Current Positions
2022 – present, Assistant Professor of English, Louisiana Scholars’ College, Northwestern State University of Louisiana
2023 – present, Editor, Nineteenth Century Studies (Penn State UP)
Past Positions
2016 – 2022 Visiting Assistant Professor of 19th-century British Literature
English Department, DePauw University (Greencastle, IN)
Affiliate faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, World Literature, Global
Health, DePauw’s Honors Program, and the Prindle Institute for Ethics
2013 – 2016 Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Literature, Media, and
Communication, Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA)
Education
2013 PhD, English, University of Georgia
Comprehensive Area: 19th-Century British Literature and Culture
Dissertation: “‘The Hoarding Sense’: Hoarding in Austen, Tennyson, Dickens, and Nineteenth-Century Culture.” Directed by Dr. Richard Menke with Dr. Roxanne Eberle.
2007 MA, English, University of Georgia
Thesis: “Piercing Vibrations: Orality and Literacy in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Auguste Villiers de I’Isle-Adam’s L’Eve Future.” Directed by Dr. Richard Menke with Dr. Tricia Lootens.
2005 BA, English, Rhodes College
Research and Teaching Interests
19th-century literature; biography studies; gender and sexuality studies; history of the novel; medical humanities; science fiction studies
Awards, Fellowships, and Grants
2025 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Stipend ($8000)
2025 College of Arts and Sciences Research and Scholarly Activity Grant, Northwestern State University of Louisiana ($2500)
2024 Huntington-Oxford Exchange Fellowship, Lincoln College, University of Oxford (one-month research fellowship and in-college residence)
2024 Faculty Research Support Grant, Northwestern State University of Louisiana ($1000)
2024 Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award, Northwestern State University of Louisiana
2023 Harry Ransom Center, Short-Term Research Fellowship, University of Texas at Austin ($3000)
2023 Faculty Research Support Grant, Northwestern State University of Louisiana ($1000)
2022 Huntington Library, Short-Term Research Fellowship ($3500)
2021 Faculty Research Summer Award, DePauw University ($3000)
2021 Amy M. Braddock Award, Summer Research Stipend, DePauw University ($1000)
2020 Amy M. Braddock Award, Summer Research Stipend, DePauw University ($1000)
2020 Fisher Course Reassignment Award, DePauw University (one course release)
2020 Growing Inclusive Excellence in STEM, Grant for Medical Humanities Reading Group, funded by HHMI ($600)
2019 NEH Summer Institute Fellowship, “Colonial Experiences and Their Legacies in Southeast Asia,” 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, UGA Foreign Travel Assistance Program ($800)
2009 Travel Award, North American Victorian Studies Association ($600)
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
In Progress
Book – Stranger than Fiction: The First Biography of Mary Shelley (in development)
Books
2024 X-RAY, Bloomsbury, Object Lessons Series, 2024. pp. 150.
Featured on BBC 4’s Thinking Allowed, episode “Medical Icons” (September 2024), and reviewed in Journal of Medical Humanities, Victorian Periodicals Review, Hektoen International: A Journal of Medical Humanities, and on MedHum.org.
2018 H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man, including critical introduction, footnotes, and appendices. Co-edited with Nancee Reeves. Broadview Press, 2018. pp. 226.
Reviewed in Science Fiction Studies.
Refereed Articles and Book Chapters
2025 “Editing with Scissors: Jane Shelley’s Editorial Cuts in Shelley and Mary (1882).” Studies in the Literary Imagination, vol. 57, no. 2, 2025, pp. 81-103.
2025 “Borrowed Shadows: H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man” in Critical Insights: H.G. Wells, edited by Darren Harris-Fain, Anthem Press, 2025, pp. 105-126.
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. 111-120.
2021 “Immortal Voices” Nineteenth-Century Contexts, vol. 43, no. 5, 2021, pp. 561-565.
2018 “Coining Counterfeit Culture: Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market” in Victorian Network, vol. 8, no. 1, Dec 2018, pp. 5-27. https://www.victoriannetwork.org/index.php/vn/article/view/82
2018 “Digging at the Roots: Martha Redbone’s The Garden of Love: Songs of William Blake.” Rock and Romanticism: An Anthology, edited by James Rovira, Lexington Books, 2018. pp. 51-64.
2016 “‘The Invisible Girl’: Gender and Form in Mary Shelley’s Short Stories.” Critical Insights: Mary Shelley, edited by Virginia Brackett, Salem Press, 2016, pp. 162-76.
Special Issues of Refereed Journals
2018 “Frankenstein at 200” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 45, no. 2, July 2018, pp. 225-28. Written and edited with Dr. Michael Griffin.
Cited by Laura Collier and Marina Gerzic in “It’s (Still) Alive!: Re-imagining Frankenstein on Page and Screen” in The Routledge Companion to Global Literary Adaptation in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Brandon Chua and Elizabeth Ho, Routledge, 2023, pp. 54-70.
