Professional Statement
I work on Victorian literature and the history of childhood; my research interests also include the intersection of religious and literary discourse, particularly in spiritual autobiography. My dissertation, Bower of Books: Reading Children in Nineteenth-Century British Literature, explores the function of the reading and readable child subject in four key Victorian genres: the philosophical treatise, the Bildungsroman, the fantasy novel, and the autobiography. Authors whose work I consider in the project include Maria Edgeworth, Charlotte Brontë, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Charles Kingsley, Harriet Martineau, John Ruskin, and Walter Scott.
I am especially devoted to the teaching of literature and composition and I have designed and taught a variety of courses across my research interests. For the 2011-2012 academic year, I am serving as the Berkeley English Department's Assistant Pedagogy Coordinator. During the 2010-2011 academic year, I was a Graduate Student Researcher at UC Berkeley's GSI Teaching & Research Center, where I helped to coordinate the "How Students Learn" initiative.
Specialties
Selected Publications and Papers Delivered
Publications
"Child Consumers and the Invention of Children's Literature." Review of The Child Reader 1700-1840 by M. O. Grenby. Children’s Literature 40 (2012): 251-255.
Review of The Mind of the Child: Child Development in Literature, Science, and Medicine, 1840-1900, by Sally Shuttleworth. The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 4.3 (Fall 2011): 512-514.
Conference Papers
“Evacuees from London: Child Flight in Carrie’s War and A Tale of Time City,” Pacific Ancient & Modern Languages Association, Seattle University, October 19-21, 2012
“The Victorian Sage at Play,” North American Victorian Studies Association, Vanderbilt, Nov. 3-6, 2011
“An Imaginary Pupil: Rousseau Between Locke and the Novel,” British Association for Romantic Studies, University of Glasgow, July 28-31, 2011
“Reading Children in the Victorian Bildungsroman,” Society for the History of Children and Youth, Teachers College and Columbia University, New York, June 23-25, 2011
“Shrinking Bodies, Expanding Scopes: Diminutive Omniscience in the Victorian Child Fantasy Novel,” North American Victorian Studies Association, Montréal, Nov. 11-13, 2010; NAVSA Grad Paper Prize Honorable Mention
“Harriet Martineau’s Narrative Migrations,” British Women Writers Conference, Texas A&M, April 8-10, 2010
“Reading Naturalism as Fairy Tale: Jane Eyre and Bewick’s History of British Birds,” Dickens Winter Conference, UCLA, Feb. 13-15, 2010
“‘Something better that’s not a dream’: Carlylean Faith and Doubt in the Victorian Fantasy Novel,” Pacific Ancient and Modern Languages Assn., San Francisco State, Nov. 6-7, 2009
“‘A carefully conned lesson’: Schoolroom Theatrics in the Victorian Female Bildungsroman,” Berkeley-Stanford Conference in English Literature, Stanford, April 25, 2009
“‘The children could not read her name’: Didacticism and Mythic Femininity in At the Back of the North Wind and The Water-Babies,” (dis)junctions 2009, UC Riverside, April 3-4, 2009
“Ow(n)ing Matthew Arnold: The Contemporary Humanities Crisis and the Victorian Sage,” Berkeley-Stanford Conference in English Literature, Stanford, April 14, 2007
“‘By circumstance, and selection, and competition’: Darwinism and Detritus in Kingsley’s Water-Babies,” Modern Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature, Middle Tennessee State, March 29-31, 2007
“‘Myself maun bear the blame’: Structuring Feminine Power and Voice in the ‘Tam Lin’ Ballad,” Scottish Romanticism in World Literatures, UC Berkeley, Sept. 7-10, 2006
Current Research
In addition to my dissertation research, I am currently working on a project to survey Victorian books of natural history written for child readers.
Recent English Courses Taught
Fall, 2013
| 190/15 | Research Seminar: Studies in Children's Literature |
Research Seminars |