Walls of Words

Nicole Lobdell

Nicole Lobdell is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English in 19th-century British literature at DePauw University in Greencastle, IN.

 

 

RevLast updated August 17, 2024

CURRENT POSITIONS

2022-Present
Assistant Professor of English
Louisiana Scholars’ College
Northwestern State University of Louisiana (Natchitoches, LA)

Editor of Nineteenth Century Studies (2023-present)

Webmaster for Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (2023-present)

PAST EMPLOYMENT

2016 – 2022      Visiting Assistant Professor, English Department, DePauw University (Greencastle, IN)

Affiliate faculty in DePauw’s Honors Program, Global Health Program, the Prindle Institute for Ethics, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and the World Literature Program.

2013 – 2016      Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Georgia Tech (Atlanta, GA)

EDUCATION

2013      PhD, English, University of Georgia                                                                                   

2007      MA, English, University of Georgia                                                                                     

2005      BA, English, Rhodes College     

 

RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS

Primary Fields: 19th- and 20th-century British and World literature; health humanities; gender and sexuality studies

Secondary Fields: Genre and poetics; Gothic literature; history of science and technology; science fiction

AWARDS, FELLOWSHIPS, AND GRANTS

2024 Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award, Northwestern State University

2024     Huntington-Oxford Fellowship; Lincoln College, University of Oxford (UK) (one-month residency in college with privileges)

2024     Faculty Research Support Grant, Northwestern State University of Louisiana ($1000)

2023     Harry Ransom Center Research Fellowship ($3500)

2023     Faculty Research Support Grant, Northwestern State University of Louisiana ($1000)

2022     Huntington Library Research Fellowship ($3500)

2021     Amy M. Braddock Award, Summer Research Stipend, DePauw University ($1000)

2021     Faculty Research Summer Award, DePauw University ($3000)

2020     Amy M. Braddock Award, Summer Research Stipend, DePauw University ($1000)

2020     Growing Inclusive Excellence in STEM Grant, funded by HHMI; “Medical Humanities Reading Group at DePauw University” ($600)

2020     Fisher Course Reassignment Award, DePauw University (course release)

2019     NEH Summer Institute Fellowship; East-West Center for Asian Studies, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI ($3500)

2019     Faculty Research Summer Award, DePauw University ($3000)

2017     Amy M. Braddock Award, Summer Research Stipend, DePauw University ($1000)

2015     LMC Summer Research/Creativity Grant, Georgia Tech ($1200)

2012     Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, University of Georgia         

2009     Travel Award, North American Victorian Studies Association ($600)

2009     Travel Award, UGA Foreign Travel Assistance Program ($800)

2008     Travel Award, North American Victorian Studies Association ($400)

2008     Travel Award, Appleby Fund, University of Georgia ($600)

2007     Robert E. Park Award, Best Essay by a Graduate Student, University of Georgia ($500)

                        

PUBLICATIONS

Books

Bithia Mary Croker: Short Stories, Routledge (under contract)

2024 X-RAY, Bloomsbury, Object Lessons series, 152 pages. Reviewed on MedHum.org.

2018 H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man, including critical introduction, footnotes, and appendices. Co-edited with Nancee Reeves (University of Georgia). Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2018. 226 pages. Reviewed in Science Fiction Studies (46.3)

 

Articles and Book Chapters

2024 “She was Mrs. Shelley: The First Biography of Mary Shelley” invited to submit to Literary Studies in the Imagination (John Hopkins UP) (article in progress)

2023 Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” for Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, 2023. (book chapter).

