Education
Ph.D. in English, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, 1999
Dissertation: "The Subversive South: Genre Play, Aristocratic Ideology, and Antebellum Southern Literature"
M.A. in English, University of Arkansas, 1994
B.A. in English, University of Arkansas, 1991
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Publications / Books
Poe, Queerness, and the End of Time, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.
Against the Gallows: Antebellum American Writers and the Movement to
Abolish Capital Punishment, U of Iowa P, 2011.
Unwelcome Voices: Subversive Fiction in the Antebellum South, U of Tennessee P, 2005.
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Evelyn Scott: Recovering a Lost Modernist, edited with Dorothy Scura, U of Tennessee P, 2001.
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Publications / Articles and Book Chapters
"The Cultural and Political Work of Poe's 'The Masque of the Red Death' during the AIDS Era," Edgar Allan Poe Review, vol. 21, no. 2,
Autumn 2020, pp. 192-223. Link to Full-Text.
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"Counterparts: Poe's Doubles from 'William Wilson' to 'The Cask of Amontillado," Oxford Handbook of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by J.
Gerald Kennedy and Scott Peeples, Oxford UP, 2018, pp. 236-251.
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"Resisting Reproduction in Edgar Allan Poe's Family Fictions," Studies in American Fiction, vol. 45, no. 2, Fall 2018, pp. 165-89.
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"'Nevermore!': Non-Normative Desire and Queer Temporality in Poe's 'The Raven,'" Poe Studies, vol. 49, 2016, pp. 80-98.
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"Edgar Allan Poe and the Art of Fiction," A History of Virginia Literature, edited by Kevin Hayes, Cambridge UP, 2015, pp. 180-91.
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"'Her Little Maid Mandy': The Abolitionist Slave Owner and the Rhetoric of Affection in the Life and Early Fiction of E. D. E. N. Southworth," J19, vol. 2, no. 1, Spring 2014, pp. 59-88.
"Surviving National Disunion: Civil War Novels of the 1860s," Oxford History of the Novel in English, Vol. 5: American Novels to 1870, edited by J. Gerald Kennedy and Leland Person, Oxford UP, 2014, pp. 564-78.
"A Scribbling Woman's Rebuttal: Grace Greenwood Responds to the Hawthornes," Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, vol. 39, no. 2, Fall 2013, pp.
166-181.
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"Revising Uncle Tom's Cabin: Sympathy, the State, and the Role of Women in E.D.E.N. Southworth's The Lost Heiress,"E.D.E.N. Southworth: Recovering a Nineteenth-Century Popular Novelist, edited by Melissa Homestead and Pam Washington, U of Tennessee P, 2012, pp. 183-204.
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"Slavery and Abolitionism," Edgar Allan Poe in Context, edited by Kevin Hayes, Cambridge UP, 2012, pp. 138-47.
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"'That I could look . . . on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning': Walt Whitman’s Anti-Gallows Writing and the Appeal to Christian Sympathy,"
Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, vol. 27, Fall 2009, pp. 1-27.
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"Trust Thyself?: Teaching Poe’s Murder Tales in the Context of Transcendental Self-Reliance," Approaches to Teaching Poe’s Prose and Poetry, edited by Anthony Magistrale and Jeffrey Weinstock, MLA, 2009, pp. 154-60.
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"'I put my fingers around my throat and squeezed it, to know how it feels': Anti- Gallows Sentimentalism and E.D.E.N. Southworth's The Hidden Hand," Legacy, vol. 25, 2008, pp. 41-61.
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"The Politics of Poetry: The Democratic Review and the Gallows Verse of William Wordsworth and John Greenleaf Whittier," American Periodicals, vol. 17, 2007, pp. 1-25; reprinted in Poetry Criticism, vol. 93, edited by Michele Lee, Gale, 2009.
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"Recovering Southern Identity in Evelyn Scott's Migrations and Escapade," Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 59, 2006, pp. 559-78.
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"Burning Mrs. Southworth: True Womanhood and the Intertext of Ellen Glasgow's Virginia," Southern Literary Journal, vol. 37, Fall 2004, pp. 25-40.
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"A Re-Awakening: Anne Tyler's Postfeminist Edna Pontellier in Ladder of Years," Critique, vol. 44, Spring 2003, pp. 271-83; reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 205, edited by Jeffrey Hunter, Thomson Gale, 2005, pp. 319-26.
