Dr Adam James Smith

Teaching

I teach widely across the English Literature programme, but tend to deal predominantly with pre-1900 Literature.

On our BA in English Literature I teach:

• Theorizing Literature: Power and Identity
• Dawn of Print (Module Director)
• The Romantic Imagination: Excess, Affect and Revolution (Module Director)
• Literature at Work (Module Director)
• Literary Legacies: The Gothic (Module Director)
• Research Now: Literature and Satire (Module Director)

I also contribute lectures to:

• Forms of Narrative
• Introduction to Literary Studies 1 and 2
• Sick Novels
• Science Fiction for Survival

Outside of Literature I contribute sessions to:

• Politics and... (Politics)
• Eboracum: York, Space and Place (Foundation Year in Liberal Arts)
• Media Evolution and History (Film and Media)
• Working With Words (Creative Writing)
• Publishing Then and Now (Creative Writing MA)

On the MA in Contemporary Literature I teach:

• Historicizing the Contemporary (Module Director)
• Form and Genre

I also supervise undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations on a range of topics which, in recent years, have included the form and function of the eighteenth-century elegy, representations of the devil from Paradise Lost to the present, virtue and politeness in Gulliver's Travels, the role of women writers in the eighteenth-century public sphere and the treatment of memory and consciousness in Romantic poetry.

Research

My research explores the role of cheap print in negotiating the relationship between citizen and state in the long eighteenth century, with a particular interest works of propaganda, protest and satire. My doctoral research focused on Whig-sponsored periodicals, particularly those written by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, which neglected to signal explicitly their partisan allegiance. Following my PhD I began to work on radical literature produced by the Hartshead Press in Sheffield at the end of the eighteenth century, focusing particularly on the output of Joseph Gales and James Montgomery. In recent years my attention has turned to satire, especially in the eighteenth century, and I have published work on such figures as Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Eliza Haywood and Virginia Woolf (as well as forthcoming pieces on satire in the works of Charles Ignatius Sancho and the anonymous novel The Woman of Colour, A Tale). I have also worked on satire in the context of animals, hatred, cannibalism and folk horror.

As a founding member of the 'People of Print Collective' I am also interested in challenging historic understanding of regionality and agency in the context of early modern and eighteenth-century print culture and book history, as explored in the Print Culture, Agency and Regionality in the Handpress Era (Palgrave, 2022) and the People of Print Cambridge University Press series which I co-edit with Drs Rachel Stenner and Kaley Kramer.

Working with Rob Edgar and the YSJ Hauntology and Spectrality Research Group, I have also begun exploring the viability of 'folk horror' as a means of analyzing eighteenth-century writing which straddles the boundaries between what we ordinarily recognize as either gothic, sentimental or Romantic literature.

I welcome PhD proposals in any area of long eighteenth-century literature and culture, but especially the following:

• Early print culture (pamphlets, periodicals, newspapers)
• Non-fiction prose (travel writing, life-writing, essays)
• Political writing and satire
• Whig literary culture
• The writing of Joseph Addison and/or Richard Steele
• Eighteenth-century women's writing and satire (e.g., Eliza Haywood, Charlotte Lennox, Jane Collier)
• The rise of the novel
• Representations of politeness
• Representations of the coffee house
• The relationship between the Gothic, sentimentalism and or Romanticism
• Folk Horror
• Twenty-first-century engagements with eighteenth-century literary culture

Publications

Academic outputs

Smith, Adam James, ‘“It just tastes better than other meat…”: Satire and Cannibalism after Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal (1729)’, ‘Special Issue: Tasting Funny? Humour and Taste’, edited by Nils Couturier and Anne-Sophie Bories, Humour: International Journal for Humour Research (forthcoming) 

Smith, Adam James, ‘“We both look, but we see differently.” Romanticism, Sentimentalism and Provocative Landscapes in the Historiographic Metafiction in Alan Garner’s Thursbitch (2003)’, Alan Garner and the Work of Time, edited by Rob Edgar, Wayne Johnson and John Marland (Manchester University Press, forthcoming)

Smith, Adam James, ‘Healthy Hating in Early Eighteenth-Century Satire’, in ‘The Pleasure of Hating: 1660-1830’, edited by Daniel Brooks and Francesca Gardner, The Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (forthcoming) 

