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Dr Emily Cock
Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History
School of History, Archaeology and Religion
- Available for postgraduate supervision
Overview
I am a Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History in SHARE with broad interests in medicine and disability c.1600-1800.
I joined Cardiff through a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, Fragile Faces: Disfigurement in Britain and its Colonies (1600–1850). Fragile Faces explores the threat, experience and representation of facial disfigurement in Britain and its colonies in Virginia, Massachusetts and Australia from 1600 to 1850. I investigate what facial differences were considered disfiguring and how these differed between and within each region, with regard to assumptions of individual and group identity, disability, violence and legal approaches to disfigurement, gender and sexuality, and developing national and racial boundaries. My analysis challenges and critiques certain notions of facial normativity that are employed today in medical and legal frameworks, and the relation of facial difference to stigma and disability. I am also a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker (2019).
Publication
2025
- Cock, E. 2025. Cripping the convict archive. In: Hunt-Kennedy, S. and Barclay, J. eds. Cripping the Archive: Disability, History and Power. University of Illinois Press
2024
- Cock, E. 2024. Portraiture and disability: Cripping retrospective diagnosis. Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 20(1)
2023
- Cock, E. 2023. Monstrosity. [Online]. Reading Early Medicine. Available at: https://reademed.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/article/monstrosity
- Cock, E. 2023. Facial disfigurement, madness, and the royal touch in early modern Britain: reconsidering Arise Evans. Disability Studies Quarterly 42(3-4)
- Cock, E. 2023. Alanna Skuse. Surgery and selfhood in Early Modern England: Altered bodies and contexts of identity. [Book Review]. Journal of British Studies 62(1), pp. 255-266. (10.1017/jbr.2022.196)
2022
- Cock, E. 2022. Disability. [Online]. Reading Early Medicine. Available at: https://reademed.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/article/disability
2021
- Cock, E. 2021. Noelle Gallagher. Itch, Clap, Pox: Venereal disease in the eighteenth-century imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. Pp. 288. $65.00 (cloth). Journal of British Studies 60(1), pp. 193-195. (10.1017/jbr.2020.169)
2020
- Cock, E. 2020. Of the mouths (and noses) of babes. The New Female Spectator 4(Summer), pp. 28-29.
- 2020. Hester Pulter's "Poem 60: to Sir William Davenant: Upon the Unspeakable Loss of the Most Conspicuous and Chief Ornament of His Frontispiece" [Critical Annotated Edition]. The Pulter Project. Available at: https://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/poems/ae/to-sir-william-davenant-upon-the-unspeakable-loss-of-the-most-conspicuous-and-chief-ornament-of-his-frontispiece/
2019
- Cock, E. 2019. Proportionate maiming: The origins of Thomas Jefferson's provisions for facial disfigurement in Bill 64. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 29, pp. 157-151. (10.1017/S0080440119000069)
- Cock, E. and Skinner, P. 2019. (Dis)functional faces: signs of the monstrous?. In: Godden, R. and Mittman, A. S. eds. Embodied Difference: Monstrosity, Disability, and the Posthuman in the Medieval and Early Modern World. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 85-106.
- Cock, E. 2019. Rhinoplasty and the nose in early modern British medicine and culture. Social Histories of Medicine. Manchester University Press.
- Cock, E. 2019. Wounded: ‘A small Scar will be much discerned’: treating facial wounds in early modern Britain. Science Museum Group Journal 11(11) (10.15180/191111)
2018
- Skinner, P. and Cock, E. eds. 2018. Approaches to facial difference: past and present. Facialities: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Human Face. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
- Cock, E. 2018. In dock, out nettle: health and danger in the Early Modern garden. In: Skinner, P. and Herbert McAvoy, L. eds. The Medieval and Early Modern Garden in Britain: Enclosure and Transformation, 1200-1750. Routledge, pp. 70-70.
- Cock, E. 2018. Affecting glory from vices: negotiating shame in prostitution texts, 1660-1750. In: Maddern, P. and McEwan, J. eds. Performing Emotions in the Medieval and Early Modern World. Early European Research Brepols, pp. 27-50., (10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.115225)
- Cock, E. and Skinner, P. 2018. Introduction: situating the different face. In: Cock, E. and Skinner, P. eds. Approaching Facial Difference: Past and Present. Bloomsbury, pp. 1-8.
