Emma Smith (scholar) explained

Honorific Prefix:Professor
Emma Smith
Birth Name:Emma Josephine Smith
Birth Date:1970 5, df=y
Birth Place:Leeds, West Yorkshire, England
Nationality:English
Occupation:Historian and academic
Professor of Shakespeare Studies
Boards:Royal Shakespeare Company
Education:Abbey Grange School
Alma Mater:Somerville College, Oxford
Thesis Title:Sifting strangers: some aspects of the representation of the European foreigner in the English drama, 1580-1617
Thesis Year:1997
Discipline:English literature
Workplaces:All Souls College, Oxford
New Hall, Cambridge
Hertford College, Oxford
Notable Works:Portable Magic: A History of Books and their Readers

Emma Josephine Smith (born 15 May 1970)[1] is an English literary scholar and academic whose research focuses on early modern drama, particularly William Shakespeare, and the history of the book. She has been a Tutorial Fellow in English at Hertford College, Oxford since 1997 and Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford since 2015.

She has published and lectured widely on Shakespeare and on other early modern dramatists, and worked with numerous theatre companies. Her lectures are available as podcasts Not Shakespeare: Elizabethan and Jacobean Popular Theatre[2] and Approaching Shakespeare.[3]

Life and career

Born and raised in Leeds, Smith was educated at Abbey Grange school and did her undergraduate degree at Somerville College, Oxford, from 1988 to 1991.[4] In an interview with the Oxford Review of Books, Smith said that she "didn't go to a school or come from a family where people particularly did go to Oxford" but that she also was not "from a terribly deprived background". She was a Prize Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford and completed her doctorate in 1997 during her fellowship at the college.[5] Smith has credited the Prize Fellowship as helping her become an academic but said she found the time "isolating" and "felt the miss of having a graduate cohort". She joined Hertford College as Tutorial Fellow in English in 1997, having previously held a junior academic position at New Hall, Cambridge.[6] In November 2015 she was awarded the Title of Distinction of Professor of Shakespeare Studies by the University of Oxford.[7]

As part of her work on Shakespeare's First Folio, Smith worked with conservators, digital specialists and crowd-sourced funding on a Bodleian Library project to digitise a copy of the book.[8] In 2016, she authenticated a new copy of the First Folio found at Mount Stuart House on the Isle of Bute.[9]

With Laurie Maguire of Oxford University she published a new argument in 2012 that Shakespeare's play All's Well that Ends Well was a collaboration with Thomas Middleton. The New Oxford Shakespeare edition of 2016, edited by Bourus et al., was the first printed edition of the play to accept this joint attribution.[10] Another article with Laurie Maguire won the 2014 Hoffman Prize.[11] She was a script advisor to Josie Rourke's 2018 film Mary Queen of Scots and the BBC’s 2023 documentary series Shakespeare: The Rise of a Genius. She edits the Cambridge University Press journal Shakespeare Survey.

Smith published This Is Shakespeare in 2019. The book was published as a guide to Shakespeare's plays. It extends from her lectures for Oxford undergraduates, which were also used as the basis for her Approaching Shakespeare podcast, where she discusses 20 of Shakespeare's plays in chronological order. She says she wanted the book "to give a sense of Shakespeare's range across his career" but also "to keep the individual chapters self-contained, so that you could read one before going to the theatre."[12] This is Shakespeare was well-received and "catapulted [Smith's] name into literary renown"; Smith said the response was "exciting and unexpected".[13]

She was shortlisted for the 2023 Wolfson History Prize for Portable Magic,[14] which she described as "a book about books, rather than words". In 2024 she was made an Honorary Bencher at Middle Temple and included in Ribbons, a public sculpture in Leeds celebrating inspirational women. In September 2024 Smith joined the board of the Royal Shakespeare Company, having been named an Associate Scholar of the RSC in 2021.[15]

Bibliography

Selected publications

The Spanish Tragedie (ed. 1998)

External links

Oxford podcasts

Notes and References

  1. Web site: The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare (electronic resource) / Emma Smith . Browns Books . 11 September 2024.
  2. http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/not-shakespeare-elizabethan-and-jacobean-popular-theatre
  3. http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/approaching-shakespeare
  4. Web site: Shakespeare's First Folio: from London to the world - and Leeds! . Leeds Art and Humanities Research Institute . 11 September 2024.
  5. Book: Who's Who 2020.
  6. Web site: Professor Emma Smith . Hertford College, Oxford . 11 September 2024.
  7. https://www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2015-2016/15october2015-no5109/notices/#220529 "Recognition of Distinction: Successful Applicants 2015"
  8. http://Firstfolio.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
  9. News: Shakespeare Folio 'astonishing' find. Coughlan. Sean. 7 April 2016. BBC News. 16 September 2017. en-GB.
  10. The Radical Argument of the New Oxford Shakespeare. Pollack-Pelzner. Daniel. 19 February 2017. The New Yorker. 16 September 2017. 0028-792X.
  11. Web site: Hoffman Prize Winners. The Marlowe Society. 9 November 2021.
  12. Web site: No Such Thing as a Stupid Question: On Emma Smith's "This is Shakespeare". 21 December 2021. Cleveland Review of Books. en-US.
  13. Samuel King . English the Obscure: Professor Emma Smith on All Souls and Shakespeare . Oxford Review of Books . Winter 2022–23 . 7 . 1 . 16.
  14. Web site: 2023-11-14 . Kochanski wins £50k Wolfson History Prize . 2023-11-20 . Books+Publishing.
  15. Web site: Professor Emma Smith joins the RSC Board . Royal Shakespeare Company . 11 September 2024.
  16. Book: Smith, Emma . Portable Magic . 27 April 2023 . en.
  17. Web site: This Is Shakespeare by Emma Smith review – the Bard without the baggage. 6 May 2019. Alex Preston. The Observer. 9 November 2021.
  18. Smith, Emma. Women on the Early Modern Stage: A Woman Killed with Kindness, The Tamer Tamed, The Duchess of Malfi, The Witch of Edmonton. Methuen Drama (2014)
  19. Andy Kesson and Emma Smith, eds. The Elizabethan Top Ten: Defining Print Popularity in Early Modern England. Material Readings in Early Modern Culture series. . Journal of British Studies. July 2014 . 53 . 3 . 769–771 . 10.1017/jbr.2014.58 . 9 November 2021. Sauer . Elizabeth .
  20. Book: Smith, Emma . Five revenge tragedies . Penguin Books . London . 2012 . 9780141192277 .
  21. Book: Smith, Emma . The Cambridge Shakespeare guide . Cambridge University Press . Cambridge . 2012 . 9780521195232 .
  22. Review. Journal of British Studies. 37. 3. July 2008. 661–663. James Hirsh. 25482840 .
  23. Book: Smith, Emma . Shakespeare's Comedies : a Guide to Criticism . John Wiley & Sons . Chichester . 2007 . 9780470776919 .
  24. Book: Smith, Emma . Shakespeare's Tragedies : a Guide to Criticism . John Wiley & Sons, Ltd . Hoboken . 2008 . 9780470776896 .
  25. Book: Smith, Emma . Shakespeare's Histories : a Guide to Criticism . John Wiley & Sons . Chichester . 2007 . 9780470776889 .