2022 “Ethical Simulation Games in the Liberal Arts Classroom: Civilization V, SimEarth, and Sweatshop” written with Harry Brown in Teaching Games and Game Studies in the Literature Classroom, edited by Tison Pugh and Lynn Ramey, Bloomsbury, 2022. pp. 111-20. (book chapter)

2021 “Immortal Voices” Nineteenth-Century Contexts, vol. 43, no. 5, 2021, pp. 561-65. (article)

2018 Coining Counterfeit Culture: Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market” in “Imitation and Forgery [Special Issue] Victorian Network, vol. 8, no. 1, Dec 2018, pp. 5-27. https://www.victoriannetwork.org/index.php/vn/article/view/82 (article)

2018 “Digging at the Roots: Martha Redbone’s The Garden of Love: Songs of William Blake.” Rock and Romanticism: An Anthology. Ed. James Rovira. Lexington Books, 2018. pp. 51-64. (book chapter)

2016 “‘The Invisible Girl’: Gender and Form in Mary Shelley’s Short Stories.” Critical Insights: Mary Shelley. Ed. Virginia Brackett. Amenia, NY: Salem Press, 2016. 162-76. Print. (book chapter)

 

Guest-Edited Journals

2018 (author and editor) "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at 200." [Special Issue]. Co-edited with Michael Griffin, School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Georgia Tech. Science Fiction Studies 45.2 (July 2018): 225-28. (link to Table of Contents)

 2015 (author and editor) "Nineteenth-Century Mobilities" [Special Issue]. Co-edited with Narin Hassan, School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Georgia Tech. Nineteenth-Century Contexts 37.5 (2015): 387-90. (link to Table of Contents)

2015 (author and editor) "Illustration and Gender: Drawing the Nineteenth Century." [Special Issue]. Co-edited with Kate Holterhoff, Department of English, Carnegie Mellon. Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies 11.2 (2015). 22 July 2015.  http://www.ncgsjournal.com/issue112/issue112.htm

Short Essays

2020 “Never Dead: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” Review essay of Global Frankenstein, edited by Carol Margaret Davison and Marie Mulvey-Roberts (Palgrave McMillan, 2018) and Transmedia Creatures: Frankenstein’s Afterlives, edited by Francesca Saggini and Anna Enrichetta Soccio (U of Bucknell P, 2019). Reviewed in Science Fiction Studies, vol. 47, no. 2, 2020, pp. 253-261.

2020 “The Value of Things After the V21 Manifesto” Review essay of Paraphernalia! Victorian Objects. Edited by Helen Klingstone and Kate Lister. Routledge, 2018. Reviewed in Nineteenth-Century Prose, vol. 47, no. 1, 2020, pp. 277-282.

2017 “Margaret Fuller.” Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 381: Writers on Women’s Rights and United States Suffrage, edited by George P. Anderson, Gale Cengage, 2017, pp. 122-130.

Public Scholarship

2019 “A Curious New Woman: Veronica Speedwell” Nursing Clio: Romancing Clio Series. 12 Dec. 2019, https://nursingclio.org/2019/12/12/a-curious-new-woman-veronica-speedwell/

Book Reviews

2024 Equal Natures: Popular Brain Science and Victorian Women’s Writing, by Shalyn Claggett, SUNY, 2023. Reviewed in Nineteenth-Century Contexts vol. 43, no. 3, 2024.

2020 Dickensian Affects: Charles Dickens and Feelings of Precarity, by Joshua Gooch, Routledge, 2019. Reviewed in Victorian Review, vol. 46, no. 1, 2020, pp. 135-138.

2019 Drawing on the Victorians: The Palimpsest of Victorian and Neo-Victorian Graphic Texts. Edited by Anna Maria Jones and Rebecca N. Mitchell. Ohio UP, 2017. Reviewed in Nineteenth-Century Contexts. Reviewed in Nineteenth-Century Contexts, vol. 41, no. 2, 2019.

2018 The Alchemy of Empire: Abject Materials and the Technologies of Colonialism, by Rajani Sudan, Fordham UP, 2016. Reviewed in Configurations, vol. 26, no. 1, 2018, pp. 109-110.