Smith, Adam James, ‘A Man of Feeling: Raymond Williams and the Eighteenth Century’, in Raymond Williams and the Structures of Feeling, edited by Niall Gildea and Louise Braddock (Wales University Press, forthcoming)

Smith, Adam James, ‘“Eat Your Young”: Contemporary Media Encounters with Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1729)’ in ‘Depicting the Eighteenth-Century in Media Entertainment’, edited by Briana Robertson Kirkland and Rachel Bynoth, The Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (forthcoming)

Smith, Adam James, ‘“I brought my books with me.” Books as Totems of Fortitude in The Woman of Colour (1808) and Eighteenth-Century Women’s Writing’, The Uses of Books, edited by Leah Orr and Nicholas Seager (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) 

Smith, Adam James, ‘“Laugh when you must, be candid when you can”: The Concealed Resistance of the Radical Printer Winfred Gales’, People of Print: Eighteenth-Century England, edited by Adam James Smith, Rachel Stenner and Kaley Kramer (Cambridge University Press, in press)

Smith, Adam James and Victoria Barnett-Woods, ‘“My chief pleasure has been books”: On Teaching The Letters of Ignatius Sancho’’, in Eighteenth-Century Fiction (in press)

Smith, Adam James, ‘Satirist as Physician’, In: Clark Lawlor, Leigh Wetherall Dickson, Ashleigh Blackwood (eds), Rewriting Medicine: Healthcare, Literature, and Culture, ca. 1660-1832 (Cambridge University Press, in press)

Impolite Periodicals: Down and Out with Mr Spectator, essay collection co-edited with Emrys Jones and Katarina Stenke, inc. chapter and co-authored introduction (Bucknell, 2024)

Smith, Adam James, ‘‘Such Very Slaughter-men’: The Character of the Satirist in Early Eighteenth-Century Print’, In: Jennifer Buckley and Montana Davies-Shuck, Conceptualising Character (Palgrave, 2024)

Smith, Adam James, ‘Taking Tea with Joseph Addison: Virginia Woolf and the Eighteenth Century in Orlando’ (1928), in ‘Adaptation and Digitisation in the Long Eighteenth Century: Sterneana and Beyond’, a special issue of 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, Helen Williams and Mary Newbould eds. (forthcoming, 2023)

Impolite Periodicals: Down and Out with Mr Spectator, essay collection co-edited with Emrys Jones and Katarina Stenke, inc. chapter and co-authored introduction (Bucknell, forthcoming 2023)

Smith, Adam James, ‘Satire and the Folk Horror Revival’ in The Routledge Handbook of Folk-Horror, ed. by Robert Edgar and Wayne Johnson (Routledge, forthcoming 2023)

Smith, Adam James and Benjamin Garlick, ‘“A Green Parrot for a Good Speaker”: Writing with a Birds-eye View in Eliza Haywood’s The Parrot (1746), in Satire and Animals, ed. by Susan McHugh and Robert McKay (Palgrave Animal Studies, forthcoming 2022)

Print Culture, Agency and Regional Identity in the Handpress Era, essay collection co-edited with Rachel Stenner and Kaley Kramer, inc. chapter and co-authored introduction (Palgrave, 2022)

Smith, Adam James and Jo Waugh, Contagious Laughter: Talking About Satire in the Age of Covid-19 (Greenteeth, 2022)

‘Deceive, Inveigle, Obfuscate: Post-structuralism and the staggered retirement of Fox Mulder’ in Policing the Monstrous: Essays on the Rise of Supernatural Procedural Dramas, ed. by Ashley Szanter (McFarland, 2021).

‘Echoes of Meaning: Cheap Print, Ephemera and the Digital Archive’, Eighteenth Century Fiction, 32.4, Sept 2020.

‘How Proudly Shines the Crazy Clock’: Temporal Displacement and the Miasma of York in James Montgomery’s Prison Amusements (1795-97), in Time, the City and the Literary Imagination, Anne-Marie Evans and Kaley Kramer eds. (Palgrave, 2020).

Smith, Adam James, ‘Property, Politics and Patriotism: The Figure of the “Freeholder” in Eighteenth-Century Partisan Print’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 40.3, Sept 2017.

Poetry, Conspiracy and Radicalism in Sheffield, co-edited and co-authored introduction with Hamish Mathison (Spirit Duplicator, 2016).

