Emily Cox

Emily Cox is a historian of European modernism in transnational contexts. Her dissertation, Perverse Modernism: 1884-1900, draws a connection between two late-nineteenth-century phenomena: an acceleration of capital, on the one hand, and a remarkable burst of formal experimentation across Europe, on the other. With a novel methodology that tracks four motifs across fine and decorative arts, literature, and philosophy from London and Paris to Brussels, Berlin, Vienna, St. Petersburg and Oslo, her dissertation offers a vision of modernism rooted in a venal transnationalism. Other areas of research and teaching include: ekphrasis and the politics of description; critical theories of ornament; intersections of craft, empire, and incarceration; and literary and visual cultures of the Arctic. Her writing has been published in Art History and Apollo. 

Emily holds a BA with Highest Honors from the University of Virginia and an M.St. from the University of Oxford, where she held an Ertegun Graduate Scholarship in the Humanities. Her research has been supported by the New York Public Library, the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, the British Association for Victorian Studies, the Paul Mellon Centre, the Decorative Arts Trust, and the U.S. Department of Education.