Languages, Cultures and Visual Studies

Photo of Professor Vike Martina Plock

Professor Vike Martina Plock

Head of Department

V.Plock@exeter.ac.uk

4233

01392 724233

Overview

Office: Queens 215

Professor Plock is the author of three academic monographs: Joyce, Medicine and Modernity (2010; paperback 2012), Modernism, Fashion and Interwar Women Writers (2017; paperback 2019) and The BBC German Service during the Second World War: Broadcasting to the Enemy (Palgrave, 2021). She has edited four journal issues and written numerous articles and book chapters on Elizabeth Bowen, James Joyce, Rosamond Lehmann, Erika Mann, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Edith Wharton and Virginia Woolf. She is co-editor of the interdisciplinary journal Literature & History and an advisory editor of the James Joyce Quarterly. Her reserach has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust as well as several research library fellowships.

Her research interests include:

  • international modernism
  • James Joyce
  • Sylvia Townsend Warner
  • Elizabeth Bowen
  • Edith Wharton
  • literature, science, and medicine
  • literature, fashion, and consumer culture
  • interwar women's writing
  • twentieth-century media and publishing history
  • Anglo-German and German-American Studies

Professor Plock is currently working on a new resarch project on modernist writers as Penguin Books authors. A  first article on Penguin paperback editions of Virginia Woolf's work has just been published in Book History.

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Research

Professor Plock's research focuses on literary modernism and the cultural history of modernity. She has published widely on James Joyce's lifelong interest in medicine and science. Her first monograph Joyce, Medicine, and Modernity was published in 2010 by the University Press of Florida (paperback, 2012) and she has edited two special issues of the journal James Joyce Quarterly.     

Her second major research project took a slightly different approach to the study of literary modernism. Her multi-author monograph, Modernism, Fashion and Interwar Women Writers, examined the role that fashion played in the works of early twentieth-century women novelists such as Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, Elizabeth Bowen and Rosamond Lehmann. In this book she argues that these women writers used sartorial tropes to self-consciously comment on their involvement with the literary marketplace of the interwar period. Engaging with the sartorial fashions of their time, Modernism, Fashion and Interwar Women Writers argues, allowed different women writers to respond, at times critically, to market forces and to engage with the literary fashions of their time. A detailed review of the book has been published in Woolf Studies Annual (2018).

Professor Plock's third monograph The BBC German Service during the Second World War: Broadcasting to the Enemy, for which she was awarded a sixteen-month research fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust in March 2017, tells the story of the people responsible for delivering the propaganda programmes that went out on BBC airwaves to listeners in Nazi Germany. Who were the individuals behind the microphone, whose names could only be mentioned in whispered conversations on the continent? Who wrote the news programmes, the features and satires that offered comic relief to housewives struggling to obtain enough food to feed their families? Who made decisions about programme delivery and staffing? Drawing extensively on previously unexplored archival sources, her book sheds light on the difficult working conditions in the BBC German Service in war-time London. Here, in the BBC's recording studios people from different nationalities, social backgrounds and political convictions collaborated and argued about the delivery of an effective propaganda programme that could assist the Allies in defeating the Nazis. By making many of the stories of these individuals available for the first time, The BBC German Service during the Second World War: Broadcasting to the Enemy offers a fascinating new picture of the wartime BBC. An article on Erika Mann's work at the BBC German Service was published in modernism/modernity in January 2020.  

Professor Plock has also developed a strong interest in the neglected modernist writer Sylvia Townsend Warner. Already in print is Professor Plock's co-edited journal issue on STW that was published by Literature Compass in 2014. 

She is currently beginning work on her next major reserach project: a history of modernist authors and intellectuals such as Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann and Sigmund Freud whose books were re-printeded as cheap paperbacks by Penguin Books.

Professor Plock's articles have appeared in Book History, Modern Fiction Studies, Modernism/Modernity, Journal of Modern Literature, Literature & History, James Joyce Quarterly, Joyce Studies Annual, and Literature Compass.



Research collaborations

From June 2013 to September 2014 Professor Plock was Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded research network Tailored Trades: Clothes, Labour and Professional Communities, 1880-1939. Network events included adacemic workshops at Northumbria University and the University of Exeter, public lectures at the Bishopsgate Institute in London, exhibitions in the People's History Museum in Manchester and a concluding network conference "Clothes, Working Lives and Social Change (1880-1939)" in 2014.

A recording of Professor Plock's public lecture on Jack London, Slum Tourism and the East End Sweated Industries that she gave in the Bishopsgate Institute in May 2014 can be found on the Tailored Trades network website.

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Supervision

Professor Plock welcomes enquiries from research students with interests in James Joyce, literary modernism, women's writing of the interwar period (especially Elizabeth Bowen and Sylvia Townsend Warner), middlebrow literature and culture, and literature and science.

