Professor
1985, PhD, English, Cornell University
1982, M., English, Cornell University
1976, BA, summa cum laude, with High Honors in English, Wesleyan University
Bio
My research is in the long nineteenth century in Britain. My most recent book was on Romantic-era poetry: The Juvenile Tradition: Young Writers and Prolepsis, 1750-1835 (Oxford University Press). I am a charter member of the recently formed International Society of Literary Juvenilia; I serve on the advisory board of the Journal of Juvenilia Studies. My next project, building on my work on Romanticism as a youth movement, looks at youth in the Pre-Raphaelites.
Recent or forthcoming work regarding youth and generations:
“The Young Century.” Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: the 1800s. Vol. 1 (1800-1809), ed. Andrew Stauffer. (forthcoming 2022).
“Origins of the Juvenile Tradition,” Cambridge History of Children’s Literature in English. Volume One, Origins to 1830: Ed. Eugene Giddens, Zoe Jaques, and Louise Joy. (forthcoming 2022).
“Young England” Parts One and Part Two.” The Journal of Juvenilia Studies 2.2 (2019) & 3.1 (2020)
“Children’s Poetry,” co-written with Beverly Taylor. Cambridge Companion to Victorian Women’s Poetry, ed. Linda K. Hughes (2019).
“Juvenilia and Young Writers.” Blackwell Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature, ed. Dino Franco Felluga, Pamela K. Gilbert, and Linda K. Hughes (2015).
Parts of The Juvenile Tradition appear as:
- “Romance,” Blackwell Companion to the English Novel, ed. Stephen Arata, Madigan Haley, J. Paul Hunter and Jennifer Wicke (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2015). 103-16.
- “Prolepsis and the Juvenile Tradition: Henry Kirke White and Robert Southey,” PMLA (2013)
- “Leigh Hunt and Juvenilia,” Keats-Shelley Journal 60 (2011): 112-133.
For related essays, see:
- “The Hobbledehoy in Trollope,” The Cambridge Companion to Anthony Trollope, ed. Carolyn Dever and Lisa Niles, 113-27.
- “Marjory Fleming and Child Authors: The Total Depravity of Inanimate Things,” RaVoN 56 (2009)
- “Ethics and Theory: Suffering Children in Dickens, Dostoevsky, and LeGuin,” ELH (2008)
Related to my interest in young writers is work on children’s literature:
- “Off to See the Wizard Again and Again,” Seriality and Texts for Young People: The Compulsion to Repeat, ed. by Mavis Reimer, et al (Palgrave Mcmillan 2014)
- “The Ethics and Practice of Lemony Snicket: Adolescence and Generation X,” PMLA 122.2 (2007)
Publications:
Books:
The Juvenile Tradition: Young Writers and Prolepsis, 1750-1835. (Oxford UP: 2016), 300 pages.
Novels of Everyday Life: The Series in English Fiction, 1850-1930 (Cornell UP: 1999), 241 pages.
Women and Romance: The Consolations of Gender in the English Novel (Cornell UP, 1990), 271 pages.
Chosen for inclusion in the NEH Open Book Program; republished, 2019.
Teaching Awards
- Graduate Teaching Award, Association of Graduate English Students, 2008
Awards
- John E. Sawyer Fellowship, The National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, NC, 2011-2012
- Arts and Sciences Competitive Kenan Research Leave, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Spring, 2009.
- Fellowship in Scholarship, Creative Activity or Research in the Humanities and Fine Arts, College of Arts and Sciences, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Summer, 2007.
- Franklin Grant, American Philosophical Society, 2006
- Hamilton Family Fellowship for Teaching with the New Media, Johnson Center for Undergraduate Excellence and the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Spring 2005
- Ethics Fellow, Institute of the Arts and Humanities, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Fall 2002
- Spray-Randleigh Fellowship, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Summer, 2002
- Contemplative Practice Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies, 2000-2001
- Reynolds Competitive Research Leave, College of Arts and Sciences, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Spring 2001
- Faculty Fellowship, The Institute for the Arts and Humanities, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Spring 1998.
- Philip and Ruth Hettleman Award for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement by Young Faculty, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1997.
- Ford Foundation Cultural-Diversity Course-Development Grant, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1996
- Mellon Foundation Seminar on the Intellectual in the Academy, Swarthmore College, 1994-95
- Eccles External Faculty Fellowship, Humanities Center, The University of Utah, 1993-94
- American Council of Learned Societies Grant-in-Aid, Summer 1990
- Visiting Research Fellowship, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, May-August 1990
- American Council of Learned Society’s Fellowship for Recent Recipients of the Ph.D., 1986‑87
- American Association of University Women Dissertation Fellowship, 1984‑85
Courses Taught:
- English 121 British Literature, 19th and Early 20th Century
- English 274 Drama: PlayMaker’s Current Season
- English 284 Reading Children’s Fiction
- English 291 Illustrated Children’s Books
- English 292 Youth in Culture
- English 338 Studies in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel
- English 838 Nineteenth-Century British Novel
- English 842 Seminar in Victorian Literature