Email

NickGroom@um.edu.mo

Tel

(853) 88228246

Office

E21-4065

Consultation Hours

Tuesday: 16:30-17:30

Friday: 16:30-17:30

Nick GROOM

Associate Head of Department of English

Introduction

Nick Groom joined the University of Macau in 2020 as Professor of Literature in English. He was previously Professor in English at the University of Exeter, has held visiting professorships at University of Chicago and Stanford University, and has also taught at the University of Bristol and the University of Oxford.

Education

Nick studied at the University of Oxford; he was awarded a First Class BA Hons degree in English Language and Literature in 1988, an MA in 1992, and a DPhil in 1994.

Research Interests

Nick is an internationally acknowledged expert in four related fields:

  1. cultural formation and authenticity, including attribution studies and literary forgery (especially the poet Thomas Chatterton);
  2. national and regional identities (primarily UK, Irish, and Anglophone);
  3. cultural environmentalism and intangible cultural heritage (ICH), including folklore and ‘green well-being’; and
  4. historicist readings of the Gothic from earliest times to the present day – for which he is probably best known, especially in the media.

In addition, he has written on subjects such as culture and place, William Shakespeare, and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Courses Regularly Taught

MA Option: Nineteenth-Century Gothic Literature

  • Honorary Professor, University of Exeter
  • Honorary Research Fellow, Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health
  • Advisor, All-Party Parliamentary Flags and Heraldry Committee (UK government)
  • Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts

Nick has written or edited over 20 books, and is the author of more than 60 academic papers; his work has been translated into several languages, including Chinese, German, Indonesian, Italian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. His recent publications include:

Selected Publications: Books

  1. Twenty-First-Century Tolkien: What Middle-Earth Means To Us Today, 2nd expanded edn (London: Atlantic, 2023), xxiv + 454pp.
  2. Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century: The Meaning of Middle-Earth Today (New York: Pegasus Books, 2023), xxiv + 454pp.
  3. Twenty-First-Century Tolkien: What Middle-Earth Means To Us Today, read by Mike Grady (Leicester: W. F. Howes Ltd, 9 March 2023), online audiobook and 11 CD edn.
  4. Twenty-First-Century Tolkien: What Middle-Earth Means To Us Today (London: Atlantic, 2022), xxii + 426pp.
  5. The Vampire: A New History, 2nd revised edition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2020), xix + 288pp.
  6. El Vampiro: Una Nueva Historia (Madrid: Desperta Ferro Ediciones, 2020) [translation].
  7. Il Vampiro: Una Nuova Storia (Milan: Il Saggiatori, 2019) [translation].
  8. The Vampire: A New History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018), xix + 288pp.
  9. , Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818 Text) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), lxxv + 226pp.
  10. , with Nicholas Allen and Jos Smith, Coastal Works: Cultures of the Atlantic Edge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), xiv + 320pp; co-wrote Introduction, 1-18, and chapter ‘Draining the Irish Sea: The Colonial Politics of Water’, 20-39.
  11. , Ann Radcliffe, The Italian, or The Confessional of the Black Penitents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), lv + 424pp.
  12. , Matthew Lewis, The Monk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), liii + 357pp.
  13. , Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), li + 132pp.
  14. The Seasons: An Elegy for the Passing of the Year (London: Atlantic, 2013), 400pp.
  15. The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). xviii + 164pp.

