Who: Dr. Tom Ue
Where: Cape Breton University, Sydney, Canada
What: Assistant Professor in English of the Long Nineteenth Century
Photo Credit: Corey Katz
I’ve always cherished the process of, and the friendships that emerge from, collaborating, especially with my students. As I routinely tell them, the next great book and the next great essay are the ones that they will be writing.
I want to call you a “super publisher”, because ever since I have known you, you have written and published a lot. Tell us a bit about your teaching, research, and writing.
My research, teaching, and service truly come together to develop my overarching program: a reconsideration of the global nineteenth century that reveals the close correspondence between canonical and less canonical writers, foregrounds the commonalities and differences in their thinking, and illustrates the persistence of their concerns in our own times. For example, my service work as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Popular Film and Television directly informs my teaching of courses in film and popular culture. These activities have encouraged me, in turn, to think and write more extensively about cinema. I work through ideas in the classroom with my students and I write them up almost immediately thereafter. I also work very closely with my RAs. In 2025, I have essays forthcoming in the Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance and from Edinburgh UP and from State U of New York P.
I have also been thinking, researching, and writing more and more about the theory and practice of teaching, and this is a direct consequence of the many workshops and activities organized by our sterling Centre for Teaching and Learning at Cape Breton University. I co-wrote, with my RA Kristofer Starzomski-Wilson, an essay for Short Film Studies on teaching gender in Doug Murphy’s “True Colors” (2017) from Justice League Action Shorts (2016-18); and I’m at work on a separate book chapter about teaching and activism in Star Wars Episodes I-III (1999-2005) for a collection edited by my friend and colleague Carolin Kreber (Routledge). Last year, I edited a forum of essays on How We Teach Today in Victorian Review.
You have also co-authored and co-edited articles and books. How do you normally manage the collaboration process?
I’ve always cherished the process of, and the friendships that emerge from, collaborating, especially with my students. As I routinely tell them, the next great book and the next great essay are the ones that they will be writing. I have successfully mentored students to revise their essays for presentation at academic conferences, both online and in person, and for publication in journals such as Essays in Criticism (2020) and in periodicals including Film Matters (2022, 2019, and 2018). My process varies from collaborator to collaborator. One of the aspects that I find most rewarding is the discovery of that very process.
Your first book, ‘Gissing, Shakespeare, and the Life of Writing,’ was based on the research you did for your PhD at UCL. What was the process of turning your PhD dissertation into a book like? Do you have any advice for early career scholars hoping to publish their first work?
My PhD project is becoming three books: a monograph (Edinburgh UP); a critical edition (Edinburgh UP); and a reader’s companion (Liverpool UP). I’d recommend taking some time away from the PhD project and working on others in the interim. I have grown much as a person, as a scholar, and as a writer since I completed my PhD; and I think the emergent scholarship is all the better for it. I’ve also learned a great deal both from teaching, supervising, and mentoring our wonderful students here at Cape Breton University—they are excellent interlocutors and the ideal readers that I have in mind as I’m writing—and from reading the numerous manuscripts that we receive for the Journal of Popular Film and Television and for Book 2.0.
What you are currently working on and what’s the next publication of yours that we can look forward to?
This Reading Week, I’ll be heading to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., with my RA Callum McNutt. This work will contribute to my upcoming monograph on Superman’s son Jon Kent for the University Press of Mississippi. My other projects include several essays on Gissing (Edinburgh UP and Manchester UP). As noted, I have a continuing interest in nineteenth-century afterlife: I’m co-writing, with Callum, an essay on Bridgerton (Wiley-Blackwell), and we’ll be reviewing some of the productions that we’ll be seeing in Washington in Theatre Journal and the Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance. I’ve just written on Matthieu Delaporte’s and Alexandre de La Patellière’s The Count of Monte Cristo (2024) for the latter.
I joined the flagship Center for Henry James Studies as Advisory Editor in 2023; and we are producing a volume of The Complete Letters of Henry James (U of Nebraska P) every year.
Finally, I am always looking for my next book to read. Any recommendations?
I’m currently (re)reading all of James’ fiction. He’s a fantastic writer, and I just love the rhythm of his prose. There are many excellent new books: I have been recommending John Guillory’s On Close Reading (U of Chicago P) to everyone. It’s a fantastic primer on how our discipline “works.” Caroline Levine’s The Activist Humanist: Form and Method in the Climate Crisis (Princeton UP), a kind of sequel to Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network (also Princeton UP), speaks to so many of my interests; and I’ve learned much from Caroline as a person, as an academic, and as an activist.
This interview is part of the Interview with a Scholar series.