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"William Gilmore Simms's Last Word on Slavery: The Racial Politics of 'Bald- Head Bill Bauldy' and 'The Humours of the Manager,'" Southern Quarterly, vol. 41, Winter 2003, pp. 110-18.
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"The Danger of Sympathy: Edgar Allan Poe's 'Hop-Frog' and the Abolitionist Rhetoric of Pathos," Journal of American Studies, vol. 35, August 2001, pp. 239-54.
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"This Dainty Woman's Hand . . . Red with Blood:' E.D.E.N. Southworth's The Hidden Hand as Abolitionist Narrative,"ATQ, vol. 15, March 2001, pp. 59-80.
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"Becoming (M)Other: The Anxiety of Maternity in Evelyn Scott's Escapade," Evelyn Scott: Recovering a Lost Modernist, edited by Dorothy Scura and Paul C. Jones, U of Tennessee P, 2001, pp. 37-52.
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"Copying What the Master Had Written: Frederick Douglass's The Heroic Slave and the Southern Historical Romance," Southern Quarterly, vol. 38, Summer 2000, pp. 78-92.
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"William Gilmore Simms's Revolt against the Romance: The Golden Christmas and As Good As A Comedy," South Carolina Review, vol. 31, Fall 1998, pp. 67-76.
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Publications / Reference Articles
"A New Poe Letter--to Nicholas Biddle," Edgar Allan Poe Review, vol. 19, no. 1, Spring 2018, pp. 104-06. Link to Full-Text.
"Evelyn Scott's Nonfiction Prose: A Supplemental Bibliography," Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 59, 2006, pp. 627-39.
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"Michael Cunningham," Dictionary of Literary Biography: 21st-Century American Novelists, edited by Suzanne Green and Lisa Abney, Gale, 2004, pp. 55-61.
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"Historical Romance," The Companion to Southern Literature, edited by Joseph Flora and Lucinda MacKethan, Louisiana State UP, 2001, pp. 335- 40.
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"Joseph Holt Ingraham" and "Hamilton C. Jones," American National Biography, edited by John Garraty, Oxford UP, 1999, Vol. 11, pp. 658-59, and Vol. 12, pp. 196-97.
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"Ellen Gilchrist," Contemporary Southern Writers, edited by Roger Matuz, St. James Press, 1998, pp. 159-61.
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Publications / Book Reviews
"Poe's Profession/Dupin's Detection," Review of Edgar Allan Poe and His Nineteenth-Century American Counterparts, by John Gruesser, Poe Studies, vol. 52, 2019, pp. E23-29.
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Review of Poe Writing/Writing Poe, edited by Richard Kopley and Jana Argersinger, Edgar Allan Poe Review, vol. 15, no. 1, 2014, pp. 92-95.
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"Locating Poe on New Maps," Review of Poe and the Remapping of Antebellum Print Culture, edited by J. Gerald Kennedy and Jerome McGann, Poe Studies, vol. 46, 2013, pp. 101-07.
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Review of Mosaic of Fire: The Work of Lola Ridge, Evelyn Scott, Charlotte Wilder, and Kay Boyle, by Caroline Maun,Legacy, vol. 30, no. 2, Fall 2013, pp. 420-22.
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Review of Critical Theory: The Major Documents, by Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Stuart and Susan Levine, Resources in American Literature, vol. 35, 2012, pp. 376-79.
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Review of The Tell-Tale Corpse, by Harold Schechter, Edgar Allan Poe Review, vol. 8, Spring 2007, pp. 88-90.
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Review of The Poe Shadow, by Matthew Pearl, Edgar Allan Poe Review, vol. 7, Fall 2006, pp. 76-79.
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Review of Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt, by Matthew Wilson, Ohioana Quarterly, vol. 49, Summer 2006, pp. 56-58.
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Review of William Dean Howells: A Writer's Life, by Susan Goodman and Carl Dawson, Ohioana Quarterly, vol. 48, Fall 2005, pp. 318-20.
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Review of Blood & Irony: Southern White Women's Narratives of the Civil War, 1861-1937, by Sarah Gardner, Southern Studies, vol. 12, Fall/Winter 2005, pp. 167-170.
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Review of Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: Family and Sectionalism in the Virginia Novels of Kennedy, Caruthers, and Tucker, 1830-1845, by John Hare, Southern Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 1, Fall 2003, pp. 140-43.
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Conference Presentations and Public Lectures
“‘I would prefer not to make any change’ : Immobility as Queer Resistance in Herman Melville’s ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener,’” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS) Conference, Knoxville, TN, April 2023.
