Dr. Sophie Thomas

Biography:

Dr. Thomas joined the English Department at TMU in 2009, after previous posts at the University of Sussex in the UK and the University of Toronto. Her research explores the crosscurrents between visual culture, material culture, and literary texts. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on a variety of topics related to Romanticism, museums, collections and the visual arts, including co-editing the Edinburgh Companion to Romanticism and the Arts; a special issue of Museum and Society, “On the Properties of Things: Collective Knowledge and the Objects of the Museum”; and a forthcoming book, Romanticism and Material Culture: Curiosities, Collections, and the Emergence of the Museum, 1780 - 1830. Her previous book, Romanticism and Visuality: Fragments, History, Spectacle, focused on a variety of ‘sites’ of seeing, and on the impact of new visual media on the literary and historical imagination.

Selected Recent Publications:

“Printing the Land: Bewick, Wordsworth, and the Common Reader,” European Romantic Review 37.3 (September 2026).

“‘Marmoreality:’ Re-Animating the Classical Body in the Romantic Present,” Litteraria Pragensia: Studies in Literature and Culture 35:69 (July 2025). https://litterariapragensia.ff.cuni.cz/magazin/2025-35-69/ (external link) 

“The Visual and Plastic Arts,” Percy Shelley in Context, ed. Ross Wilson (Cambridge University Press, 2025).

“Museum,” Romanticism on the Net (RoN) #80-81 (Spring-Fall 2023). Special issue: Materialising Romanticism, edited by Nicola Watson and Catriona Seth. https://ronjournal.org/articles/n80-81/museum/ (external link) 

The Edinburgh Companion to Romanticism and the Arts, co-edited with Maureen McCue (EUP, 2023).

“Playing ‘Alive’: Performing Sculpture on the Romantic Stage,” The Visual Life of Romantic Theatre, ed. Terry Robinson and Diane Piccitto (University of Michigan Press, 2023).

“The Self-Contained Museum: Romanticism, Collecting, and the Space of Writing,” Museums in Literature: Fictionalising museums, world exhibitions, and private collections, ed. Caroline Marie and Anne Chassagnol (Museums in Literature, Brepols, 2022).

“‘With a master’s hand and prophet’s fire’: Blake’s Illustrations for ‘The Bard,’” Romanticism and Illustration, ed. Susan Matthews and Ian Haywood (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

“A ‘strange and mixed assemblage’: Sir John Soane, Archivist of the Self,” Studies in Romanticism 57:1 (Spring, 2018).

“Word and Image,” The Oxford Handbook of British Romanticism, ed. David Duff (Oxford University Press, 2018).

“Pompeii, the Body, and the Imprint of the Ancient World,” Word & Image 33:3 (September, 2017).

“Collecting, Cultural Memory, and the Regency Museum,” Regency Revisited, ed. Tim Fulford and Michael E. Sinatra (Palgrave, 2016).

Digital Projects and Exhibits:

The Theatre of the Arts: Thomas Hope’s Visionary Gallery Remediated.
https://cdh.rula.info/theatre-of-the-arts/ (external link) 

Inside Out: Representing the Romantic Museum, an online exhibition for Romantic Circles Gallery. Created with the collaboration of Rhys Jeurgensen and Erin McCurdy (March 2024)
https://romantic-circles.org/gallery/exhibit/inside-out-representing-romantic-museum (external link) 

“Denon’s Reliquary,” Romantic Europe: The Virtual Exhibition (RÊVE). Posted 30 August, 2023.
http://www.euromanticism.org/denons-reliquary/ (external link) 

Special Journal Issues:

Museum and Society, Vol. 17:3 (November, 2019). Guest edited, with Janine Rogers: “On the Properties of Things: Collective Knowledge and the Objects of the Museum.” https://journals.le.ac.uk/ojs1/index.php/mas/index (external link) 

Romanticism on the Net (RoN), Vol. 70 (Spring, 2018). Guest edited issue on the theme of “Recollecting the Nineteenth-Century Museum.” https://ronjournal.org/articles/n70/ (external link)