and Humanities, Birkbeck, 26 January 2013
‘Bodies, Voices, Spaces’, Space: From Theory to Practice, Birkbeck, 17 November 2012
‘Multi-Species Networks and Infected Worlds’, North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) conference (‘Victorian Networks’), University of Wisconsin–Madison, 28 September 2012
‘Poetic Spaces’, First International Djuna Barnes Conference, Institute of English Studies, University of London, 21 September 2012
‘Cultural Histories of Convergence’, 4th Annual Work in Progress Conference, Department of English and Humanities, Birkbeck, 5 February 2011
Academic and Professional Development
Short Courses and Modules
Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice, Queen Mary (2014–2016); Fundamentals of Teaching, Birkbeck (2010); Teaching English and Humanities in British Higher Education, Birkbeck (2010); Introduction to Digital Humanities, Birkbeck (2008); various courses at Birkbeck, IES, SAS, and UCL (2008–2009)
Languages
English, native
French, intermediate
