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Scholarship, Writing, & Professional Experience

My research charts an interdisciplinary approach to 19th-century literature and culture, uncovering connections that help detangle questions of British and American gender politics, race, and religion in the period and beyond.

My dissertation project, "Bold Devotion: Female Religious Authority and Transatlantic 19th-Century Fiction," fills in the gaps of women's religious authority in the period, showing how novels, memoirs, and essays assert women's ability to preach and engage in theology in a culture that actively works to silence them. This project sees women writers reinterpreting Scripture and Christian history through their perspectives of gender, class, and race.

I received the 2023 Boston University Center of the Humanities Clarimond Mansfield Award and Angela J. and James J. Rallis Memorial Award for my graduate work. A portion of my dissertation, is forthcoming in Legacy.

My passion for interesting interdisciplinary projects also appears in my research in creative engagements with nineteenth-century writing and culture in videogames, as displayed in my chapter on Jules Verne and 80 Days in Victorians and Videogames for Routledge.

In my scholarship and service, I seek to embody a posture of curiosity and collaboration. As current Colloquium Coordinator for our department’s English Graduate Student Association, I collaborate with peers to plan colloquia on pedagogy, graduate student wellbeing, and faculty research. I'm a member of the editorial team for journal Ampersand: An American Studies Journal. run out of BU’s American and New England Studies Program, where I work with writers across disciplines and universities. I am also thrilled to be the Graduate Representative on the BU Humanities Curriculum Committee this year to review graduate and undergraduate courses and programs in cooperation with BU faculty and staff.

Education

Ph.D. Candidate in English, Boston University, expected March 2025.

Dissertation: “‘Bold Devotion: Female Religious Authority and Transatlantic 19th-Century

Fiction,” directed by Anna Henchman and Laura Korobkin

M.A. in English and American Literature, graduated 2018.

B.S. in English, Corban University

Salem, Oregon, graduated 2017 summa cum laude.

Minor in Biblical Studies

Semester at the University of Oxford, fall 2015

Publications

Forthcoming "80 Days, 80 Plays: Victorian Curiosity as Antidote to Empire in Inkle Studio’s

80 Days," in Victorians and Videogames, ed. by S. Brooke Cameron and Lin

Young. Under contract with Routledge.

Forthcoming "Antebellum Black Women Preachers and the Vocation Narrative," in ESQ.

Forthcoming "Women in the Work(s): Race and Minorness in The Gates Ajar and

Work," in Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers.

2024 "Dickinson on the Surface: Contemporary Children’s Editions of Dickinson

and the Board-Book Canon," Ampersand: An American Studies Journal.

Under Review "'To give the passage quite a contrary turn': Female Religious Authority and

Subversive Hermeneutics in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley," at Brontë Studies.

Encyclopedia Entries and Reviews

2025 Review of Sarah Bartels, The Devil and the Victorians (2021); Ian Bradley,

Breathers of an Ampler Day: Victorian Views of Heaven (2023); and Jessica Ann

Hughes, Jesus in the Victorian Novel: Reimagining Christ (2022), forthcoming

in Religion and the Arts.

2024 Review of Ilana M. Blumberg, George Eliot: Whole Soul (2024), forthcoming in

Christianity & Literature, vol. 73, no. 4.

2023 "Mrs. Halliburton’s Troubles (1862) by Wood, Ellen," in The Literary

Encyclopedia, ed. by Grace Moore.

Conference Presentations

2025 March "Frances Harper in the Black Female Preaching Tradition,” Northeast Modern

Language Association (NeMLA) Annual Convention. Philadelphia, PA. \

Accepted Seminar Paper.

2025 March "Hyrule’s Herstory: Memory, Text, and the Role of Women in The Legend of

Zelda,” NeMLA Annual Convention. Philadelphia, PA. Accepted Roundtable

Paper.

2024 Nov. "'To give the passage quite a contrary turn': Women’s Struggle for Hermeneutic

Authority in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley," Pacific Ancient and Modern Language

Association (PAMLA) Convention. Palm Springs, CA. Accepted Panel Paper.

2024 Sept. "Playing Novels and Reading Games: Making Literature Interactive in the

Victorian Classroom," Midwest Victorian Studies Association (MVSA) Virtual

Summer Seminar.

2024 May "Emily's Surfaces: Contemporary Dickinson Children’s Picture Books and the

Board-Book Canon," Emily Dickinson International Society panel, American

Literature Association (ALA), Chicago, IL.

2024 April "Shifting Sympathies: Realism, Representation, and the Reception of Eliot’s

Devout Heroines," Midwest Victorian Studies Association (MVSA), Iowa City, IA

2024 Mar. "Bridging New and Old Poetic Canons in the Classroom," Northeast Modern

Language Association (NeMLA) Convention. Boston, MA.

2023 Sept. "Victorian Women’s Theology in Conversation: Transatlantic Feminist

Hermeneutics and Community in Shirley and The Minister’s Wooing,"

Midwest Victorian Studies Association (MVSA) Summer Seminar.

2023 Mar. "Rewriting Her Stories: 19th-Century Scripture Biographies by and for

Women," Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Convention.

Niagara Falls, NY.

2022 May "Man and/as His Dog: Canines, Class, and Reform in Middlemarch," British

Women Writers Conference (BWWC). Waco, TX.

2022 Mar. "Reading Failure and Failing to Read in Disco Elysium," Northeast Modern

Language Association (NeMLA) Annual Convention. Baltimore, MD.

2021 Nov. "'They did more than to pour out tea': Black Women Preachers and Their

Communities in 19th-Century America," Pacific Ancient and Modern Language

Association (PAMLA) Convention. Virtual Conference.

2021 Jan. "Playing Jane(s): Narrative Multiplicity and Community in Video Game

Adaptations of Austen," Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual

Convention. Virtual Conference.

2020 June "Living Gothic Spaces: Reconsidering the Bleak House Dark Plates,"

International Dickens150 Virtual Conference.

2019 Mar. "Shaftesbury, Fielding, and the Question of Right Ridicule," The Conference

for Christianity and Literature (CCL), Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, MA.

Invited Talks

“George Eliot’s Heroines and the Problem of Female Religious Authority in the 19th Century,” New Work in Victorian Studies, Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard, Jan. 2024.

“The Rhetorics of Women’s Faith and Activism in the 19th Century,” Antrim Literature Project public lecture series, Nov. 2023. (link)

“From Orals to Dissertation Development,” in EN794: Professionalization Seminar, Dr. Robert Chodat, Boston University, Nov. 2022.

Guest Lectures

“Reading with the Plot: Jane Eyre, Genre, and Strategies for Approaching Victorian Novels,” EN744: Nineteenth-Century British Novels, Prof. Anna Henchman, Boston University, Oct. 2023.

“Everlasting Joy: G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis,” PH303: History of Philosophy, invited by Dr. Ryan Stark, Corban University, Jan. 2019.

“The Evolution of T.S. Eliot,” EN323: English Literature: 19th & 20th Centuries, invited by Dr. Colette Tennant, Corban University, April 2017.

Creative Writing: Poetry

“An Accumulation,” “Standing on the lurching prow,” “I will never be Frank O’Hara,” and “Again,” In Parenthesis, online edition, February 8, 2021 (link).

“In the Garden,” Gyroscope Review, no. 2, Spring 2020, 17.

“My Mother is Trying to Tell Me Something,” Peregrine, vol. 32, Amherst Writers & Artists Press, 2018, 66.