News 

As of September 2023, I am delighted to be working as an educator at a public elementary school in the community where I live in Maine. Given the dearth of stable, fairly-compensated academic jobs in my area, and my commitment to public education at all levels, this role feels like the best current expression of my values. I continue to publish as an independent scholar in English Literature and Gender and Sexuality Studies and write freelance cultural criticism. Most recently, I co-authored, with Doreen Thierauf, a Keyword Entry on “Rape” for Victorian Literature and Culture’s Keywords Redux issue, which you can read here.

——

During the 2022-23 school year, I served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of 19th Century Literature at Colby College. I taught four courses: “Race in Literature of the Nineteenth-Century British Empire,” “Queer Romantics/Queer Romanticisms,” “How the British Became Straight: Reading the Queer Eighteenth Century,” and “The Victorian Novel.” More information about my work at Colby can be found here.

——

I am delighted to be currently at work on a collaborative project dear to my heart with a number of valued colleagues. With Doreen Thierauf and Michael Dango, I am currently co-editing a collection entitled “Theorizing the New Rape Studies: Humanist Interventions” (under advance contract with SUNY Press). Contributors include key thinkers on the topic of sexual violence, such as Seo-Young Chu, Carissa Harris, Kathleen Lubey, Stephanie Hershinow, Marlene Tromp, and ‘Ilaheva Tua’one.

——

I was honored to have been named an ACLS Fellow for 2021-22. This grant supported work on my book manuscript, “Awful Nearness: A Literary and Cultural History of Rape, 1740-1900.” You can read more about my project, and about the fascinating work being done by other fellows, here.

——

I received my PhD in English Literature from The Graduate Center, CUNY, in February 2020.

I’m grateful that my dissertation, Awful Nearness: Rape and the English Novel, 1740-1900, was recently awarded two prizes:

The Carolyn G. Heilbrun Dissertation Prize for most outstanding feminist dissertation in the humanities from the Center for the Study of Women and Society of the The Graduate Center, CUNY.

The Prize for the Best Dissertation in Feminist Studies, from the English Program of the Graduate Center, CUNY.