Selected Publications: Papers

  1. ‘The Undead and Eternal: Vampires of Enlightenment’, A Cultural History of Death, vol 4: In the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Jeffrey Freedman (London, New York, Oxford, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), 167-185.
  2. ‘“The Ghostly Language of the Ancient Earth”: Tolkien and Romantic Lithology.’ The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Julian Eilmann and Will Sherwood (Zurich: Walking Tree, 2023), 99-124.
  3. ‘Thomas Chatterton: Four Ways of Literary Terra-Forming’, Journal of the British Academy 10 (2022), 135-55 (https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/010.135).
  4. ‘Polidori’s “The Vampyre”: Composition, Publication, Deception.’ Romanticism1 (April 2022), 46-59.
  5. Alexander J. Smalley, Mathew P. White, Timothy X Atack, Rebecca Ripley, Eliza Lomas, Mike Sharples, Peter A. Coates, Nick Groom, Ann Grand, Ailish Heneberry, Lora E. Fleming, and Michael H. Depledge, ‘Forest 404: Using a BBC Drama Series to Explore the Impact of Nature’s Changing Soundscapes on Human Wellbeing and Behavior.’ Global Environmental Change 74 (May 2022): 102497 (14pp.) (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102497).
  6. ‘Malone and the Trials of Forgery: William Henry Ireland and the Shakspeare Papers.’ Bodleian Library Record1-2 [published 2022], 124-46.
  7. ‘Nazgûl Taller Than Night: Tolkien and Speculative Realism’, Twenty-First Century Receptions of Tolkien: Proceedings of the Tolkien Society Winter Seminar 2021, ed. Will Sherwood (Edinburgh: Luna Press, 2022), 38-57.
  8. ‘Malone Unmasking Forgery: Thomas Chatterton and the Rowley Controversy.’ Bodleian Library Record1-2 [published 2021], 124-46.
  9. ‘The English Literary Tradition: Shakespeare to the Gothic.’ A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Stuart Lee, 2nd edn (Hoboken, NJ and Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2022), 283-96.
  10. , with Hollis Beach. ‘Thomas Chatterton.’ Poetry Criticism, vol. 239, ed. Carol A. Schwartz (Farmington Hills: Gale, 2021), 1-204.
  11. ‘Tolkien y la literatura gótica’, R. R. Tolkien y la Tierra Media: Once Ensayos sobre el Mayor Mito Literario del Siglo XX, ed. Martin Simonson and José R. Montejano (Aces de Candamo: Jonathan Alwars, 2021), 269-310.
  12. ‘The Union Jack belongs to Everyone, not just the Government.’ History & Policy (13 April 2021), https://www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion-articles/articles/the-union-jack-belongs-to-everyone-not-just-the-government
  13. ‘The Term “Gothic” in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1680-1800.’ The Cambridge History of the Gothic, ed. Angela Wright, Dale Townshend, and Catherine Spooner, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), i. 44-66.
  14. ‘Introduction: CoronaGothic, Culture, and Crisis’, with William Hughes, Critical Quarterly, special issue CoronaGothic: Cultures of the Pandemic, ed. Nick Groom and William Hughes, 62.4 (2020), 2-6.
  15. ‘Viral Vampires.’ Critical Quarterly, special issue CoronaGothic: Cultures of the Pandemic, 62.4 (2020), 7-14.
  16. ‘Thomas Chatterton and the Death of John William Polidori: Copycat or Coincidence?’ Notes & Queries, gjaa152, https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjaa152.
  17. ‘The Union Jack belongs to Everyone, not just the Government.’ History & Policy (13 April 2021), https://www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion-articles/articles/the-union-jack-belongs-to-everyone-not-just-the-government.
  18. ‘Tolkien y la literatura gótica’, R. R. Tolkien y la Tierra Media: Diez Ensayos sobre el Mayor Mito Literario del Siglo XX, ed. Martin Simonson (Asturias: Jonathan Alwars, 2021), 269-312.
  19. ‘Hallowe’en and Valentine: The Culture of Saints’ Days in the English-Speaking World. The Thirty-Seventh Katharine Briggs Memorial Lecture, November 2017.’ Folklore 129 (2018), 331-352.
  20. Stephen Hinchliffe, Mark A. Jackson, Katrina Wyatt, Anne E. Barlow, Manuela Barreto, Linda Clare, Michael H. Depledge, Robin Durie, Lora E. Fleming, Nick Groom, Karyn Morrissey, Laura Salisbury, and Felicity Thomas, ‘Healthy Publics: Enabling Cultures and Environments for Health.’ Palgrave Communications, 4:57 (2018), 1-10 (doi: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0113-9).
  21. ‘Catachthonic Romanticism: Buried History, Deep Ruins.’ Romanticism, 24.2 (2018), 118-33.
  22. ‘Romanticism before 1789.’ The Oxford Handbook of British Romanticism, ed. David Duff (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 13-29.
  23. ‘Dracula’s Prehistory: The Advent of the Vampire.’ The Cambridge Companion to Dracula, ed. Roger Luckhurst (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 11-25.
  24. ‘Rings and Flies: Tolkien and Golding, Lords of ’54.’ Critical Insights: Lord of the Flies, ed. Sarah Fredericks (Ipswich, Mass.: Grey House Publishing/Salem Press, forthcoming 2017), 175-87.
  25. ‘“Let’s discuss over country supper soon”: Rural Realities and Rustic Representations’, in Creating the Countryside: The Rural Idyll Past and Present, ed. Verity Elson and Rosemary Shirley (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2017), 49-60.
  26. ‘Plastic Daffodils: The Pastoral, the Picturesque, and Cultural Environmentalism.’ Climate Change and the Humanities: Historical, Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Contemporary Environmental Crisis, ed. James Cullis, Vinita Damodara, and Alex Elliott (Houndmills: PalgraveMacmillan, 2018), 117-139.
  27. ‘“The Celtic Century” and the Genesis of Scottish Gothic.’ Edinburgh Companion to the Scottish Gothic, ed. Carol Davison and Monica Germana (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 14-27.
  28. ‘Otranto: Racconto per il Compleanno.’ Chi ha Paura di Horace Walpole? Da un Castello di Otranto all’altro, ed. and trans. Luigi Ballerini (Otranto: Stampato Presso, 2016), 11-28.
  29. ‘The Poet as “Fraud”.’ The Oxford Handbook of British Poetry, 1660-1800, ed. Jack Lynch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 227-46.