2015 “Nineteenth-Century Mobilities,” Nineteenth-Century Contexts, vol. 37, no. 5, September 2015, pp. 387-90. Written and edited with Dr. Narin Hassan.
2015 “Illustration and Gender: Drawing the Nineteenth Century” Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies. vol. 11, no. 2, July 2015. Written and edited with Dr. Kate Holterhoff. http://www.ncgsjournal.com/issue112/issue112.htm
Short Essays
2025 “Victorians and the Discovery of X-Rays.” The Victorian Web. https://www.victorianweb.org/technology/xrays.html
2024 “Tennyson’s ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade.’” Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Gale, 2024, pp. 263-270.
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) in Science Fiction Studies, vol. 47, no. 2, 2020 pp. 253-261.
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/
2018 “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.
Book Reviews (select)
2024 Equal Natures: Popular Brain Science and Victorian Women’s Writing, by Shalyn Claggett, SUNY Press, 2023. Reviewed in Nineteenth-Century Contexts, vol. 46, no. 4, 2024, pp. 531-533.
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, vol. 41, no. 2, 2019, pp. 232-235.
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. 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 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.
2013 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 Public Talks
2025 “Stranger than Fiction: Rediscovering Shelley and Mary.” Keats-Shelley House, Rome, Italy. (November 2025)/
2024 “X-ray Vision: How Seeing Through Objects Changes What We Know.” Northwestern State University of Louisiana (September 2024).
2022 “Culture of the Invisible: X-rays in the Popular Imagination.” Colgate University, Global Public and Environmental Health program.
Invited Lectures
2024 “Jane Austen’s Medical World.” University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Honors College.
2021 “Gothic Science: X-rays and The Invisible Man.” University of Florida, Department of English.
2020 “The Ethics of Storytelling” in “Ethics and Pandemics: Examining the Critical Issues Raised by Covid-19.” Prindle Institute for Ethics, DePauw University.
2020 “The Invisible Man: How Science and Technology Created a Legend.” University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Department of English.
Media Interviews
2025 “X-ray” New Books Network, interviewed by Victoria Lupascu. 19 Feb. 2025. https://newbooksnetwork.com/x-ray
2024 “Medical Icons” Thinking Allowed, BBC 4, interviewed by Laurie Taylor. 19 Sept. 2024, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00230wm
Conference Presentations (select)
2025 “The Short Book: Brevity in Scholarship,” Organizer and Presider. Participants: Jacquelyn Ardam, Lisa Gitelman, Judith Pascoe, Christopher Schaberg, Johanna Winant. MLA Conference, New Orleans, LA.
2024 “Stranger Than Fiction: The First Biography of Mary Shelley.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies, Cincinnati, OH.
2023 “‘She was Mrs. Shelley’: On Making the First Biographies of Mary Shelley.” Nineteenth-Century Studies Association, Sacramento, CA.
2022 “Unprecedented Disruptions: Nineteenth-Century Contexts & Research in the COVID Era” Roundtable Presenter, Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies, Salt Lake City, UT.
2021 “Bithia Mary Croker: 100 Years Later.” Nineteenth-Century Studies Association, Virtual Conference.
2019 “Bithia Mary Croker: The Secret in the Story.” North American Victorian Studies Association, Columbus, OH.
2018 “No Longer Within: How X-Rays Transformed the Victorian Body.” North American Victorian Studies Association, St. Petersburg, FL.
2016 “False Scenes: Mary Shelley’s Short Stories.” British Women Writer’s Conference, University of Georgia. Athens, GA.
2015 “The Mutability of Men: H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies, Georgia Institute of Technology. Atlanta, GA.
2012 “‘Walls of Words’: Novel Hoardings.” North American Victorian Studies Association, University of Wisconsin. Madison, WI.
2011 “Bleak House: Dickens’s Little Shop of Hoarders.” Victorians Institute. Coastal Carolina University, Myrtle Beach, SC.
2008 “Railway Mania, or The Failure of Common Sense.” North American Victorian Studies Association, Yale University. New Haven, CT.