2016 Thomas Hardy’s Brains: Psychology, Neurology, and Hardy’s Imagination, by Suzanne Keen. The Ohio State UP, 2014. Reviewed in Victorian Network, Special Issue: “Victorian Brains,” vol. 7, no. 1, 2016, pp. 148-52. http://www.victoriannetwork.org/index.php/vn/issue/view/12

2016 The Buried Life of Things: How Objects Made History in Nineteenth-Century Britain, by Simon Goldhill. Cambridge UP, 2014. Reviewed in Nineteenth-Century Studies, Online Reviews, 2016. http://english.selu.edu/ncs/Materiality.php

2015 The Rhetoric of Retelling Old Romances: Medievalist Poetry by Alfred Tennyson and William Morris, by Yoshiko Seki, EIHŌSHA, 2015. Reviewed in Medievally Speaking, 30 Oct. 2015.

2015 Women’s Ghost Literature in Nineteenth-Century Britain, by Melissa Edmundson Makala, U of Cardiff P, 2013. Reviewed in Supernatural Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, 2015, pp. 201-2.

2015 The Hidden Jane Austen, by John Wiltshire. Cambridge UP, 2014. Reviewed in JASNA News, vol. 31, no. 1, 2015, pp. 16.

2015 Bram Stoker, Dracula and the Victorian Gothic Stage, by Catherine Wynne. Palgrave, 2013. Reviewed in ELT 1880-1920, vol. 58, no. 2, 2015, pp. 272-75.

2014 Literary Bric-à-Brac and the Victorians: From Commodities to Oddities, edited by Jonathon Shears and Jen Harrison, Ashgate, 2013. Reviewed in The Oxonian Review, vol. 26, no. 4, 24 Nov. 2014. http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/bric-a-brac/

PRESENTATIONS

Invited Talks and Presentations

2024 “Jane Austen’s Medical World.” University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, Honors English.

2022   “Culture of the Invisible: X-rays in the Popular Imagination.” Colgate University, Global Public and Environmental Health.

2021   “Gothic Science: X-rays and The Invisible Man.” University of Florida, Department of English.

2021   “Gothic Science: X-rays and The Invisible Man.” University of Southern Indiana, Department of English.

2021   “Bithia Mary Croker: Ireland’s Lost Writer.” DePauw University, Works-in-Progress Faculty Series.

2020   “The Ethics of Storytelling” in “Ethics and Pandemics: Examining the Critical Issues Raised by Covid-19.” DePauw University, Prindle Institute for Ethics (June 2020)

2020   “The Invisible Man: How Science and Technology Created a Legend.” University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Department of English (April 2020)

2019   “Gothic Medicine: X-Rays and Science Fiction.” DePauw University, Faculty Scholarly and Artistic Forum (October 2019)

2017 “Building the Video Game Canon” DePauw University, Art Department, Peeler Art Center.

Select Conference Presentations

2025 “The Short Book: Brevity in Scholarship” Roundtable (Organizer & Presider), MLA 2025, New Orleans, LA (January 2025)

2024     “Stranger Than Fiction: The First Biography of Mary Shelley.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies, Cincinnati, OH (March 2024)

2023     Roundtable on “Publishing,” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies, Knoxville, TN (April 2023)

2023     “‘She was Mrs. Shelley’: On Making the First Biographies of Mary Shelley.” Nineteenth-Century Studies Association, Sacramento, CA. (March 2023)

2022 Invited Round Table: Unprecedented Disruptions, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS). Salt Lake City, UT (March 2022)

2021     “Bithia Mary Croker: 100 Years Later.” Nineteenth-Century Studies Association, Virtual Conference. (March 2021)

2019     “Bithia Mary Croker: The Secret in the Story.”  North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA). Columbus, OH. (October 2019)

2019   “Defaced, Destroyed, Beheaded, Replaced: Vandalizing Queen Victoria.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS). Dallas, TX. (March 2019)

2018    “No Longer Within: How X-Rays Transformed the Victorian Body.” North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA). St. Petersburg, FL. (October 2018)

2018     “H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man: Teaching the Invisible in 2018.” Roundtable Participant. Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA). Pittsburgh, PA. (April 2018)

2018     “Diurnal Time in the Early Poetry of Emily Brontë.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS). San Francisco, CA. (March 2018)

