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Dr. B.P. (Ben) Moore

Faculty of Humanities
Capaciteitsgroep Engelse taal en cultuur
Photographer: Ben Moore

Visiting address
  • Spuistraat 134
  • Room number: 5.28
Postal address
  • Postbus 1641
    1000 BP Amsterdam
  • Profile and Research Interests

    Ben Moore joined the UvA in 2017 as Assistant Professor in English Literature. Previously he taught at Cardiff University (2015-16) and the University of Manchester (2011-15), where he also completed his BA (2007), MA (2010) and PhD (2014). His research has focused mainly on modernity, cities, vision, space and architecture in the nineteenth century. This work has led to the monograph Invisible Architecture in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Rethinking Urban Modernity (Edinburgh University Press, 2024). He has written articles and book chapters on Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Kingsley, Margaret Oliphant, Victorian childhood, Rem Koolhaas, the uncanny in literature, and Walter Benjamin, among other topics.

    Ben is also interested in re-reading discourses of biology and the human in nineteenth-century literature, in light of recent debates around the Anthropocene. He published a short book on this topic, Human Tissue in the Realist Novel, 1850-1895 (Palgrave) in 2023. 

    His next major project is provisionally titled Spatialising Money in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture. It will look at the interaction between money and space in authors including Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Margaret Oliphant. It examines the role of specific locations in disrupting, suspending or bypassing the 'normal' processes of economic circulation. Such locations include the pawnbroker's shop, the debtors' prison, the bank in crisis and the European spa town. Conceptually, this project examines the relations between the symbolic and allegorical sides of money, in Walter Benjamin's sense of allegory as fractured, broken and incomplete, as opposed to the fullness of meaning associated with the Romantic symbol. The project aims to extend this interest into reading the cultural role of money and value in contemporary society. An article on surplus in Oliphant's novel Hester (2021) and a book chapter on money and representation in Dickens and Gissing (2022) are the first outcomes of this work. 

    Ben is Co-Editor of the Gaskell Journal and Secretary of the Dickens Society. For several years he has co-convened an ASCA reading group on Politics and Aesthetics in Critical Theory (details here), which culminated in a symposium on 'Troubling Universalisms' in June 2023 and a forthcoming journal publication on the same topic.

    Current PhD supervision topics include death in Victorian literature, pychoanalysis and horror cinema, Walter Benjamin and weather, and heterotopias in British and Chinese women writers from the 1920s-1960s. Students interested in supervision possibilities are welcome to get in touch.

  • Teaching

    In 2024-25 Dr Moore is co-ordinator for the BA English core courses English Literature 4: The Nineteenth Century and Texts in Focus 1. He teaches the BA elective Authors in Focus: The Nineteent Century (focusing on Charles Dickens) and the MA elective Money, Space and Affect in English Literature. He also contributes to the course English Literature 1: Genres, Texts and Context

    He is Co-Programme Director for BA English Language and Culture, and the UvA's Harting Programme representative.

  • Publications

    2024

    • Moore, B. P. (2024). Invisible Architecture in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Rethinking Urban Modernity. (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Literature). Edinburgh University Press.
    • Moore, B. P. (2024). Architecture. In J. John, & C. Wood (Eds.), The Edinburgh Companion to Charles Dickens and the Arts (pp. 303-19). Edinburgh University Press.

    2023

    2022

    2021

    2020

    2019

    • Moore, B. (2019). [Review of: N. Henry (2018) Women, Literature and Finance in Victorian Britain: Cultures of Investment]. The Gaskell Journal, 33, 59-61. [details]

    2018

    2017

    2016

    • Moore, B. (2016). Ruptures in the City: Retrospective Memory in Benjamin’s Paris and Koolhaas’s New York. In L. Huskinson (Ed.), The Urban Uncanny: A collection of interdisciplinary studies (pp. 90-106). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315681177 [details]
    • Moore, B. (2016). The Dolls’ Dressmaker Re(ad)dressed: Jenny Wren’s Critique of Childhood, Femininity and Appearance. Victorian Literature and Culture, 44(3), 473-490. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1060150316000103 [details]
    • Moore, B. (2016). Walter Benjamin and The Arcades Project. In J. Tambling (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and the City (pp. 59-73). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54911-2_4

    2015

    2014

    2013

    • Moore, B. P. (2013). Review of London, Radical Culture, and the Making of the Dickensian Aesthetic. Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, 64, NA. https://doi.org/10.7202/1025682ar

    2012

    2022

    2020

    2019

    Membership / relevant position

    • Moore, B. (2024-2027). Secretary, Dickens Society.
    • Moore, B. (2022-2025). Dickens Society Trustee, Dickens Society. https://dickenssociety.org/

    Journal editor

    • Moore, B. (editor) (2023-2028). The Gaskell Journal (Journal). https://gaskelljournal.co.uk/
    • Moore, B. (member of editorial board) (2019-2023). The Gaskell Journal (Journal).

    Others

    • Farrant, M. (participant), Bergs, S. (participant) & Moore, B. (organiser) (6-2023). Troubling Universalisms. Troubling Universalisms: Politics and Aesthetics in Critical Theory SymposiumThe main part of the symposium will take place on 10 June. On 9 June, (…) (organising a conference, workshop, ...). https://aihr.uva.nl/content/events/2023/06/troubling-universalisms.html

    2024

    This list of publications is extracted from the UvA-Current Research Information System. Questions? Ask the library or the Pure staff of your faculty / institute. Log in to Pure to edit your publications. Log in to Personal Page Publication Selection tool to manage the visibility of your publications on this list.
  • Ancillary activities
    • No ancillary activities