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Rebekah Scott

Assistant Professor in 19th- and 20th-Century Literature, Faculty of Arts

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Biography

I gained my BA in English Literature (Hons) from the University of Queensland before winning a Commonwealth Scholarship to undertake my MPhil (2005) at Cambridge University, where I went on to complete my PhD (2010) with a doctoral thesis entitled "On Complex Terms: James Among the Ethical Critics". After that, I held a post-doctoral fellowship sponsored by the University of Ghent and based in Cambridge, working on The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James. In 2011 I was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship in English Literature at St Anne's College, Oxford University. I left Oxford in 2013 to take up a permanent Lectureship in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Literature at Nottingham University.

Expertise Summary

English and American Literature of the Victorian and Modernist periods; transatlantic literary and philosophical relations; periodical reading communities; text editing and variant editions; voice and the auditory imagination; music and literature; style; ethical criticism, ecocriticism, and the health humanities.

I have been a member of the Henry James Society since 2005 and will serve on the Editorial Board of The Henry James Review from 2026. I am editing "The Lesson of the Master" and Other Tales, volume 28 of The Cambridge Edition of The Complete Fiction of Henry James. I have published essays on Shakespearean afterlives in the nineteenth century; the concept of "gruff" in Charles Dickens; "drops" in the lyrics of Benjamin Britten; and the deranged aphorisms of Wilde and Beckett. I have also published numerous articles on Henry James, including, most recently, Henry James in "the minor key" and Henry James's style of abstraction.

I have completed the draft of my monograph, "On Complex Terms: Henry James, Abstraction, and Modernity", and am working on a new project: "The Special Case: A Modern Literature of Delusion".

Teaching Summary

I teach texts and topics in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and American Literature, with a focus on novels and poetry of the Victorian period, transatlantic literary relations in the… read more

Research Summary

I recently completed a monograph draft entitled "On Complex Terms: Henry James, Abstraction, and Modernity", a study of James's encounter with cultural modes of abstraction in the late Victorian and… read more

Recent Publications

I welcome research proposals on texts and topics in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and American Literature, especially those with a focus on the novels and poetry of the Victorian period, transatlantic literary relations in the nineteenth century, and British and American modernism.

My particular areas of expertise include Henry James, Charles Dickens, Samuel Beckett, and, more broadly, style (and vulgarity), the auditory imagination, ethical criticism and textual editing/editions.

I teach texts and topics in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and American Literature, with a focus on novels and poetry of the Victorian period, transatlantic literary relations in the nineteenth century, and British and American modernism.

Undergraduate modules taught: I teach across all levels of the undergraduate English degree, including modules such as Studying Literature; Regional Writers; Victorian & Fin-de-Siecle Literature; and Oscar Wilde and Henry James: British Aestheticism & Commodity Culture. I also supervise undergraduate dissertations on topics in 19th- and 20th-century Literature.

Postgraduate modules taught: I teach various Masters seminars, including Textualities; Modernism & the Avant-Garde in Literature and Drama; Place, Region, Empire; and Poetry: Best Words, Best Order. For the Applied English program (online), I convene and teach on: Ethical Criticism; Ecocriticism; Approaches to Victorian Literature; and Approaches to Literary Studies.

I welcome Masters and PhD students with dissertation topics in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and have a special interest in supervising on Henry James. I am currently supervising PhD students in the fields of literary pedestrianism (Wordsworth and Dickens); periodical communities (Macmillan's Magazine and Victorian women's poetry); and the literary "apology" in the long nineteenth century (Newman, Pater, Wilde, and James). I have supervised to completion doctoral theses in the health humanities (sensation fiction and monomania) and on Victorian print culture (Dickens, Mayhew and the fiction and journalism of 19th-century poverty).

Current Research

I recently completed a monograph draft entitled "On Complex Terms: Henry James, Abstraction, and Modernity", a study of James's encounter with cultural modes of abstraction in the late Victorian and early modernist period and the positive value in James's work of obscurity, obliquity, and other forms of literary "abstraction", such as withdrawal, generalisation, vagueness, intangibility, preoccupation, distraction, bewilderment, and engrossment.

I am also editor of Vol. 28 of The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James: "A Lesson of the Master and Other Tales", a scholarly edition of 9 tales by James written in the late 1880s and early 1890s, contracted to Cambridge University Press.

I welcome Masters and PhD students with dissertation topics in the 19th and early 20th centuries; the health humanities; ethical criticism; and ecocriticism. I have an abiding interest in supervising research topics on Henry James. I am currently supervising PhD students in the fields of literary pedestrianism (Wordsworth and Dickens); periodical communities (Macmillan's Magazine and Victorian women's poetry); and the literary "apology" in the long nineteenth century (Newman, Pater, Wilde, and James). I have supervised to completion doctoral theses in the health humanities (sensation fiction and monomania) and on Victorian print culture (Dickens, Mayhew and the fiction and journalism of 19th-century poverty).

Future Research

My future research is located in the fields of affect studies and the health humanities.

I take up Oscar Wilde's remark that "No artist is ever morbid; the artist can express everything" to examine the tension between morbidity and vitality in forms of mental illness found in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century prose fiction. In "A Special Case: The Modern Literature of Delusion" I will explore idiosyncratically 'talkative' texts that problematise the relationship between expressiveness and wellness, uncovering instances of sprightly narratorial 'delusion' in writers such as Dickens, Braddon, Hardy, Stevenson, Wilde, Vernon Lee, James, Conrad, Gilman, Larsen, Woolf, and early Beckett. My particular interest is in the ways in which different forms of solipsism and singularity are construed as distinctly 'characterful' yet also pathological - registered in highly anxiogenic focalisations of narrative voice and style - and the effect of this on the civic dimension of reading. I hope to develop applications of this subject in a post-Covid 19 setting, exploring the related topics of waiting, deteriorating, expectancy, remission and recovery, and ultimately, offer a theory on the "special cases" these narrators represent.

School of English

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telephone: +44 (0) 115 951 5900
email: english-enquiries@nottingham.ac.uk