Dr Gemma Moss
Before joining BCU, Gemma taught at the University of Salford and the University of Manchester, where she completed an MA in Postcolonial Literature and an AHRC-funded PhD.
Gemma is author of Modernism, Music and the Politics of Aesthetics (Edinburgh University Press, 2021). She is currently editing E. M. Forster鈥檚 first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread, for the Cambridge Edition of the Fiction of E. M. Forster.
Current Activity
Most of Gemma's time is currently spent on the Cambridge Edition of the Fiction of E. M. Forster, and she is also beginning a new project on literature and drugs.
Areas of Expertise
- Modernism
- Musicology
- Continental Philosophy
- Close Reading
- Gender and Sexuality
Qualifications
- PhD (University of Manchester)
- MA Postcolonial Literature (University of Manchester)
- BA (Hons) English Literature (University of Manchester)
- FHEA
Memberships
- International E.M. Foster Society
- Sylvia Townsend Warner Society
- BAMS
Teaching
Gemma teaches twentieth-century literature and culture on English undergraduate modules and the MA English Literature.
Undergraduate
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EGL4047 Key Critical Concepts
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EGL5073 Writing and the Environment
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EGL5062 Gender, Sexuality and Culture
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EGL6130 Modernism and its Legacies
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ADM5000 Work Placement
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EGL6000 Undergraduate Dissertations
MA
- EGL7227 Literature and Truth
- EGL7226 Literature and Place
- EGL7000 MA Dissertations
Research
Gemma is currently working on the Cambridge Edition of the Fiction of E. M. Forster, editing Where Angels Fear to Tread and working on the editorial board. This project addresses the fact that there is, at present, no modern scholarly edition of Forster鈥檚 work. In this sense, Forster is behind such lesser-known, early twentieth-century authors such as Dorothy Richardson and Wyndham Lewis. The Cambridge Edition will become the primary scholarly editions of Forster worldwide. Gemma鈥檚 new edition of Where Angels Fear to Tread will make archive and manuscript material available to scholars around the world for the first time.
Gemma's published research to date examines music in literature. She is interested in the real-world, political significance of seemingly abstracted things like musical and literary forms, and find that music plays a crucial role in investigations of language, rational thought and ideology among modernist and contemporary novelists. Gemma's first monograph, Modernism, Music and the Politics of Aesthetics (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) analyses the use of music among modernists 鈥� particularly James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Sylvia Townsend Warner 鈥� as well as contemporary writers Paul Griffiths and Richard Powers. This book re-shapes aesthetic, temporal and political understandings of modernism by showing that music鈥檚 ambiguity and abstraction remains key to an enduring, politically-motivated modernist desire to use aesthetic forms to engage with otherness, and reveal the limitations of rational thought.
Gemma often uses continental philosophies of music to unpack the political implications of aesthetic forms. Using interdisciplinary approaches, she's explored aesthetic and material approaches to music, popular music, ideology, opera and stream of consciousness narrative technique in writing by Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Ford Madox Ford, and E.M. Forster.
Gender and sexuality are always close at hand, especially in her work on Warner and Forster. Gemma has examined the relative marginalisation of Sylvia Townsend Warner when compared with other writers of the early- to mid-twentieth century, and has written on Forster鈥檚 critique of purity-feminism in Maurice.
Postgraduate Supervision
Gemma welcomes enquiries from prospective PhD students interested in modernist studies, especially in conjunction with music or critical theory.
Publications
Monographs
Modernism, Music and the Politics of Aesthetics聽(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021).
Scholarly Editing
E. M. Forster,聽Where Angels Fear to Tread,聽ed. Gemma Moss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024). [In progress.]
Journal articles
鈥楳usic, Noise and the First World War in Ford Madox Ford鈥檚 Parade鈥檚 End鈥�.聽Modernist Cultures聽12.1 (April 2017), 59-77.
鈥楳usic in E. M. Forster鈥檚 A Room with a View and Howards End: The Conflicting Presentation of Nineteenth-Century Aesthetics鈥�.聽English Literature in Transition聽59.4 (May 2016), 493-509.
鈥樷�淎 beginning rather than an end鈥�: Popular Culture and Modernity in D. H. Lawrence鈥檚 St Mawr鈥�.聽Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies聽4.1 (December 2015), 119-139.
Book chapters
鈥楥lassical Music and Literature鈥� in聽Literature and Sound, ed. Anna Snaith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 92-113.
鈥榃omen in and out: Forster, Florence, Feminism and Social Purity鈥� in聽Critical Essays on E. M. Forster鈥檚 Maurice, ed. Emma Sutton and Tsung-Han Tsai (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2021), 52-74.
鈥楶opular Culture鈥� in The Edinburgh Companion to D.H. Lawrence and the Arts, ed. Catherine Brown and Susan Reid (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 145-159.
鈥楾he Treatise on Harmony: Ezra Pound as Music Theorist鈥� in聽Companion to Ezra Pound and the Arts, ed. Roxana Preda (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019), 347-358.
Reviews
Vincent Sherry, ed.,聽The Cambridge History of Modernism,聽ed. (Cambridge University Press: 2016).聽Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies.
Cecelia Bjorken-Nyberg,聽The Player Piano and the Edwardian Novel聽(Ashgate: 2015).聽English Literature in Transition聽60.1 (2017).
Maroula Joannou, ed.,聽The History of British Women鈥檚 Writing, 1920鈥�1945 (Palgrave Macmillan: 2012).聽Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society聽(2013).