Professor Andrew Smith
School of English
Professor of Nineteenth-Century English Literature
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+44 114 222 0217
Full contact details
School of English
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
- Profile
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I am Professor of Nineteenth-Century English Literature. My research interests are in Gothic literature, literature and science, nineteenth century literature, and critical theory. The Gothic of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the topic of both my MA thesis and PhD at the University of Southampton.
I have published widely on the Gothic and have given conference papers on related topics in the UK and in the USA, Canada, Spain, France, Belgium, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands. I was elected Joint President of the International Gothic Association in 2009 and re-elected in 2011.
I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2007 and elected a Fellow of the English Association in 2008. In 2015 I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
With Prof Angela Wright, I co-direct the Centre for the History of the Gothic.
I am Director of the PhD programme in English Literature.
- Research interests
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My principal area of research is focused on the Gothic of the late eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. My Gothic Radicalism: Literature, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis in the Nineteenth Century (Macmillan 2000) explores how a Gothic tradition during this period critically reconstructed an Idealist tradition from Burke to Freud. This demonstrated the intellectually radical critical potential of the Gothic.
Victorian Demons: Medicine, Masculinity and the Gothic at the fin-de-siècle (MUP 2004) explores representations of disease and degeneration in a variety of Gothic and medical contexts from the 1880s to the end of the century.
The Ghost Story 1840-1920: a cultural history (MUP 2010), which was nominated for the inaugural Allan Lloyd Smith prize for the best book of Gothic scholarship published between 2010-2011, examines the various economic, cultural and political contexts of the ghost story.
Gothic death 1740-1914: a literary history (MUP 2016), explores literary representations of death and dying from the Graveyard poetry of the 1740s to the later work of Bram Stoker.
My Gothic Fiction and the Writing of Trauma, 1914-1934: The Ghosts of World War One (EUP 2022), examines how representations of the soldier-ghost were used to manage trauma both during and in the post-war era.
I am currently writing Dickens and the Gothic for CUP’s ‘Elements in the Gothic’ series and editing The Edinburgh Companion to the Victorian Ghost Story.
I edit, with Prof Ben Fisher (University of Mississippi), the award-winning ‘Gothic Literary Studies’ series for the University of Wales Press and the series ‘Gothic Authors: Critical revisions’ for the University of Wales Press, which specialises in 60,000-word polemical introductions to Gothic writers. I also edit the ‘Gothic Originals’ series with UWP with Prof Anthony Mandal (Cardiff University), which specializes in the publication of edited scholarly editions of Gothic texts. With Prof William Hughes (University Of Macau), I edit the series 'Edinburgh Companions to the Gothic' for Edinburgh University Press. With Anna Barton (University of Sheffield) I edit the series ‘Rethinking the Nineteenth Century’ for Manchester University Press. I am also on the Advisory Board of the ‘International Gothic’ series published by Manchester University Press.
- Publications
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Books
- The Ghost Story 1840-1920. Manchester University Press.
Edited books
- The female gothic: New directions. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
- Teaching the Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
- Empire and the Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
- Gothic Modernisms. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
- Bram Stoker. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Journal articles
- Radcliffe's Aesthetics: Or, The Problem With Burke And Lewis. Women's Writing, 22(3), 317-330. View this article in WRRO
- Introduction: Locating Radcliffe. Women's Writing, 22(3), 281-286.
- Introduction: Literature and Money. Victorian Review, 31(2), 5-9.
- Dickens' Ghosts: Invisible Economies and Christmas. Victorian Review, 31(2), 36-55.
- Love, Freud, and the Female Gothic Bram Stoker’s the Jewel of Seven Stars. Gothic Studies, 6(1), 80-89.
- Defining the Relationships between Gothic and the Postcolonial. Gothic Studies, 5(2), 1-6.
- Demonising the Americans: Bram Stoker's Postcolonial Gothic. Gothic Studies, 5(2), 20-31.
- Rethinking the Gothic: What do we mean?. Gothic Studies, 4(1), 79-85.
- Pathologising the Gothic: The Elephant Man, the Neurotic and the Doctor. Gothic Studies, 2(3), 292-304.
- Bram Stoker'sthe mystery of the sea:Ireland and the Spanish‐Cuban‐American war. Irish Studies Review, 6(2), 131-138.
Chapters
- Bram Stoker’s Dracula in Context, The Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire (pp. 1-16). Springer International Publishing
- Introduction, Interventions
Conference proceedings papers
Dictionary/encyclopaedia entries
Other
- Research group
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I welcome PhD applications on any area of Gothic studies and the literature of the long nineteenth century.
- Teaching activities
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I teach on a number of Romantic and Victorian modules and on an elective module on the late nineteenth-century Gothic. I teach an MA module on ‘Murderers and Degenerates at the fin de siècle’.
- Professional activities and memberships
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Past President of the international Gothic Association and Executive Committee member of the IGA.
AHRC Peer Review College member 2010-2017.
I am a member of the editorial board for the following journals: Gothic Studies, The Journal of Literature and Science, Miranda: a multi-disciplinary peer-reviewed Journal on the English-Speaking World and Dissections.
I am an academic reader for: Palgrave, Manchester University Press, Edinburgh University Press, Routledge, SUNY, University of Wales Press, Liverpool University Press, Broadview Press, Peter Lang, Zittaw Press (book blurb), Cambridge Scholars Press (book blurb).
I have provided academic peer-review for: Gothic Studies, PMLA, Victorian Review, Nineteenth Century Studies, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Modern Languages Review, Studies in The Novel, Frontiers, Mosaic, Anarchist Studies, Dissections, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Literature Compass, Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance and Diegesis.
I have acted as an external assessor for a number of internal Readership, Associate Professorship and full Professorship applications at a number of UK and North American institutions.
I was external examiner for MA Popular Cultures, University of Hull 2010-2012 and external examiner for English at Liverpool Hope University College 1999-2003.
I have examined PhD theses at the universities of Aberystwyth, Bristol, Cardiff, Kent, Swansea, Stirling, Lancaster, Hull, Limerick (Mary Immaculate), Loughborough, Melbourne, Queen's University Belfast, Sheffield Hallam, Western Australia and the West of England.