Dr Jessica Gossling
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Jessica’s research is primarily focused on French and English literary decadence, spatial theory, and occulture.
Jessica Gossling is Lecturer in English and teaches Victorian literature, decadence, modernism, poetry, and literary theory. Her research is primarily focused on French and English literary decadence, spatial theory, and occulture. She is a member of the Decadence Research Centre and she completed her PhD on Decadent Threshold Poetics in 2018.
Academic qualifications
- PhD, ‘Decadent Threshold Poetics’, Goldsmiths, University of London 2018
- MA, Twentieth Century Literature and its Contexts, Goldsmiths, University of London 2007
- BA Hons, English and Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths, University of London 2006
- PGCE, Post-Compulsory Education (English), Institute of Education, University of London 2009
Teaching and supervision
Jessica's office is WT406. Please feel free to drop in during her office hour (Tuesdays 1-2) or email for an appointment.
- Decadence
- Introduction to Poetry
- Literature and Power in the Victorian Period
- European Decadence and the Visual Arts
Research interests
Jessica is co-editor, with Alice Condé, of In Cynara’s Shadow: Collected Essays on Ernest Dowson (Peter Lang, 2019) and her chapter ‘‘“Things worldly and things spiritual”: Joris-Karl Huysmans’s À rebours and the house at Fontenay’ appears in Decadence and the Senses (Legenda, 2017). She is also contributing a chapter on ‘Decadence and Interior Design’ to the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on Decadence and her chapter on ‘Decadent Magic’ is due to be published in Magic: A Companion, edited by Katharina Rein (Peter Lang, 2021). Jessica is working on her first monograph on decadent threshold poetics.
Featured publications
2019:
‘From the Drawer to the Cloister: Ernest Dowson’s ‘Poésie Schublade’
In Cynara’s Shadow: Collected Essays on Ernest Dowson, ed. by Alice Condé and Jessica Gossling
2017:
‘“Things worldly and things spiritual”: Joris-Karl Huysmans’s A rebours and the house at Fontenay’
Decadence and the Senses, ed. by Jane Desmarais and Alice Condé
2018:
‘The Devil in the Detail: An Introduction to Decadent Occultism from the Editors’
‘Decadence, Magick, and the Occult’, Volupté: Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies, 1.2
2018:
‘Decadent Threshold Poetics: A Comparative Study of Threshold Space in Charles Baudelaire, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Ernest Dowson, and Arthur Symons’
PhD thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London
Professional projects
Jessica was Editorial Assistant for Cambridge Critical Concepts: Decadence and Literature, ed. by Jane Desmarais and David Weir (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and is Assistant Editor for The Literary Encyclopedia. She is also Deputy Editor of the international Decadence journal Volupté and treasurer of the British Association of Decadence Studies (BADS).
Media engagements
2020:
Free Thinking - Magic
BBC Radio 3
Conferences and talks
2020:
‘Decadent Magic in Arthur Machen’s The Hill of Dreams (1907)’
Magickal Women Summer Salon, Online
2019:
‘Extreme Unction: Decadent Purification in Ernest Dowson’s Catholic Poetry’
Death and the Sacred, Manchester Metropolitan University
2018:
‘White Stains: Aleister Crowley’s Decadent Minimalism’
Decadence, Magic(k), and the Occult, Goldsmiths
2016:
‘Dowson’s ‘Poésie Schublade’
Ernest Dowson (1867-1900): Poet, Translator, Novelist, Goldsmiths
2014:
‘“Things worldly and things spiritual”: The Motif of the Hothouse in J.-K. Huysmans’s À rebours’
Decadence and the Senses, Goldsmiths
2013:
‘Dislocations, Correspondences and the Hothouse: Baudelaire’s Prose Poems’
Goldsmiths Literature Seminar (GLITS)
DMON
Jessica is setting up the Decadence, Magic(k), and Occult Network (DMON) in the Decadence Research Centre.
Please email her if you are interested in this or any other projects related to decadence and occulture.