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Emma Davenport

@emmadavenport.bsky.social
1.4K followers 758 following 88 posts

Assistant Professor at Emory. Victorian lit, legal & political theory, novels.

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Emma Davenport @emmadavenport.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Want to read about me embarrassing myself? The Victorian Studies blog's got you covered! Come for the admission of total incompetence, stay for the open-access full article! 😱🫠😅 iupress.org/connect/blog... @victstudies.bsky.social
iupress.org
Victorian Studies 68.2: History’s Embarrassments - Indiana University Press
Emma Davenport (Emory University) Read Davenport’s essay, “Gifting Contract: The Persistence of Caribbean Apprenticeship in Wilkie Collins's Armadale,”
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Victorian Studies @victstudies.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
It might not feel like it but winter is here! Our newest edition Winter 2026 (68.2) is live now on Project MUSE!
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Victorian Studies @victstudies.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Check out Emma Davenport's article "Gifting Contract: The Persistence of Caribbean Apprenticeship in Wilkie Collins's 𝘈𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘢𝘭𝘦" and Kristin Mahoney's "Vernon Lee and the Difficulty with Love" linked here: muse.jhu.edu/issue/57600
muse.jhu.edu
Project MUSE -- Verification required!
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Cornell University Press @cornellupress.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
FORMS OF SUFFERING demonstrates how Geoffrey Chaucer transformed pity into a central ethical and aesthetic concern in English literature by tracing his reformulations of trans-European pity discourses for an English audience. #Chaucer #Literature Learn more here: ow.ly/4cNy50Zlok0
ow.ly
Forms of Suffering by Jessica Hines | Paperback | Cornell University Press
Forms of Suffering demonstrates how Geoffrey Chaucer transformed pity into a central ethical and aesthetic concern in English literature by tracing his reformulations of trans-European pity discourses...
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Devin Garofalo @devingarofalo.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
GREETINGS.
Cover of my forthcoming monograph, Nineteenth-Century Poetry and Cosmologies of the Human, featuring an image by John Ruskin of ferns, moss, florals, and rock in shades of sage green, teal, and lavendar.
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Devin Garofalo @devingarofalo.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
It (nearly) lives! Forthcoming from OUP in November or December! My first reaction, for once, was glee — though the terror of writing a book is that it’s never finished. Eek! Woohoo! Wild to have proofs in hand!!!!
Title page of forthcoming book by me, titled Nineteenth-Century Poetry and Cosmologies of the Human: Worlds Unmanned. From Oxford UP.Table of contents for forthcoming book.

Introduction: Poetry, Person, Planet — with subsections on William Wordsworth; Sylvia Wynter and lyricization; climate, affectability, impress; and criticism, canonicity, and counterbumanism. 

First chapter on Wordsworth, Charles Lyell, and c19 manscapes — with subsections on Wordsworth’s and Lyell’s lyric theologies, the pathetic fallacy (Ruskin) and Wynter on desperate realization, and apostrophizing Toussaint Louverture. 

Second chapter on Tennyson’s In Memoriam, the possibilities and limits of posthumanism, and ambivalent reading — with subsections on extinction and apostrophe. 

Third chapter on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the problem of reference, and infrastructures of reading — with subsections on Swedenborgianism, sphericity, plantation inheritances, and the slippages of rhyme. 

Fourth chapter on Phillis Wheatley, extractivism, extractionist reading, and salvage criticism—with subsections on solar intergumanism, allusion, reticence, and refusal. 

Coda on contemporary representations of climate collapse, Wynter on transumption, and the afterlives of c19 aesthetic imaginaries.
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Emma Davenport @emmadavenport.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
"Subject to Contract: Liberalism and the Victorian Novel" is now officially subject to a contract for publication with Cornell University Press! 📖 @cornellupress.bsky.social
Excerpt from publication contract for Cornell University Press to publish "Subject to Contract: Liberalism and the Victorian Novel."
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Victorian Poetry @victorianpoetry.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
A new issue of VP is live, featuring @emmadavenport.bsky.social prize-winning essay on Toru Dutt! Issue contents previewed in the image & alt-text, + a reminder abt the upcoming submission deadline for the journal’s annual early career essay prize. Please share far and wide! muse.jhu.edu/issue/57126
Issue 63.2 of Victorian Poetry is live! The full issue is open access. Its contents are as follows:

EMMA DAVENPORT, "Crediting Toru Dutt's Poetic Labor: 'Our Casuarina Tree' and Paradise Lost -- winner of VP's inaugural early career essay prize

MONICA DAVID, "'Your Harlot Roofs': Women, Individualism, and the Towers of Idylls of the King"

JAMES QUINNELL, "'The Burden of the Strain': Self and World in the Poetry of Emily Brontë and Gerard Manley Hopkins"

ELIZABETH K. HELSINGER, "Writing Toward and Against Death: Tennyson and the Rossettis"

BENJAMIN O'DELL, "Verse Novel" -- a Poetry's Parts keyword essay

In other news, Victorian Poetry invites submissions for its 2026 Early Career Prize, which recognizes exemplary essays by untenured scholars of all ranks and affiliations (including NTT and graduate student colleagues). Conferred on an annual basis, the prize carries an award of $500 and publication in Victorian Poetry. Strong essays that do not win the award may also be considered for publication as recommended by the prize committee. Submissions are due 3 August 2026. Scholars wishing to be considered should submit anonymized MS Word essays and brief CVs to victorianpoetryjournal [at] gmail [dot] com with "Early Career Essay Prize" in the subject line. Prior to submission, consult our guidelines for authors. Essays conceived and / or written with the assistance of generative AI are ineligible for the prize.

Winning articles will be selected according to three criteria: (1) significance of contribution; (2) excellence of research, interpretation, and method; and (3) efficacy of presentation. The journal continues to expand its purview to a wider compass of archives and approaches. We welcome work that capaciously (re)interprets the field's originary contexts and reconsiders Victorian poetry (broadly construed) in new, innovative, cross-disciplinary, theoretical, and / or experimental ways.
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Emma Davenport @emmadavenport.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Victorian poetry stans! Excited to say that my article on Toru Dutt and Paradise Lost is now out in Victorian Poetry, and available open access for your reading pleasure and/or heckling. 🌳🐍🌱 @victorianpoetry.bsky.social doi.org/10.1353/vp.2...
doi.org
Project MUSE -- Verification required!
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Lauren Eriks Cline @lerikscline.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
Resharing, for the Friday crowd, the news of this crucial special issue, in which I'm honored to appear alongside scholars and humans I deeply admire and to share the article I wrote when I thought it might be my last. Solidarity with all who have wondered the same. muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...
muse.jhu.edu
Project MUSE -- Verification required!
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Victorian Poetry @victorianpoetry.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
@ryancarroll.bsky.social kicks off VP’s new keyword series with a brilliant essay on INFORMATICS. muse.jhu.edu/article/987315
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Victorian Poetry @victorianpoetry.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
@lerikscline.bsky.social writes abt cuts at St. Norbert College & broader patterns of agentless budget shortfalls, “transformations,” admin hostility to protesters, & crackdowns on higher ed—these expose the tactical limits of a category like “Victorian studies.” muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...
Snippet of essay showing title and abstract. 