"Anxiety about Temporal Deviance in Poe's Fiction from 'The Devil in the Belfry' to the Dupin Mysteries," Fifth International Edgar Allan Poe Conference, Boston, MA, April 2022.
“'A Gay and Magnificent Revel': The Queer Politics of Maureen Cummins’s and Wendy Pini’s Rewritings of Poe’s 'The Masque of the Red Death,'" Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Denver, CO, November 2018.
"‘A story that tells all we need to know about the moment we live in now’: The Political Work of Poe’s ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ in the AIDS Era," International Poe and Hawthorne Conference, Kyoto, Japan, June 2018.
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"Edgar Allan Poe, Queerness, and the End of Time," a public lecture hosted by the Special Collections Library of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, November 2017.
"Resisting Reproduction in Edgar Allan Poe's Family Fiction," American Literature Association, San Francisco, CA, May 2016.
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"Slavery and Identity in the Transracial Narrative: Variations on the Pudd'nhead Wilson Plot in E.D.E.N. Southworth's Posthumously Published Fiction," Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Philadelphia, PA, November 2015
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"'Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore': Acknowledging Non-Normative Desire in Poe's 'The Raven,'" Fourth International Edgar Allan Poe Conference, New York, NY, February 2015
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"Citizen Wives and the Anxiety of Infidelity in E.D.E.N. Southworth's Retribution and The Unloved Wife," American Literature Association, Washington, DC, May 2014.
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"Antebellum American Literature in the Shadow of the Gallows," Case Western Reserve University Department of English, Cleveland, OH, September 2013.
"'Art thou not happy in that glorious lot?': Women, Slaves, and Citizenship in E.D.E.N. Southworth's The Mother-in-Law," Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Denver, CO, October 2012
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"Tried for Her Life: E.D.E.N. Southworth's Female Victims of Circumstance," C19: Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists Conference, Berkeley, CA, April 2012
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"'Terrible Engine of Horror and of Crime': Reading Poe's Fiction in the Context of the 1840s Anti-Gallows Debates," Third International Edgar Allan Poe Conference: The Bicentennial, Philadelphia, PA, October 2009
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"The Places of Edgar Allan Poe: Where He Lived, Where He Wrote, and Why it Matters," West Virginia Humanities Council, Charleston, WV, May 2009
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"'The Laws Will Be Obeyed': Sympathy and the State in E.D.E.N. Southworth's The Lost Heiress," Southworth Symposium, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA, April 2009
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"The Americanization of Jack Sheppard: Antebellum Crime Fiction and Anti-Gallows Sympathy," Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A & M, College Station, TX, March 2009
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"'The Singer in the Prison': Sympathetic Identification as Anti-Capital Punishment Argument in the Work of Walt Whitman and Johnny Cash," Midwest Modern Language Association, Cleveland, OH, November 2007
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"Marrying the Prince of Darkness: Racial Panic and Gothic Conventions in E.D.E.N. Southworth’s Hickory Hall," Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Philadelphia, PA, November 2006
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"'The Happy Valley had a cloud over it': Hawthorne’s Rewriting of Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas in The House of the Seven Gables," Transatlanticism in American Literature: Emerson, Hawthorne, and Poe, Oxford, UK, July 2006
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"Writing the Gallows: The Opposing Visions of Wordsworth and Whittier," College English Association, Indianapolis, IN, April 2005
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"'Such a Dreadful Deed': E.D.E.N. Southworth's Anti-Capital Punishment Argument and The Hidden Hand," American Literature Association, San Francisco, CA, May 2004
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"Relocating the South in Evelyn Scott's Escapade and Migrations," Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Chapel Hill, NC, March 2004
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"Taming Capitola: The Dramatizations of E.D.E.N. Southworth's The Hidden Hand," Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Fort Worth, TX, September 2003
"Trust Thyself?: Poe's Fiends and the Transcendentalist View of Human Nature," Rediscovering Poe, A Program for High School Teachers Sponsored by the Ping Institute for the Teaching of the Humanities, Athens, OH, April 2003
"'Prophet of a Civilization Buried Alive': Poe, the Raven, and the House of Usher in Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada," International Poe Conference, Baltimore, MD, October 2002
"The Transcendentalist as Monster in Poe's Horror Fiction," Midwest Modern Language Association, Cleveland, OH, November 2001
"Getting This House in Order: Women and the State of the South in Poe's 'The Fall of the House of Usher' and Southworth's The Hidden Hand," Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Orlando, FL, April 2000
"'Hop-Frog': Poe's Critique of the Abolitionist Rhetoric of Pathos," International Poe Conference, Richmond, VA, October 1999
"Burning Mrs. Southworth: From True Woman to New Woman in Ellen Glasgow's Virginia," South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Atlanta, GA, November 1998
"'Shaking Off the Dust of Old Virginia': Frederick Douglass's The Heroic Slave and the Tradition of the Virginia Novel," Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Charleston, SC, April 1998
"A Re-Awakening: Anne Tyler's Ladder of Years and the Legacy of Edna Pontellier," Crossing the Lines: A Conference on Contemporary Southern Women Writers, Fayetteville, AR, October 1997