2017     “Albinism in the Nineteenth Century.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS). Muhlenberg College. Philadelphia, PA. (March 2017)

2016     “False Scenes: Mary Shelley’s Short Stories.” British Women Writer’s Conference (BWWC). University of Georgia. Athens, GA. (June 2016)

2016     “‘Most Precious Treasures’: A History of Hoarding.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS). Appalachian State University. Asheville, NC. (March 2016)

2015     “The Mutability of Men: H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS). Georgia Institute of Technology. Atlanta, GA (April 2015)

2012     “‘Walls of Words’: Novel Hoardings.” North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA). University of Wisconsin. Madison, WI. (September 2012)

2011     “Bleak House: Dickens’s Little Shop of Hoarders.” Victorians Institute. Coastal Carolina University. Myrtle Beach, SC. (October 2011)

2008     “Railway Mania, or The Failure of Common Sense.” North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA). Yale University. New Haven, CT. (November 2008)

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Louisiana Scholars’ College at Northwestern State University of Louisiana (2022-present)

ENG 4210: LGBTQ+ Literature Survey

ENG 3890: Jane Austen

ENG 3590: Magical Realism

ENG 3520: Global Gothic Literature

ENG 2000: American & British Literature Seminar

MHU 4000: Seminar in Medical Humanities:

SCRT 181W: The Interdisciplinary Study of Gender

SCTT 1810: Texts & Traditions I (from Gilgamesh to Oedipus)

SCTT 1820: Texts & Traditions II (from Plato to Boethius)

SCTT 2810: Texts & Traditions III (from Aquinas to Margaret Cavendish)

SCTT 2820: Texts & Traditions IV (from Mary Wollstonecraft to Louise Erdrich)

DePauw University (2016-2022)

English Department

ENG 393: Adv. Lit & Culture: The Body in Pain: Disease & Disability in Literature, 1700-1900

ENG 393: Adv. Lit & Culture: Daring, Wild, Visionary: The Global Romantics

ENG 282: British Writers II, 1780 CE to Present                                                              

ENG 281: British Writers I, 680 CE to 1780 CE

ENG 269: LGBTQ+ Literature Survey

ENG 264: Topics: Women in Gothic Literature

ENG 255: Topics: Queer Victorians: LGBTQ+ Literature of the Long 19th Century

ENG 255: Topics: Global Gothic

ENG 255: Topics: Gothic Short Stories: East and West Legacies

ENG 255: Topics: Dead Bodies in Literature, or the Corpse in the Corpus

ENG 255: Topics: Literature and Medicine: Contagious Stories

ENG 255: Topics: Brain on Fire: Medical Narratives

ENG 197: First Year Seminar: Writing Obsession

ENG 191: Science, Technology, and Nature

ENG 184: Topics: Let Me In: Why We Love Horror

ENG 161: Visual and Digital Narratives: Video Game Narratives

ENG 151: Drama, Fiction, and Poetry

ENG 141: Intro to World Literature

Film Studies

FILM 184: Topics: Let Me In: Why We Love Horror

Global Health

GLH 342: Adv. Topics: The Body in Pain: Disease & Disability in Literature, 1700-1900

GLH 242: Topics in Global Health: Literature and Medicine: Contagious Stories

Honors Program

HONR 300: Seminar: Medical Humanities

Prindle Institute for Ethics

UNIV 291: Jessica Bylander’s Narrative Matters: Writing to Change the Health Care System

UNIV 291: Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic

UNIV 291: Jaipreet Virdi’s Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History

University Studies

UNIV 190: Leadership and the Liberal Arts: In Crisis and In Calm

Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

WGSS 290: Topics: Women in Gothic Literature

WGSS 290: Topics: LGBTQ+ Literature

WGSS 140: Intro to Women’s Studies

World Literature

WLIT 215: Topics in World Literature: Gothic Short Stories: East and West Legacies

WLIT 215: Topics in World Literature: Global Gothic

WLIT 105: Intro to World Literature

Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Literature, Media, and Communication (2013-2016)

Literature, Media, and Communication 3316: Science, Technology, and Postcolonial Literature

English 1102: Writing about Literature: Speculative Fiction of the Nineteenth Century

English 1102: Writing about Literature: Voices of the Industrial Revolution

English 1102: Writing about Literature: Birth of the Gothic Novel

English 1102: Writing about Literature: Obsessions: Trash or Treasure?