TITLE: Humanities Future: or, Don’t Quit Lit

ABSTRACT: In 2024, I saw the ongoing crises facing higher education in the United States reach a new inflection point, both for my own career and for the broader professions of academic work. In this essay, I draw from my experience at St. Norbert College—a small, Catholic, liberal arts college in Wisconsin—and from work in Black studies and critical university studies, in order to offer an analysis of what forces humanities workers in particular will confront, as well as some ideas about what steps they can take. Ultimately, I suggest that our sites of academic labor will have to be disciplines in the sense that Mariame Kaba says hope is a discipline: spaces where we do the daily work of making what students and scholars will need in humanity’s future, not just what we think will save our own positions in the world as it’s arranged now.
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Victorian Poetry @victorianpoetry.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
A new special issue of VP on material conditions is out & it’s a banger. It considers what it looks like to interrogate the protocols whereby intellectual production’s insides are quarantined from their constitutive outsides in conversation with Victorian poetry. muse.jhu.edu/issue/56685
Snippet of the introduction’s title line, “The Material Conditions of Victorian Poetry,” with two versions of the phrase “Victorian Poetry” laid on top of one another. One version is not italicized and refers to the field of study. The other version is italicized and refers to the journal, which has undergone a series of seismic transitions as a direct result of the erosion of literary studies and higher ed.
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Ellen Tilton-Cantrell @ellentc.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Registration is now open for Crafting Your Scholarly Book, my annual summer book workshop! tiliaeditorial.com/crafting-your-scholarly-book A participant comment: "Ellen knows how to work with diverse kinds of projects and help everyone articulate their own ideas better. Dream editor to work with!"
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leah toth @thescrvnr.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
Steven Mintz's substack post may have gone unnoticed since he published it as the holiday season kicked in. If you missed, it, it's very useful for anyone currently doing course planning for the spring who wants students to learn things in the dystopian era of AI substack.com/inbox/post/1...
substack.com
AI Killed the Take-Home Essay. COVID Killed Attendance. Now What?
Reclaiming Learning in an Age of Distraction and Artificial Intelligence
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Aaron Colton @acolton.bsky.social · 29/12/2025
The Emory Writing Program Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship application is now open! 3/3 teaching in first-year writing with opportunities to design/instruct upper-level classes in rhet/comp. Renewable up to three years. All PhDs with experience/interest in writing are welcome to apply—share widely!
apply.interfolio.com
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 20/12/2025
It would perhaps surprise no one that I was raised with public radio as the background noise to my daily existence, so it was a singular delight getting to go on NPR to talk about Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol omny.fm/shows/in-the...
omny.fm
Christmas Special: Tobias Wilson-Bates on Charles Dickens - In These Times with Bill Nigut
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Lauren Eriks Cline @lerikscline.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
Sharing again for the Friday crowd and for all your Knives-Out-season needs.
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Mid Theory Collective @mid-theory.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
"It is a drag, and it is drag doing the gender work expected of 007. This year Amazon acquired full creative rights to the James Bond franchise. And as the quest for the next 007 drags on, Lauren Eriks Cline reflects on Daniel Craig's legacy in making palpable the character’s coerced masculinity.
mid-theory.com
The Drag of Being Bond
It is a drag, and it is drag doing the gender work expected of 007. One of popular media’s perennial questions, whether the role is currently filled or not, is “who will be the next James Bond?” It…
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Douglas Dowland @profdgd.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
In my mailbox today, a book well worth reading.
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Maebh Long @maebhlong.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
Auckland university is hiring a Lecturer (that’s Assistant Prof for all you Americans) in English, specialising in the long nineteenth century, to a permanent position commencing before Semester 1, 2026 (or by negotiation). Focus is nineteenth century fiction - details below!
jobs.smartrecruiters.com
Lecturer - English
Company Description: Waipapa Taumata Rau | The University of AucklandThe University of Auckland is New Zealand’s pre-eminent University, with a turnover of $1.1bn, including research revenue of over $...
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Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
Last week I learned that the University system is paying for a subscription to Gemini, Google's AI, for all students, and that my purchase of two packages of blue books and a box of pencils has exhausted my office supply budget. Every budget is a moral document.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
A tool that signals how far they diverge from an aspirational norm is not that useful for the task of learning that student’s unique entrance into critical thought, and any process that separates me from the difficult work of learning the student’s language is an obstacle to helping them.
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