Research students

Current Research Students:

Jo Barlow, "The Darkness of David Hunter: Domestic Noir in Agatha Christie's Taken at the Flood" (Joint Supervisor)

Ina Skaer Beeston, "The Self in German Family History" (Second Supervisor)

Mary Anna Evans, "Agatha Christie, Witness to the Evolution: Women, Justice, Crime Fiction and the Twentieth Century" (Joint Supervisor)

Jean Harris, "Interwar Women Writers and the Virago Imprint" (First Supervisor)

Lauren Huggett, "Disrupted Memory and the Restoration of the Normal: Daphne du Maurier and the Cold War, 1949-1960" (Second Supervisor)

Antonio Spaccapietra, "Rome--The Eternal City: Modernity and Antiquity in Joyce's Ulysses" (First Supervisor)

Margaret Webb, "Unmasking the Gothic in James Joyce's Modernist Novels" (First Supervisor)

Frederic Worthington, "Selling Britain: The BBC German Service in the Post-War Period" (AHRC) (First Supervisor)

Past Research Students:

James Bernthal, "Queering the Outcast in Agatha Christie" (AHRC) (First Supervisor) (2011-15)

Rinni Haji Amran, "Modernist Literature and Aviation" (First Supervisor) (2011-15)

Demet Karabulut Dede, "Modernism Literature and Time-Space Compression" (TUEBITAK, Turkey) (Research Mentor) (2020-21)

Elizabeth Micakovic, "T. S. Eliot's Voice" (AHRC) (First Supervisor) (2011-13)

Jake O'Leary, "Modernist Women Writers and Antifascism" (AHRC) (Second Supervisor) (2016-20)

Teresa Sanders, "Sylvia Townsend Warner and Education" (AHRC) (First Supervisor) (2016-20)

Jack Sargent, "Desiring Long-Term Intimacy in Victorian to Twenty-First Century British and American Homosexual Literature" (Second Supervisor) (2015-20)

Leonie Thomas, "Wireless Women: Listening in to Forgotten Voices at the BBC, 1922-1955" (AHRC) (First Supervisor) (2015-19)

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Publications

Copyright Notice: Any articles made available for download are for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the copyright holder.

| 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2010 | 2009 | 2007 | 2006 |

2024

  • Plock V. (2024) The uses of satire: Berlin and the BBC German Service during the Second World War, Berlin and the BBC: A Century of Sound and Vision, De Gruyter.

2023

  • Plock V. (2023) Garment Cultures in Joyce, The Edinburgh Companion to James Joyce and the Arts, Edinurgh University Press.

2022

  • Plock V. (2022) Agatha Christie's Radio Broadcasts for the BBC, Bloomsbury Handbook to Agatha Christie, Bloomsbury Academic, 320-337.
  • Plock V. (2022) Virginia Woolf, Penguin Books, and Mass Publishing in Mid-Century Britain, Book History, volume 25:1, pages 238-268.
  • Plock V. (2022) Joyce and the (Critical) Medical Humanities, New Joyce Studies: Twenty-First Century Critical Revisions, Cambridge University Press, 208-221.

2021

  • Plock V. (2021) The BBC German Service during the Second World War: Broadcasting to the Enemy.

2020

2019

  • Van Mierlo W, Plock VM. (2019) Anniversary Joyce, James Joyce Quarterly, volume 56, no. 1-2.
  • Plock V. (2019) "The New Reading Public: Modernism, Popular Literature, and the Paperbacks", A History of 1930s British Literature, Cambridge University Press, 134-146.

2018

2017

  • Plock V. (2017) Modernism, Fashion and Interwar Women Writers, Edinburgh University Press.

2015

  • Plock V. (2015) “A Note on Sylvia Townsend Warner’s ‘The Kingdom of Elfin’", The Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society, pages 1-8.

2014

  • Plock V, Murray, Alex. (2014) "Re-Visiting Sylvia Twonsend Warner", Literature Compass, volume 11, no. 12, pages 725-731.
  • Plock V. (2014) "Object Lessons": Bloom and His Things, James Joyce Quarterly, volume 49, no. 3, pages 557-572, DOI:10.1353/jjq.2012.0025.
  • Plock VM. (2014) "Bodies", The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce's Ulysses, Cambridge University Press, 184-199.

2013

  • Plock, V. (2013) “I just took it straight from Vogue”: Rosamond Lehmann, Fashion, and Literary Modernity, MFS Modern Fiction Studies, volume 59, no. 1, pages 83-106.

