Emma Davenport Assistant Professor

Emma Davenport is an assistant professor of English at Emory University, where she specializes in Victorian literature and culture. Her areas of theoretical expertise include novel theory and critical legal theory. She also teaches Anglo-American law and literature, literary and cultural theory, and the history of the novel.

Her current research focuses on the intersection of nineteenth-century novels and legal theories of contract. Reading literature, law, and political theory together, she traces how the Victorian novel challenged liberalism’s insistence that contractual agreement enacts willed consent. An article drawn from this research appears in Victorian Studies.

• PhD, Duke University
• JD, Harvard Law School
• MA, Georgetown University
• BA, Carleton College