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Staff Profile

Dr James Harriman-Smith

Lecturer in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature

  • Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 7599
  • Personal Website: http://jharrimansmith.net
  • Address: Room 2.13, Percy Building,
    Newcastle University,
    Newcastle upon Tyne,
    NE1 7RU
Background

Role in the School and University

I am a senior lecturer in Restoration and eighteenth-century literature and one of the university's public orators.

Biography

I read English literature at the University of Cambridge, where I won the Harness Essay Prize in 2009, and the Charles Oldham Shakespeare Scholarship in 2010. I was also fortunate to receive an Erasmus scholarship during my degree that allowed me to spend a year studying French, Latin and Greek at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon.

Following time spent teaching English back at the Ecole Normale, I returned to Cambridge for a PhD on the place of Shakespeare and the theatre in the literary culture of the long eighteenth century, both in Britain and France.

I was appointed to a lectureship at Newcastle University in September 2015; I became a trustee of the British Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies in 2018, and one of the university's public orators in 2019. At SELLL I teach on a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, and welcome PhD candidates whose research interests overlap with my own.

Expertise

As a lecturer in Restoration and eighteenth-century literature, my areas of expertise include the literary and intellectual history of (roughly) the period 1660-1830. I have a particular interest in the theatre of this time, and its philosophy (especially aesthetics) too.

I speak French fluently, and have good knowledge of German and Ancient Greek. I am also learning Japanese. Although my research focusses on English literary culture, I always seek to place that culture within a larger, international context.

I have given public lectures in museums and theatres in the North-East, and worked as an academic advisor on productions of eighteenth-century drama. I have also collaborated with local theatre companies around the UK to redevelop actor training methods using historical material. 


Teaching
Undergraduate

I teach, have taught, the following courses:

  • SEL1030: Close Reading (2016-23)
  • SEL1033: Doing Criticism
  • SEL1023: Transformations
  • SEL2202: Writing New Worlds
  • SEL3366: The Ways of the World (2015/6)
  • SEL3389: Stage and Page (2016/7)
  • SEL3392: Between the Acts: English Theatre 1660-1737. You can read examples of some of the work students have produced online. This website offers, for example, an accessible introduction to Catharine Trotter's The Unhappy Penitent (1701).

I also supervise undergraduate dissertations.


Postgraduate

I teach, or have taught, the following courses at Masters level.

  • SEL8188: Reading the Past (2015/6)
  • SEL8535: Intermedialities (2018/9)
  • SEL8680: Thinking through Performance (2019/20)

I have also supervised a range of MLitt dissertations.

Current and past PhD students include:

  • Zhen Gong, Early Modern Utopian Writings and the Just Commonwealth (completed in 2021)
  • Grainne O'Hare, Female Methodist Experience in Print (completed in 2025)
  • Juliana Beykirch, Performing 'Monstrosity' on the British Stage, 1637-1737 (completed in 2025, winner of the university's Humanities and Social Sciences Thesis Prize)
  • Cícero de Almeida Oliveira, The Ludic Artificiality of Louis Jouvet's Body in Cinema (ongoing)
Research

My research concerns what James Boswell, in 1770, called 'literary productions relative to the art of acting': a heterogeneous range of materials from across the long eighteenth century, including letters, biographies, articles, and scholarly editions as well as acting treatises and manuals. Key themes within this work include: celebrity and identity, the theory and performance of the passions, and the transmission of theatrical tradition on both page and stage.

My PhD thesis examined the place of Shakespeare within 'literary productions relative to the art of acting', which represents an important but understudied part of the playwright's legacy. One chapter of that thesis has become a book, called Criticism, Performance, and the Passions: The Art of Transition, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2021.

In 2024 I published What Would Garrick Do? Or, Acting Lessons from the Eighteenth Century. This book opens a dialogue between contemporary theatre professionals and the history of acting; it is one of the fruits of a multi-year collaboration with theatre companies around the UK based on my research. It was shortlisted in 2025 for the STR Theatre Book Prize as one of the best books about English theatre published in 2024.

My current work focusses on the history of the concept of performance, and its relationship to play and games, both in the eighteenth century and beyond it.

Google scholar: Click here.

SCOPUS: Click here.

Publications