Teaching Experience
Northwestern State University of Louisiana (2022-present)
SCTT 2820: Texts & Traditions IV Seminar (from Mary Wollstonecraft to Louise Erdrich)
SCTT 2810: Texts & Traditions III Seminar (from Dante to Margaret Cavendish)
SCTT 1820: Texts & Traditions II Seminar (from Plato to Boethius)
SCTT 1810: Texts & Traditions I Seminar (from Gilgamesh to Oedipus)
ENG 4210: LGBTQ+ Literature Survey
ENG 3880: Author Seminar: Jane Austen
ENG 3860: Studies in Contemporary Literature: Magical Realism
ENG 3590: Studies in British Literature: Drawing the Victorians: Literature and Illustration
ENG 3520: Studies in World Literature: Global Gothic Literature
ENG 2000: American & British Literature Seminar: Selfhood and Community
GSS 2000: Intro to Gender and Sexuality Studies
MHU 4000: Medical Humanities Seminar
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 Survey, 1780 CE to Present
ENG 281: British Writers I Survey, 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 Literature
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
ENG 255: Topics: Brain on Fire: Medical Narratives
ENG 191: Science, Technology, and Nature
ENG 151: Intro to Literature
ENG 141: Intro to World Literature
Film Studies
FILM 184: ‘Let Me In’: Why We Love Horror
Global Health
GLH 242: Topics in Global Health: Literature and Medicine
Honor Scholar
HONR 300: Medical Humanities Seminar
Prindle Institute for Ethics: Experiential Reading Courses
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
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
Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Literature, Media, and Communication (2013-2016)
English 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 1101: Intro to College Writing: Going Viral: Writing about Global Disease
University of Georgia, Department of English (2007-2013)
ENGL 4000: Theories and Methods (Teaching Assistant)
ENGL 2330: American Literature I Survey, Beginnings to 1865
ENGL 2320: British Literature II Survey, 1700 to Present
ENGL 1102: Writing about Literature: Drama, Fiction, Poetry
ENGL 1101: Intro to College Writing
Thesis Supervisions
Master’s Thesis
Northwestern State University of Louisiana, Department of English
Zoe Moncla, “The ‘Unnatural’ Body: Trans Identity and Disability in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” (2023-24)
Senior Thesis (First Reader)
Northwestern State University of Louisiana, Scholars’ College
Kara Anderson, “Dystopic YA Literature, 2000-2025” (2025-26)
Madysen Morgan, “Business Ethics of Fast Fashion” (2025-26)
Kaitlyn Williams, “Benefits of Reading YA Literature in the Classroom: A Textual Analysis” (2025-26)
Sam Young, “The Turtle Moves: Identity and Representation in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld” (2025-26)
Asia Martin, “Medical Humanities: A Look into Undergraduate Education” (2024-25)
Kristina Simon, “A Philosophical Evolution: Emily Dickinson’s Response to Platonic Philosophy” (2023-24)
DePauw University, Honors Program
Maggie Ephraim, “Custody Battles: Reimagining Persephone’s Plight” (2020-21)
Eduardo Garcia, “Examining Barriers: Black Hispanic Men and Mental Health Services” (2020-21)
Emma Giles, “The Domestic and Global Implications of Tuberculosis in the United States” (2019-20)
Senior Thesis (Second Reader)
Northwestern State University of Louisiana, Scholars’ College
Laurel Dickinson, “What Came First, Modernity or Protestantism?” (2024-25)
Makayla Dean, “The Use and Misuse of Mental Illness in Entertainment” (2023-24)
Jonathan Gennaro, “Her Afterlife: A Creative Retelling of Persephone” (2022-23)
Skylar Sanders, “Body Modification and the Self in Victorian Britain” (2022-23)
DePauw University, Honors Program
Riley Magoon, “Pain is Personal: Understanding Pain Relativity and the Importance of the Biopsychosocial Model” (2021-22)
Diana Borse, “Mostly Harmful? Phragmites Australia and Typha Angustifolia” (2020-21)
Vanessa Balis, “Friend or Foe? Chaucer’s Depiction of Women in Troilus and Criseyde” (2019-20)
Olivia Miller, “Unpacking the Opioid Epidemic: Intervention Methods” (2018-19)
Service
Professional Service
Editor, Nineteenth Century Studies (2023-present)
Board Member (ex officio), Nineteenth-Century Studies Association (2023-present)
Webmaster, Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (2023-25)
Board Member (ex officio), Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (2020-25)
Conference Organizer, INCS 2015 “Mobilities,” Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA (2015)
Referee Reader
Journals
European Romantic Review
Journal of Victorian Culture
Nineteenth-Century Contexts
Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies
Prose Studies
Science Fiction Studies
Victorian Network
Books
Routledge, Art History & Visual Studies series
University of Delaware Press
University Service
Northwestern State University of Louisiana
Co-Chair of Scholars’ College Hiring Committee in Social Science (2025-26)
Faculty Senator for Scholars’ College, NSULA Faculty Senate (2024-25)
Co-Chair of Scholars’ College Hiring Committee in History (2024-25)
Forum Council Faculty Advisor (2023-25)
Student Retention Committee (2022-24)
Policies and Procedures Committee (2022-23)
DePauw University
Medical Humanities Reading Group, Organizer (2020-21)
Faculty Writing Group, Organizer (2017-22)
Global Health Steering Committee (2020-22)
World Literature Steering Committee (2020-22)
Literature Steering Committee (2016-21)
Empowerment and Inclusion Committee (2016-17, 2018-19, 2020-21)
Committee for Community Outreach (2016-18)
Fulbright Scholarship Program Advisor (2016-18)
(updated February 1, 2026)