2017
- Cock, E. 2017. 'He would by no means risque his Reputation': patient and doctor shame in Daniel Turner's De Morbis Cutaneis (1714) and Syphilis (1717). Medical Humanities 43(4), pp. 231-237. (10.1136/medhum-2016-011057)
2016
- Cock, E. 2016. The à la mode disease: syphilis and temporality. In: Wetherall-Dickson, L. and Ingram, A. eds. Disease and Death in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture: Fashioning the Unfashionable. Palgrave Macmillan
- Cock, E. 2016. Reading humility in early modern England by Jennifer Clement [Book Review]. Parergon 33(1), pp. 203-204. (10.1353/pgn.2016.0017)
2015
- Cock, E. 2015. ‘The Body and Shame: Phenomenology, Feminism, and the Socially Shaped Body’ by Luna Dolezal (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015) [Book Review]. [Online]. www.centreformedicalhumanities.org: Centre for Medical Humanities (Durham). Available at: https://www.centreformedicalhumanities.org/the-body-and-shame-phenomenology-feminism-and-the-socially-shaped-body-reviewed-by-dr-emily-cock/
- Cock, E. 2015. 'Lead[ing] 'em by the Nose into Publick Shame and Derision': Gaspare Tagliacozzi, Alexander Read and the lost history of plastic surgery, 1600-1800. Social History of Medicine 28(1), pp. 1-21. (10.1093/shm/hku070)
- Cock, E. 2015. 'Off dropped the sympathetic snout': Shame, sympathy, and plastic surgery at the beginning of the long eighteenth century. In: Lemmings, D. and Phiddian, R. eds. Passions, Sympathy and Print Culture: Public Opinion and Emotional Authenticity in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 145-164.
- Cock, E. 2015. Medical consulting by letter in France, 1665–1789 by Robert Weston [Book Review]. Parergon 32(2), pp. 369-370. (10.1353/pgn.2015.0090)
- Cock, E. 2015. 'Nonsence is rebellion?': John Taylor's Nonsence upon Sence, or Sence, upon Nonsence (1651-1654) and the English Civil War. Ceræ: An Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 2
Articles
- Cock, E. 2024. Portraiture and disability: Cripping retrospective diagnosis. Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 20(1)
- Cock, E. 2023. Facial disfigurement, madness, and the royal touch in early modern Britain: reconsidering Arise Evans. Disability Studies Quarterly 42(3-4)
- Cock, E. 2023. Alanna Skuse. Surgery and selfhood in Early Modern England: Altered bodies and contexts of identity. [Book Review]. Journal of British Studies 62(1), pp. 255-266. (10.1017/jbr.2022.196)
- Cock, E. 2021. Noelle Gallagher. Itch, Clap, Pox: Venereal disease in the eighteenth-century imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. Pp. 288. $65.00 (cloth). Journal of British Studies 60(1), pp. 193-195. (10.1017/jbr.2020.169)
- Cock, E. 2020. Of the mouths (and noses) of babes. The New Female Spectator 4(Summer), pp. 28-29.
- Cock, E. 2019. Proportionate maiming: The origins of Thomas Jefferson's provisions for facial disfigurement in Bill 64. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 29, pp. 157-151. (10.1017/S0080440119000069)
- Cock, E. 2019. Wounded: ‘A small Scar will be much discerned’: treating facial wounds in early modern Britain. Science Museum Group Journal 11(11) (10.15180/191111)
- Cock, E. 2017. 'He would by no means risque his Reputation': patient and doctor shame in Daniel Turner's De Morbis Cutaneis (1714) and Syphilis (1717). Medical Humanities 43(4), pp. 231-237. (10.1136/medhum-2016-011057)
- Cock, E. 2016. Reading humility in early modern England by Jennifer Clement [Book Review]. Parergon 33(1), pp. 203-204. (10.1353/pgn.2016.0017)
- Cock, E. 2015. 'Lead[ing] 'em by the Nose into Publick Shame and Derision': Gaspare Tagliacozzi, Alexander Read and the lost history of plastic surgery, 1600-1800. Social History of Medicine 28(1), pp. 1-21. (10.1093/shm/hku070)
- Cock, E. 2015. Medical consulting by letter in France, 1665–1789 by Robert Weston [Book Review]. Parergon 32(2), pp. 369-370. (10.1353/pgn.2015.0090)
- Cock, E. 2015. 'Nonsence is rebellion?': John Taylor's Nonsence upon Sence, or Sence, upon Nonsence (1651-1654) and the English Civil War. Ceræ: An Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 2
Book sections
- Cock, E. 2025. Cripping the convict archive. In: Hunt-Kennedy, S. and Barclay, J. eds. Cripping the Archive: Disability, History and Power. University of Illinois Press
- Cock, E. and Skinner, P. 2019. (Dis)functional faces: signs of the monstrous?. In: Godden, R. and Mittman, A. S. eds. Embodied Difference: Monstrosity, Disability, and the Posthuman in the Medieval and Early Modern World. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 85-106.