New game: Read, Research, Recycle (One you read for fun, one you research for years, one you put out with the old paper) Bleak House, David Copperfield, Our Mutual Friend
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Emma Davenport @emmadavenport.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
Look, there are many reasons to admire Joe Buttigieg, but this approach to citation is top 3 at least
Screenshot of the beginning of a journal article: "The eighteenth-century British moralist and belletrist nonpareil, Joseph Addison, declared somewhere in his _Spectator_ essays that 'Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind.'"
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Emma Davenport @emmadavenport.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
Look, there are many reasons to admire Joe Buttigieg, but this approach to citation is top 3 at least
Screenshot of the beginning of a journal article: "The eighteenth-century British moralist and belletrist nonpareil, Joseph Addison, declared somewhere in his _Spectator_ essays that 'Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind.'"
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Studies in the Novel @studiesinthenovel.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
New podcast! Tobias Wilson-Bates interviews Nathan K. Hensley, author of "Action without Hope: Victorian Literature after Climate Collapse," a study of “how writers from the early phases of our prolonged climate emergency used aesthetic strategies to redefine the category of action.”
studiesinthenovel.org
Podcasts | Studies in the Novel
Action without Hope
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
The most fun I’ve had talking about ideas in a long time. I’m so grateful to Tobias for leading this wide ranging & (for me) really energizing conversation. He is such a badass— listen for his edited-in list of the 10,000 books on Amazon abt “climate” and “hope,” one by Michael Bloomberg 🤣🙏🌿
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Emma Davenport @emmadavenport.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
Y'all, listen to @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social's interview of @nathankhensley.bsky.social in this Studies in the Novel podcast! It's fantastic! www.studiesinthenovel.org/interact/pod...
studiesinthenovel.org
Podcasts | Studies in the Novel
Action without Hope
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Emma Davenport @emmadavenport.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
Sabrina Carpenter, alias Foucault 😍
"It's always so funny to me when people complain," she told the magazine. "They're like, 'All she does is sing about this.' But those are the songs that you've made popular. Clearly *you* love sex. You're obsessed with it. It's in my show. There's so many more moments than the 'Juno' positions, but those are the ones you post every night and comment on. I can't control that."
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
*Action without Hope: Victorian Literature after Climate Collapse* is out today! The official release got pushed back due to an issue w the art, & despite being mostly about literature it's very visual. So to celebrate its full entry into the world, a thread of some of my favorite images from it:
press.uchicago.edu
Action without Hope
A study of how writers from the early phases of our prolonged climate emergency used aesthetic strategies to redefine the category of action. What does it feel like to live helplessly in a world that ...
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
thank you so much, @uchicagopress.bsky.social! 😭🙏🌿
Wrapped book! Unwrapped book! (Action without Hope)
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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
atlanta! rolling through friday for Good Enough Art english.emory.edu/news-events/...
english.emory.edu
Events Calendar
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
I'm thrilled to say that to celebrate the launch of my new book, I'll be doing two events in the DC area later this month: Thurs, 4/24, 6 pm @ People's Book, Takoma Park / @peoplesbooktakoma.com Sun, 4/27, 3 pm (w/ novelist Rabih Alameddine). Politics & Prose, DC / @politicsprose.bsky.social 🌿
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Emma Davenport @emmadavenport.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
The Penguin edition of Lydia Davis's (excellent) translation of Madame Bovary:
Exploding brain meme: "Mme Bovary" as regular brain; "Mme Bovary with deckle edges" as active sparkly brain; "Mme Bovary with deckle edges representing the kitsch that is all cultural capital" as exploding lasers brain.
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Research Society for Victorian Periodicals @rs4vp.org · 23/03/2025
🚀 Join the #RSVPDigiEvent team April 11 celebrate the publication of /Digital Victorians/ with @pfyfe.bsky.social! We'll convene at our usual time (as we will have all caught up to spring by then) at 8am PT/ 11am ET /4pm UK / 5pm. rs4vp.org/launching-di...
rs4vp.org
Launching Digital Victorians with Paul Fyfe – RSVP
Join us April 11 to celebrate Paul Fyfe's new monograph, Digital Victorians: From Nineteenth-Century Media to Digital Humanities (2024)!
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Emma Davenport @emmadavenport.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
Teaching Robert Browning tomorrow, which means it's time to introduce my students to this all-time banger tweet @ncecire.bsky.social
A meme of tired-looking Ben Affleck with Lucy Holme-Roberts' caption, "me after explaining again that using 'I' in a poem doesn't mean it's me"; quote-tweeted by Natalia Cecire with the caption, "Yeah right, nice way to dodge responsibility, it's unconscionable what Robert Browning did to that duchess."
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Emma Davenport @emmadavenport.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
5 things I did last week: 1. I pluck'd 2. I eat 3. I naught else Regarded 4. I ingorged without restraint 5. I to myself thus pleasingly began