‘Research as Resistance’, in No Picnic: Explorations in Art and Research, Matthew Cheeseman ed. (NATCECT, 2014).

Book reviews

‘Libel and Lampoon: Satire in the Courts, 1670-1792’ by Andrew Benjamin Bricker (2022) The Review of English Studies. Forthcoming, 2022.

‘Anecdotes of Enlightenment: Human Nature from Locke to Wordsworth’ by James Wood (2019) Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Forthcoming, 2022.

‘Celebrity, Performance, Reception: British Georgian Theatre and Social Assemblage’ by David Worrall (2003) Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 38.1 (March 2015).

Online publications

‘The Clockmaker’s Outcry’, Sterne and Sterneana, University of Cambridge Digital Library (2020).

Reviews for BSECS Criticks (online resource) including: ‘Poldark’ (2016), ‘Andrew Marr’s James Boswell’ (2014) ‘Samuel Johnson’s Life on Screen’ (2014), ‘Adrian Teal’s Gin Lane Gazette’ (2013).

Contributions to The Literary Encyclopaedia: ‘Joseph Addison’ (2016); ‘Richard Steele’ (2017).

Other writing

‘Bridgerton: the real 18^th-century writers who used pseudonyms to stoke controversy’, The Conversation UK (April 2022).

‘The Prince – The great tradition of satirising the royal family is under threat as they become more “human”’, co-authored with Jo Waugh, The Conversation UK (September 2021).

‘Spitting Image: A warning from the “Golden Age” of satire’, co-authored with Jo Waugh, The Conversation UK (October 2019).

‘Titania McGrath: Twitter parody of “wokeness” owes a lot to satirists of the 18th Century’, co-authored with Jo Waugh, The Conversation UK (March 2019).

‘Brexit Britain is easy fodder for satirists: But should they learn from Eighteenth-Century masters how to do it properly?’, The Conversation UK (October 2018).

‘Don’t scoff at hipster coffee shops. They’ve been around for 300 years’ The Guardian (June 2015).

Conferences

‘Healthy Hating in the Eighteenth Century’, The Pleasures of Hating, 1660-1830, Trinity College, Cambridge University. November 2023. 
 
Co-Delivered with Rob Edgar. ‘Keeping the Wicker-man Waiting: 300 Years of Folk Horror’, Don’t Keep the Wicker-man Waiting, Lancaster University. October 2023. 
 
‘“No Way Comparable in Taste or Magnificence”: Satire, Cannibalism and the Dangers of Taste’, Tasting Funny: A Conference on Humour and Taste, University of Basel. September 2023. 
 
‘“Printed in York and London”: Christopher Wyvill’s Yorkshire Freehold and London Interest in Regional Intrigue’, Print Networks Between London and the Regions, Centre for Print History and Culture Symposium, St Bride Foundation. July 2023. 
 
‘Restructuring Agency in Regional Print Contexts’, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference. January 2023.

'The Corrosion of Satire: Boris Johnson [the Prime Minister] and the Dangerous Abuse of Satirical Traditions', Laughter: Contemporary Canons and Values in Contemporary Literary Studies, University of Central London. September 2019.

‘The Deformity of Little Wants”: Addison, Steele and Impoliteness after The Spectator’, Impolite Periodicals Panel, International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Edinburgh University. July 2019.

‘Brexit, Corbyn, Anything but History: The Way People Talk About Poldark’, Pop Enlightenments Panel, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference, St Hugh’s College, Oxford University.January 2019.

’The Unwilling Gratitude of Base Humanity”: The Partisan Hailing of the Satirist in the Writing of Joseph Addison and Alexander Pope’, Character and Caricature, 1660-1850, Northumbria University. September 2018.

‘The Stories of James Montgomery: Accessing obscure eighteenth-century literature through creative practices’, at English: Shared Futures Conference, Newcastle. July 2017.

'The price of tickets and of souls”: James Montgomery’s political poetry of 1816’ at Creativity and Turmoil: The Summer of 1816 Conference, University of Sheffield. June 2016.

'A Smooth Mephistopheles”: The many ‘lives’ of Joseph Addison’ at the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference, Oxford University. January 2016.

'The dead themselves were not spared”: A vision of Swift’s Examiner in Addison’s Free-holder’ at Text and Book in the Age of Swift, Oxford University. November 2013.