- Cock, E. 2018. In dock, out nettle: health and danger in the Early Modern garden. In: Skinner, P. and Herbert McAvoy, L. eds. The Medieval and Early Modern Garden in Britain: Enclosure and Transformation, 1200-1750. Routledge, pp. 70-70.
- Cock, E. 2018. Affecting glory from vices: negotiating shame in prostitution texts, 1660-1750. In: Maddern, P. and McEwan, J. eds. Performing Emotions in the Medieval and Early Modern World. Early European Research Brepols, pp. 27-50., (10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.115225)
- Cock, E. and Skinner, P. 2018. Introduction: situating the different face. In: Cock, E. and Skinner, P. eds. Approaching Facial Difference: Past and Present. Bloomsbury, pp. 1-8.
- Cock, E. 2016. The à la mode disease: syphilis and temporality. In: Wetherall-Dickson, L. and Ingram, A. eds. Disease and Death in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture: Fashioning the Unfashionable. Palgrave Macmillan
- Cock, E. 2015. 'Off dropped the sympathetic snout': Shame, sympathy, and plastic surgery at the beginning of the long eighteenth century. In: Lemmings, D. and Phiddian, R. eds. Passions, Sympathy and Print Culture: Public Opinion and Emotional Authenticity in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 145-164.
Books
- Cock, E. 2019. Rhinoplasty and the nose in early modern British medicine and culture. Social Histories of Medicine. Manchester University Press.
- Skinner, P. and Cock, E. eds. 2018. Approaches to facial difference: past and present. Facialities: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Human Face. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Monographs
- 2020. Hester Pulter's "Poem 60: to Sir William Davenant: Upon the Unspeakable Loss of the Most Conspicuous and Chief Ornament of His Frontispiece" [Critical Annotated Edition]. The Pulter Project. Available at: https://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/poems/ae/to-sir-william-davenant-upon-the-unspeakable-loss-of-the-most-conspicuous-and-chief-ornament-of-his-frontispiece/
Websites
- Cock, E. 2023. Monstrosity. [Online]. Reading Early Medicine. Available at: https://reademed.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/article/monstrosity
- Cock, E. 2022. Disability. [Online]. Reading Early Medicine. Available at: https://reademed.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/article/disability
- Cock, E. 2015. ‘The Body and Shame: Phenomenology, Feminism, and the Socially Shaped Body’ by Luna Dolezal (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015) [Book Review]. [Online]. www.centreformedicalhumanities.org: Centre for Medical Humanities (Durham). Available at: https://www.centreformedicalhumanities.org/the-body-and-shame-phenomenology-feminism-and-the-socially-shaped-body-reviewed-by-dr-emily-cock/
Teaching
I teach undergraduate modules on early modern history (including a third-year module on early modern health), and undergraduate and MA modules on historical practice, especially gender and disability histories.
Biography
I hold a PhD from the University of Adelaide (Australia). I have held research positions at Winchester, Swansea and Adelaide universities, and further fellowships including Chawton House, the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies (ICJS), the Barr Smith Library (Adelaide), the Leverhulme Trust, and the Learned Society of Wales.
Professional Memberships
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
Social History of Medicine Editorial Board (2021–)
Series Co-Editor (Early Modern) for Facialities (Bloomsbury Press) (2020–)
Learned Society of Wales Advisory Group for the Development of Researchers, ECR Rep (2022–)
Institute for Historical Research (London) Review Board (Dec 2019–)
Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies
Society for the Social History of Medicine (UK)
Disability History Association (USA)
The Early Modern Book Project
Contact Details
CockE@cardiff.ac.uk
+44 29208 76104
John Percival Building, Room Room 4.33, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10 3EU
+44 29208 76104
John Percival Building, Room Room 4.33, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10 3EU