"Becoming (M)Other: The Anxiety of Maternity in Evelyn Scott's Escapade," "Back Home In Tennessee": An Evelyn Scott Celebration, Knoxville, TN, April 1997
"'Writing in the Spaces Left': Frederick Douglass's Narrative as Radicalized Romance," Self and Other: The Fifth International Conference on Narrative, Lexington, KY, October 1996
"A Last Word on Slavery: The Racial Politics of Simms's Final Fiction," Simms Society Conference, Starkville, MS, April 1995
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Teaching Positions
Ohio University, Dept. of English, Assistant Professor, Fall 2002-Summer 2007; Associate Professor, Fall 2007-Summer 2012; Professor, Fall 2012-Present
Courses Taught:
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English 1510: Writing and Rhetoric I
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English 201: Critical Approaches to Fiction
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English 2010: Critical Analysis of Fiction and Nonfiction Prose
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English 250: Textual Analysis
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English 253: Survey of American Literature
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English 2530: American Literature I: Beginnings to 1865
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English 2540: American Literature II: 1865 to the Present
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English 254: Writing and Research in English Studies
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English 307J/3070J: Writing and Research in English Studies
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English 308J/3080J: Advanced Composition
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English 321/3210: American Literature to 1865
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English 322/3220: American Literature, 1865-1918
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English 323/3230: American Literature, 1918 to Present
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English 327: African American Fiction
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English 3570: Law and Literature
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English 398T: Honors Tutorial in American Literature to 1900
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English 460: Special Topics--American Women Writers of 19th Century
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English 460: Special Topics--American Gothic Literature
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English 460: Special Topics--Ohio in the American Literary Imagination
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English 4600: Special Topics: Edgar Allan Poe and the American Specters of Race and Slavery
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English 465: Major American Authors--Nathaniel Hawthorne
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English 465: Major American Authors--American Women Writers of 19th Century
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English 530/730: Graduate Seminar--Sympathy in 19th Century American Literature
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English 570o/775b: Graduate Seminar--American Gothic
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English 570o/775b: Graduate Seminar--American Romanticism
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English 570o/775b: Graduate Seminar--American Realism(s)
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English 5950: Introduction to English Studies
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English 7300: Graduate Seminar--The Novel and the Nation: The Political Work of 19th-Century American Fiction
Oakland University, Dept. of English, Assistant Professor, Fall 2001-Spring 2002
Courses Taught:
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English 224: American Literature Survey
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English 318: American Literature, 1820-1865
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English 451: Major Authors--Hawthorne and Poe
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English 545: Novel and Nationhood--American Fiction 1790-1830
Converse College, Dept. of English, Visiting Assistant Professor, Fall 2000-Summer 2001
Courses Taught:
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English 101: Freshman Composition
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English 102: Introduction to Literature
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English 350/550: Nineteenth-Century American Literature
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English 370/570: American Women Writers
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English 380/580: Special Topic: The Literature of Slavery
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English 394/594: Literary Criticism
University of Tennessee, Dept. of English, Graduate Teaching Associate, Fall 1994-Spring 1999; Instructor, Fall 1999-Summer 2000
Courses Taught:
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English 101: Freshman Composition I
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English 102: Freshman Composition II
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English 231: American Literature, Colonial Period to Civil War
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English 232: American Literature, Civil War to Present
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English 233: African American Literature
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English 252: Introduction to Drama
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English 253: Introduction to Fiction
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English 332: Women in American Literature
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English 441: Southern Literature
University of Arkansas, Dept. of English, Graduate Teaching Assistant, Spring 1992-Fall 1993
Courses Taught:
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English 1003: Developmental Writing
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English 1013: Freshman Composition I
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English 1023: Freshman Composition II