‘The Style of the News”: A vision of polemic print culture in the Hanoverian periodical writing of Joseph Addison’, at The Business of Newspapers: Commercial information versus civil instruction, Liverpool University. June 2013.

‘News as news: Addison’s periodical reports its own inception’, at The Eighteenth-Century World Research Centre Annual Conference, Liverpool University. March 2012.

Professional activities

On the Literature programme I am Course Lead for English Literature.

Beyond our programme I am Chair of the School of Humanities Community of Practice for Employability and Co-Director of the York Research Unit for the Study of Satire (YRUSOS) and Deputy Chair of the YSJ Hauntology and Spectrality Research Group. In 2019 to 2021, I also provided the Impact case study for Literature in REF 2021.

I am a Senior Fellow of the HEA, an SFHEA mentor, and I sit on the York St John University Teaching Senate.

Beyond York St John University I am a member of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS) Executive Council and sit on the Publications and Communications Sub-Committees. I am Editor of BSECS online review site, Criticks.

I am the Eighteenth-Century Section Editor for The Literature Compass Journal.

I also sit on the advisory board of the international Diversifying Print History: Archives, Museums, Narratives Network.

I have co-organised 2 conferences in recent years:

• Satire: Deaths, Births, Legacies at York St John University in 2018, co-organized with Jo Waugh.
• People of Print: Printers, Stationers and Booksellers at Sheffield Hallam University in 2019, co-organized with Kaley Kramer and Rachel Stenner).

I have been an editor on:

• Print Culture, Agency and Regionality in the Handpress Era, ed. by Rachel Stenner, Kaley Kramer and Adam J Smith (Palgrave, 2022).
• Impolite Periodicals, ed. by Emrys D. Jones and Katarina Stenke (Bucknell University Press, 2023).

I am also a series editor on the People of Print series of "Elements" at Cambridge University of Press, the first two of which were:

• People of Print: Seventeenth-Century England (2023)
• People of Print: Eighteenth-Century England (2024)

Together with my colleague Jo Waugh I have also, since 2019, co-hosted the monthly podcast Smith and Waugh Talk About Satire.

Public engagement

Talks and events

‘Uncovering The Parrot: A Forgotten Women-Led Periodical of the Eighteenth Century’, York Georgian Festival, August 2024.

‘The Enduring Power of Gulliver’s Travels’, York Festival of Ideas, June 2024.

‘Satire and the Brontës’, Co-presented with Dr Jo Waugh, York Literature Festival, March 2024. 

‘Satirical Women in the Olden Days’, Co-presented with Dr Jo Waugh, York Literature Festival, March 2023.

‘What has Satire Even Done for Us?’, Co-presented with Dr Jo Waugh, Quantum Sauce/Farsley Literature Festival, The Farsley Constitutional, November 2022.

‘York’s Forgotten People of Print’, York Festival of Ideas, Streetlife Centre, June 2022.

‘Satire, Libel and The Law’, Co-presented with Dr Jo Waugh and Dr Andrew Benjamin Bricker (University of Ghent), York Literature Festival, March 2022.

‘Contagious Laughter: Satire and the Pandemic with Leigh Stein’, Co-presented with Dr Jo Waugh, York Literature Festival, March 2022.

‘Representing York in Literature’, Co-presented with Dr Zoe Enstone, York Literature Festival, November 2021 (Online).

‘200 Years of James Montgomery’, Co-presented with Dr Hamish Mathison (University of Sheffield, York Festival of Ideas, June 2021 (Online).

'Introducing The Day Shall Come', Co-presented with Dr Jo Waugh, City Screen Picturehouse Cinema. October 2019.

'Satire and the Future: Can the Satirists Still Save Us', Co-presented with Dr Jo Waugh, York Literature Festival, York Explore Library. March 2019.

'Nightmares and Dreamscapes: writing York in the Eighteenth Century', Big City Read Festival, York Explore Library. November 2018

‘Poetry, protest and imprisonment in 18^th-century York: James Montgomery in York Castle Prison’, Mint Yard Lecture, York Explore Library. April 2017.

‘Inglorious prey: The incarceration of James Montgomery’, at the York Literary Festival. March 2017.