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Hank Green @hankgreen.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
History: “Eventually the incompetent fascists invariably lose power and then society recovers in a new and stronger way” Me: “Oh, cool, so what has to happen for the spell to be broken??” History: “mmmm…well, that part is less encouraging.”
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All Grim Prints @allgrim.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
Shop update.
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
Andrea gives the three canonical options: A: CAUSE-a-bon B: ca-SOW-bahn C: ca-SAW-bun This platform doesn't do polls, but please vote below so we can get this settled definitively ASAP. I have a whole chapter on *Middlemarch* that I've already written, so I need to learn soon?? 😂😱
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NAVSA 2025 @navsa2025.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
Sublimate your existential terror by crafting an incisive political manifesto enmeshed in a 19th c niche project [AKA The submission portal for NAVSA2025 is now open] navsa.georgetown.edu/submit-propo...
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Emma Davenport @emmadavenport.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
One of the smartest, most delightful people I know, writing about another of the smartest, most delightful people I know! What could be better?!
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
To be clear, when Hegel argued that History is teleological he was specifically describing the inevitability of Muppet Middlemarch
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Emma Davenport @emmadavenport.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
Lauren Eriks Cline: "Classrooms can be limited, local experiments in alternative arrangements: assessment structure as preparedness training, reading list as go-bag, class community as model for mutual aid." 🔥
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kristinmahoney.bsky.social @kristinmahoney.bsky.social · 29/12/2024
If you will be at MLA, come by the Archives and Possibility panel on Friday at 8:30 to hear scholars working in Black studies, Caribbean studies, Native and Indigenous studies, and Victorian studies consider archival methodologies that position the archive as a site of re-creation or possibility.
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Paul Fyfe @pfyfe.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
Wanna come to my party? Having a convo with @ryancordell.bsky.social about *Digital Victorians* in a series about new books in critical bibliography. Thurs 12/12 12:00p EST. Details and register here: rarebookschool.org/all-programs...
rarebookschool.org
Digital Victorians: Author Paul Fyfe and Ryan Cordell on Nineteenth-Century Media and the Digital Humanities | Rare Book School
Join author and SoFCB Senior Fellow Paul Fyfe and interviewer Ryan Cordell for a conversation about Fyfe’s book Digital Victorians: From Nineteenth-Century Media to Digital Humanities (Stanford Univer...
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Victorian Poetry @victorianpoetry.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
Delighted to announce that @emmadavenport.bsky.social is the inaugural winner of Victorian Poetry’s early career prize! Watch for her brilliant essay, “Crediting Women’s Poetic Labor: _Paradise Lost_ and Toru Dutt’s ‘Our Casuarina Tree’.” Read more abt it below or in the alt-text. Congrats, Emma! ✨
Victorian Poetry is thrilled to announce that Emma Davenport (Emory University) is the inaugural winner of the journal’s new early career prize! Davenport's forthcoming essay, “Crediting Women’s Poetic Labor: Paradise Lost and Toru Dutt’s ‘Our Casuarina Tree’,” offers a startling, skillful, and persuasive new reading of Dutt as an astute and critical reader of Paradise Lost. Building on evidence that Dutt knew Paradise Lost intimately, the essay shows us how Milton’s association of the Indian banyan tree with sin provides a rich intertext for Dutt to engage, answer, and revise. In a bravura close reading of the text, the author shifts our attention from the tree to the vine that is wrapped around it. Where most readers have read the vine as a figure for the snake—and Satan—in this account we see how Dutt associates the vine with Eve. Furthermore, through the association of Dutt’s name with an Indian vine (the Torulota or Tarulatta), the essay brilliantly demonstrates how Dutt reclaims India and the woman poet from Milton, by way of Milton’s own text. This poetic analysis complicates the binary logic in postcolonial scholarship on Dutt and makes a powerful argument about decolonizing our own analytic frames for reading colonial poetry. Richly researched, beautifully written, and highly original, this essay makes a dazzling new contribution to the project of undisciplining Victorian studies. Keep an eye out for its appearance in print very soon!
 
 
For more information about the annual early career prize and the journal’s latest initiatives (including its new keyword series), visit our Scholastica webpage. Queries can be directed to the editor, Devin M. Garofalo (University of California, San Diego) at victorianpoetryjournal@gmail.com.
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
On Friday afternoon, Kathy Psomiades brought home the hardware for *Primitive Marriage: Victorian Anthropology, the Novel, and Sexual Modernity,* awarded best second book by NAVSA. One judge, @mmvty.bsky.social, said (paraphrased): "Literally, though, how did you do this?" 🏆🔥💜
screen grab from Zoom showing Kathy Psomiades, Leah Price, and Meredith Martin celebrating Psomiades' prize winning book Primitive MarriageCover of Kathy Psomiades Primitive Marriage: Victorian Anthropology, the Novel, and Sexual Modernity (Oxford) / https://global.oup.com/academic/product/primitive-marriage-9780192863720?cc=us&lang=en&#
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