James Adams
Professor of English and Comparative Literature

My Contact Info

404 Philosophy, Mail Code: 4927, United States

Office Hours Fall 2022

On leave fall 2022; office hours by appointment.?



+1 212 854 2472
[email protected]

James Adams

Research Interests

19th Century British Literature and Culture
Gender and Sexuality Studies
Aestheticism
Interdisciplinary History of Victorian Britain
19th Century
Philosophy, Aesthetics, History of Ideas, and Sociology of Knowledge
Gender, Sexuality, Queer Theory, Feminism
Europe
Britain

Biography

S.B., Literature and Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1977); B.A., Oxford (Rhodes Scholar, 1979); Ph.D., Cornell (1987).? James Eli Adams came to Columbia in 2009 from Cornell; he previously taught at Indiana University and the University of Rochester.? He writes on a wide range of Victorian literature and culture, but he is best known for his work on gender and sexuality in Victorian literature.? He is the author of?Dandies and Desert Saints: Styles of Victorian Masculinity?(Cornell, 1995) and?A History of Victorian Literature?(Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), each of which was named a?Choice?Outstanding Academic Book.? He co-edited, with Andrew Miller,?Sexualities in Victorian Britain?(Indiana, 1996), and served as general editor of the four-volume?Encyclopedia of the Victorian Era?(Grolier, 2004).? His essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in many journals and collections, including?Victorian Studies,?ELH,?Studies in English Literature,?Victorian Poetry,?Journal of the History of Ideas,?the Blackwell Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture,?Concise Companion to the Victorian Novel,?Contemporary Dickens, and?Muscular Christianity: Embodying the Victorian Age.? He is a past Chair of the Executive Committee of the MLA Division for the Victorian Period, and a past President of the Northeast Victorian Studies Association.? From 1993-2000 he co-edited?Victorian Studies, where he remains a member of the Advisory Board.? He is currently at work on a project entitled?The Uses of Inheritance: Identity and Agency in Britain, 1789-1895.

Selected Publications

Dandies and Desert Saints: Styles of Victorian Masculinity

James Adams

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A History of Victorian Literature

James Adams

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