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Department of English

Jessie Hock

Associate Professor of English

Jessie Hock is assistant professor of English at Vanderbilt University, with a secondary appointment in French and Italian and an affiliation in Gender and Sexuality Studies. She works on English and continental Renaissance and early modern poetry, the history of materialist thought, classical reception history, and contemporary philosophy and critical theory. Her first book, The Erotics of Materialism: Lucretius and Early Modern Poetics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021), shows how early modern poets read Lucretius's De rerum natura, the most complete extant exposition of classical atomist philosophy, as a treatise on the poetic imagination, initiating an atomist genealogy at the heart of the lyric tradition. Her recent publications include essays on Lucretius, Michel de Montaigne, Margaret Cavendish, John Milton, Gilles Deleuze, and Remy Belleau, and she is also the co-translator (with Alex Dubilet) of two book by contemporary French philosopher, François Laruelle. Her current book project tracks the influence of Lucretian materialism on 20th and 21st century philosophy and theory.

 

 

 

Representative publications

Articles and Book Chapters:

Book:

  •  2021 The Erotics of Materialism: Lucretius and Early Modern Poetics (University of Pennsylvania Press (Reviews in Renaissance and Reformation, Cambridge Quarterly)


Articles and Book Chapters:

  •   “Voluptuous Style: Lucretian Rhetoric and Reception in Montaigne’s ‘Sur des vers de Virgile,’” Modern Philology 118.4 (May 2021). 
  • “Fanciful Poetics and Skeptical Epistemology in Margaret Cavendish’s Poems and Fancies,” Studies in Philology 115.4 (Fall 2018): 766-802. 
  • “The Mind Is Its Own Place: Lucretian Moral Philosophy in Paradise Lost,” in Milton’s Modernities: Essays on the Poet and His Influence, ed. Feisal G. Mohammed and Patrick Fadely. “Rethinking the Early Modern” Series, Northwestern University Press, 2017. Pages 67-83. 
  • “A Broken Line: Lucretian Lineage in The Logic of Sense,” in Speculation, Heresy, and Gnosis in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion: The Enigmatic Absolute, ed. Joshua Ramey and Matthew Farris. “Reframing Continental Philosophy of Religion” Series, Rowan and Littlefield, Intl., 2016. Pages 61-72. 
  • "Chaos with Spectator: Lucretian Perspectives in Paradise Lost,” in Milton’s Modernities: Essays on the Poet and His Influence, ed. Patrick Fadely and Feisal G. Mohammed. “Rethinking the Early Modern” Series, Northwestern University Press. (Fall 2015.)
  • “Waging Loving War: Lucretius and the Poetry of Remy Belleau,” The Romanic Review 104.3-4. (May-November 2013) (actual date of publication Spring 2015)

 

Translations:

  • Translation, with Alex Dubilet (French to English): François Laruelle, A Biography of Ordinary Man, Polity Press. (February 2018)
  • Translation, with Alex Dubilet (French to English): François Laruelle, General Theory of Victims, Polity Press. (April 2015)

 

Book Reviews:

  • Review of Love’s Wounds, by Cynthia N. Nazarian, in H-France Review, Vol. 19 (May 2019), No. x. 
  • Review of The Worldmakers, by Ayesha Ramachandran, in Modern Philology, 114.3 (February 2017): E157-9.
  • Review of The Birth of Theory, by Andrew Cole, in Modern Philology, 113.2 (November 2015). 

 

Forthcoming Publications:

  • “‘Vayne ayrey Vnsubstantiall things’: Materialism and Poetic Afterlives in the Lyrics of Lucy Hutchinson and Margaret Cavendish.” Accepted for publication at English Literary Renaissance, forthcoming 2022. 
  • “Pleasure’s Swerve: Philology between Lucretius, Derrida, and Deleuze.” Accepted for publication at Comparative Literature, forthcoming 2023.