2010

  • Plock VM. (2010) ‘Introduction. Fearful States: The Emergence of Modern Phobias’, Journal of Literature and Science, volume 3, no. 1, pages 1-9.
  • Plock VM. (2010) "'I guess I'm just nervous, then': Ethan Frome, Neuropathology and Edith Wharton's Exploration of Interior Geographies", Neurology and Modernity, Palgrave MacMillan, 184-203.
  • Plock VM. (2010) "'The seim anew: Joyce Studies for the Twenty-First Century", Literature Compass, volume 7, pages 477-483, article no. 5. [PDF]
  • Plock VM. (2010) Joyce, Medicine, and Modernity, Univ Pr of Florida. [PDF]

2009

  • Plock VM. (2009) Joyce and Physiology, ed. Special Issue, James Joyce Quarterly, volume 46, no. 3-4.
  • Plock VM. (2009) "Medicine", James Joyce in Context, Cambridge Univ Pr, 250-261.
  • Plock VM. (2009) "'Knock, knock. War's where!': History, Macbeth, and Finnegans Wake", Joyce Studies Annual, pages 212-223, article no. 9. [PDF]
  • Plock VM. (2009) "Introduction to 'Joyce and Physiology'", James Joyce Quarterly, volume 46, no. 3-4, pages 431-437, article no. 1. [PDF]
  • Plock VM. (2009) "Good Vibrations: 'Sirens,' Soundscapes, and Physiology", James Joyce Quarterly, volume 46, no. 3-4, pages 481-496, article no. 5. [PDF]

2007

  • Plock VM. (2007) "Why Does Gerty Limp", Joyce in Trieste, Univ Pr of Florida, 119-130.
  • Plock VM. (2007) "Medizin", Latenz: 40 Annaeherungen an einen Begriff, Kadmos, 148-152.
  • Plock VM. (2007) "Modernism's Feast on Science: Nutrition and Diet in Joyce's Ulysses", Literature & History, volume 16, no. 2, pages 30-42, article no. 3. [PDF]

2006

  • Plock VM. (2006) "Jack the Ripper and the Family Physician: Gynaecology and Domestic Medicine in 'Penelope'", Joyce, "Penelope" and the body, Rodopi, 129-143.
  • Plock VM. (2006) "A Feat of Strength in 'Ithaca': Eugen Sandow and Physical Culture in Ulysses", Journal of Modern Literature, volume 30, no. 1, pages 129-139, article no. 10. [PDF]

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External impact and engagement

Professor Plock's AHRC-funded research network Tailored Trades: Clothes, Labour and Professional Communities, 1880-1939 included public lectures and school study days at the Bishopsgate Institute in London and the People's History Museum in Manchester. A detailed description of these activities can be found on the project website.



Contribution to discipline

Professor Plock is one of the editors of the interdisciplinary academic journal Literature & History published biannually by Sage and she is an advisory editor of the James Joyce Quarterly.

To date Professor Plock has been peer-reviewing for  PMLA, James Joyce Quarterly, Literature Compass, Modernism/Modernity, Modernist Cultures, Journal of Design History, Open Library of the Humanities, Textual Practice, Women: A Cultural Reivew, Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas, Edinburgh University Press, Liverpool University Press, Ohio State University Press, Oxford University Press, Routledge, UCD Press and University Press of Florida.

From 2011-2014 she was a member of the executive committee of the British Society for Literature and Science and in July 2015 Professor Plock was elected as Membership Secretary of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society.

She was a member of the academic organising committee of the 25th International James Joyce Symposium "Anniversary Joyce" that took place in London in June 2016.

Professor Plock is a member of the AHRC Peer Review College.


Media

Professor Plock's research on the BBC German Service has attracted interest from the following newspapers, broadcasters and information providers:

The BBC History Research Blog featured a detailed project description on its website in October 2018 and on 17 April 2017 she spoke on the BBC World Service about her research.

Different aspects of her research have also been discussed in The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Times. In 2019 the Leverhulme Trust Newsletter (pp. 10-11) included an article about the project.

She was interviewed for the BBC Archive on 4 production Beating Hitler with Humour that was broadcast on 31 August 2019 to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War. She also spoke on BBC Radio Devon on 15 November 2021 about differnt aspects of her research on the BBC German Service. 

She has also advised on and was quoted in a BBC Culture article "Death on the Nile and Addressing Racism in Agatha Christie" (February 2022).

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Biography

After completing her doctoral dissertation on James Joyce and medicine at the University of York in 2005, Professor Plock held temporary lectureships at Durham University (2006), University College Dublin (2006-2007), Cardiff University (2007-2009), and a permanent lectureship at Northumbria University (2009-2010) before joining the Department of English at Exeter in September 2010. In January 2022, she became Head of Department for English and Creative Writing at Exeter. 

She was the recipient of a Fleur Cowles Endowment Fellowship from the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin in 2010 and 2014 and of the Donald C. Gallop Fellowship in American Literature from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University in 2011. She was awarded a Friends of the Zurich James Joyce Foundation Scholarship in 2005 and 2009. She lives in Devon with her husband and son. 

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