Email: J.Baker.5@warwick.ac.uk

---

Assistant Professor (Teaching Focussed) in C19th and c20th Literature - teaches and lectures on the English and Comparative Literary Studies programme.

• Director of Student Experience 2024-25 (which includes convening the UGSSLCLink opens in a new window)
• 2024-25 convening / teaching Academic Enrichment (FY and Intermediate Year); the UG hons module "Tales of Terror: Gothic and the Short Form" and "Haunted Britain".
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and APP-EXP Mentor and Assessor.
• I supervise a number of UG and MA dissertations in a range of areas, including: nineteenth-century fiction and culture; Gothic (all periods and a range of forms); crime fiction; the child in literature /children's literature; image and text; the short form. For PhD supervision see below.
• Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUgs) for Intermediate Year Students 2023-24.
• Director of Undergraduate Studies for First Years 2020-23.
• Nominated for the Warwick Awards for Personal Tutoring Excellence (wapte) in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
• Nominated for the Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence (WATE) in 2021, 2022, and shortlisted in 2023.
• Co-winner on the ECLS Teaching Awards 2023Link opens in a new window

Website: https://hcommons.org/members/drjenbaker/

---

Previous Teaching

• At previous institutions I have taught undergraduate modules on Critical Theory, Contemporary Writing (1945 to the present) and Literature 1830-1945, ‘Ways of Reading’, ‘The Short Story’, ‘American Literature’ and ‘Between Men and Women: Gender in Literature’.
• At Warwick I have taught on UG modules Modes of Reading and Romantic and Victorian Poetry, and convened and taught on the UG modules EN2L4 Literature in Theory (co-convenor); Crime Fiction, Nation, and Empire, 1850-1947; The English C19th Novel; MA module EN930 Nineteenth-Century Gothic (convener) and various Academic Skills Provision.

PhD Supervision

I am particularly interested in supervising works on:

• Gothic and the Short Form (any period) / publication contexts
• Gothic and the Visual (illustration in particular and any period);
• childhood and Gothic/Horror (any period);
• long c19th Gothic;
• Victorian fiction (particularly death studies and/or childhood and/orthe novel form);
• Neo-Victorian Fiction;

I am current co-supervisor for:

Mark Gorham, "Ideologues United: England's Ideology and the Gothic 'Good'". [Co-Supervisor Prof. Paulo De Medeiros] Starting date; October 2022.

Grace Rhyne who is examining women writers and Victorian Ghost Stories. [Co-Supervisor Dr Ross Forman]. Start date Oct 2022.

Completed Supervisions:

Li Liu, ‘What Do Texts Want?’: The Want and Liminality of Working-Class Women in Mid-Victorian Bourgeois Paternalistic Literature [co-supervised with Dr Michael Meeuwis]. Start date Oct 2019 - Graduate Jan 2024.

External Appointments

External Examiner for PhD, University of Edinburgh 2024

Member of Expert Adjudication committee at the University of Oslo, Norway in 2019-2020 and 2022- 2023

---

RESEARCH

Current

My research interests include the Gothic c.1760 – the present; monstrosity and childhood; death studies and the spectral; print cultures and illustration, and movable and mechanical literary books. My wider interests include history of the book; medical humanities;, folklore. I am in the process of producing my first monograph on haunting representations of child death in Anglophone literatures and iconography of the long c19th with Edinburgh University Press, due 2023.

I completed my PhD at the University of Bristol in 2017, where I was also a Senior Associate Tutor on the English UG degree and the English Literature and Community Engagement degree.

I am currently an Associate Editor on the editorial board of Gothic StudiesLink opens in a new window which includes running of the International Gothic AssociationLink opens in a new window Postgraduate Essay Prize.

I am also a member of the AHRC funded global research network Haunting Issues: Children, Spectrality, and CultureLink opens in a new window @HauntingIssues

Previous external positions

I have previous convened of research strands on "Evil" and "Children and Evil" as part of the "Evil Hub" (which is as cool as it sounds) for the interdisciplinary scholarly network Progressive Connexions. This brings together scholars and creative practitioners from all disciplines to consider the multifarious ways ideas of evil (or in particular children and evil) is represented and tackled with in various contexts, and stress the importance of collaborative work to understand the mechanics at play.

I was Co-Chief Editor of the journal HARTS & Minds for postgraduates and Early Career Researchers of the humanities and arts 2012-2-20, and was an Early Career Research Officer for the British Association of Victorian Studies 2017-19.

From Jan 2020- Jan 2022 I was an Early Career Visiting Fellow for the Centre of Death and Society,Link opens in a new window University of Bath.