‘James Montgomery: Poetry and protest’, co-presented with Dr Hamish Mathison, Off the Shelf Festival, Sheffield. November 2016.

‘The Trial of James Montgomery’, Mobile University, Sheffield. September 2015.

‘Paradise Lost in time: A text in transmission’, In The City Festival, Sheffield. June 2014.

Events

‘Terra Two: Writing for off-world survival’, co-presented with Drs Leisl King and Rob Edgar, York Festival of Ideas. June 2017.

‘Marvel comics of the Civil Rights era’, Black History Month, York St John University. November 2016.

‘James Montgomery: A life of activism’, Festival of the Mind, Sheffield. September 2016.

‘Print-houses of eighteenth-century York: A walking tour’, co-presented with Dr Kaley Kramer, York Festival of Ideas. June 2015.

Public engagement: resources

Smith and Waugh Talk About Satire. An ongoing podcast in which Dr Jo Waugh and I discuss satire with academics and practitioners involved with the study and production of satire.

Satire: Deaths, Births, Legacies. An ongoing interdisciplinary project exploring the form, function, history and future of satire, co-directed by Dr Jo Waugh.

The York Research Unit for the Study of Satire. A formal cluster of scholars intended to create opportunities for the academic community at York St John University to lead a national conversation about the form, function and future of satire.

Cold Warnings: Nuclear Armageddon in the Curriculum. An Arts Council England funded oral history project resulting in a documentary, exhibition and website.

Gulliver’s Travels: Listen with Audrey Curated Classic Edition. A fully annotated and explained edition of Swift’s novel made available as an augmented audio book via the Audrey app.

‘Words with wagtails: York prison poetry.’ An expanding archive of poetry written in York Castle prison during the late eighteenth century, accompanied by responses from a wide range of twenty-first-century readers.

‘Sheffield:  Print, Protest and Poetry, 1790-1810.’ An online archive of radical poetry from Sheffield’s late eighteenth-century press, accompanied by blog posts, videos and a three-part podcast.

‘The view from the coffee house.’ Adam’s own blog, offering commentary on contemporary events from an eighteenth-century perspective.

‘Welcome to the coffee house: The literature of the eighteenth-century’, Online course, iTunesU.

‘The Coffee House.’ In 2014, I secured funding to work with film-maker and Gemma Thorpe to develop this short film, based on my doctoral research.

Public engagement: media (publications)

‘Bridgerton: the real 18th-centry writers who used pseudonyms to stoke controversy.’ Published in The Conversation UK on 8 April 2022.

‘The Prince – the great tradition of satirizing the royal family is under threat as they become for “human”’, co-written with Dr Jo Waugh. Published in The Conversation on 21 September 2021. 

Spitting Image: a warning from the 'golden age' of satire. Co-written with Dr Jo Waugh. Published in The Conversation on 7 October 2019.

Titania McGrath: Twitter parody of ‘wokeness’ owes a lot to satirists of the 18th century. Co-written with Dr Jo Waugh. Published in The Conversation on 15 March 2019.

Brexit Britian is easy fodder for satirists: but they should learn from 18th-century masters how to do it properly. Published in The Conversation on 8 October 2018.

Smith, Adam James, ‘Sheffield Editors who stood up for the city’, Sheffield Star, 9 April 2016.

Smith, Adam James, ‘Don’t scoff at the hipster coffee shops, they’ve been around for 300 years’, The Guardian, 30 June 2015.

Smith, Adam James, ‘The Dream of the Coffee House’, Now Then Magazine, August 2014.

Media (radio)

Smith, Adam James, (Guest) Sile Sibanda, BBC Radio Sheffield: discussing the YSJ Critical Edition of Eliza Haywood’s The Parrot, May 2024.

Smith, Adam James, (Contributor), ‘The Future of Satire is No Laughing Matter’, Future Tense, ABC Radio National (Australia and East Asia, December 2022.

Smith, Adam James, (Contributor), Pop Enlightenments Podcast, 2018)

Smith, Adam James (Guest), Georgie Spanswick at Breakfast: discussing eighteenth-century coffee houses, Dec 2018.

Smith, Adam James, (Contributor), The Ant-Hill Podcast Episode 6: Into Darkness, October 2016.

Smith, Adam James, (Guest), Rony Robinson, BBC Radio Sheffield, September 2016 and March 2017.