English 1101: Intro to College Writing: Going Viral: Writing about Global Disease

 

University of Georgia, Department of English (2007-2013)

ENGL 4000: Theories and Methods

ENGL 2330: American Literature, Beginnings to 1865

ENGL 2320: British Literature, 1700 to Present

ENGL 1102: Writing about Literature: Drama, Fiction, Poetry

ENGL 1101: Intro to College Writing

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES AND SERVICE

Service

Editor, Nineteenth Century Studies journal (2023-2026)

Webmaster, Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (2023-2026)

Board Member (ex officio), Nineteenth-Century Studies Association (2023-2026)

Board Member (ex officio), Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (2020-2026)

Conference Organizer, INCS 2015 Conference: “Mobilities,” April 16-19, 2015, Georgia Tech

Referee Reader

European Romantic Review

Journal of Victorian Culture

Nineteenth-Century Contexts

Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies

Routledge, Art History & Visual Studies series (one manuscript)

Science Fiction Studies

University of Delaware Press (one manuscript)

Victorian Network

DePauw University

Mellon “Humanities for All Times” Grant Writer & Principle Investigator (2021)

Medical/Health Humanities Reading Group, Founder/Organizer (2020-2022)

Global Health Steering Committee, Member (2020-2022)

World Literature Steering Committee, Member (2020-2022)

Faculty Writing Group “Wednesday Writers,” Organizer (2017-2022)

Literature Steering Committee, Member (2016-2021)

Empowerment and Inclusion Committee, Member (2016-2017, 2018-2019, 2020-2021)

Committee for Community Outreach, Member (2016-2018)

Fulbright Scholarship Program, Interviewer (2016-2018)

Louisiana Scholars’ College, Undergraduate Honors Thesis Advising

Kristina Simon, “A Philosophical Evolution: Emily Dickinson’s Response to Platonic Philosophy” (2024)

Makayla Dean, “The Use and Misuse of Mental Illness in Entertainment” (2024)

Jonathan Gennaro, “Her Afterlife: A Creative Retelling of Persephone” (2023)

Skylar Sanders, “Body Modification and the Self in Victorian Britain” (2023)

Northwestern State University, English Department, MA Thesis Advising

Zoe Moncla, “The ‘Unnatural’ Body: Trans Identity and Disability in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” (2024)

DePauw University, Honor Scholar’s Program, Undergraduate Thesis Advising

Riley Magoon, “Pain is Personal: Understanding Pain Relativity and the Importance of the Biopsychosocial Model” (2022)

Maggie Ephraim, “Custody Battles: Reimagining Persephone’s Plight” (2021)

Diana Borse, “Mostly Harmful? Phragmites Australia and Typha Angustifolia” (2021)

Eduardo Garcia, “Examining Barriers: Black Hispanic Men and Mental Health Services” (2021)

Emma Giles, “The Domestic and Global Implications of Tuberculosis in the United States” (2020)

Vanessa Balis, “Friend or Foe?: Chaucer’s Depiction of Women in Troilus and Criseyde” (2020)

Olivia Miller, “Unpacking the Opioid Epidemic: Intervention Methods” (2019)

Professional Development

Medical Humanities Reading Group, DePauw University (2020)

NEH Summer Institute, “Colonial Experiences and Their Legacies in Southeast Asia,” East-West Center for Asian Studies, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI (2019)

Global Learning, Faculty Development Workshop, DePauw University (2019)

Power, Privilege, and Diversity, Faculty Development Workshop, DePauw University (2018)

Digital Mitford Workshop and Coding School, University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg (2015)

Digital Pedagogy Seminar, Georgia Institute of Technology (2014)