Educational Background:
Ph.D., English Literature, The George Washington University, 2007
Dissertation: “Narrative Symptoms: Cultural Trauma, Gender, and Modernism after the First World War
Psychoanalytic Theory for Scholars Program, Washington Center for Psychoanalysis, 2004-7
M.A., English Literature, San Francisco State University, 1993
B.A., English, University of California Irvine, 1989
Academic Employment:
King’s College: Professor of English, 2020-present; Associate Professor of English, 2014-2020;
Assistant Professor of English, 2008-2014
Georgetown University: Lecturer in English, 1999-2000
The George Washington University: Lecturer in English and Honors, 1995-2001
Mount Vernon College: Lecturer in English, 2000-2001
The Catholic University of America: Lecturer in English, 1996
San Francisco State University: Lecturer in English, 1992-1993
Selected Professional Awards and Honors:
The Honorable Max and Tillie Rosenn Award for Faculty Excellence, King’s College, 2023.
Project Narrative Summer Institute on Narrative, Medicine, and Disability, Summer 2020.
NEH Summer Institute Grant Recipient. “City of Print: New York and the Periodical Press.” New York City College of Technology (CUNY), Brooklyn, New York. June 14-26, 2015.
U.S. Department of Education’s Fulbright-Hays Group Project Abroad Program to study in Uganda (focus on educational and medical education systems), Summer 2014.
Edith Wharton Essay Prize, for “Consumer Culture and Jazz Age Discontents: Edith Wharton in Pictorial Review.” Edith Wharton Society, 2012.
Shoval Center Grant to support Faculty-Community Historical Research: The “U.S. Moving Picture Corporation” Silent Film Project. Summer 2010.
Shoval Center Departmental Civic Engagement Grant to support commitment to civic engagement learning in the Professional Writing Program. Summer 2010. (Grant writer and faculty member)
Tuition awards, Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2003, 2004, 2006
Cosmos Club Foundation Grant-in-Aid to Junior Scholars: grant to support dissertation research at the Huntington Library on the collected papers of Mary Annette Beauchamp Russell (Elizabeth von Arnim), 2000.
The Columbian Women’s Scholarship, 1999
Graduate Teaching Award for outstanding teaching to undergraduates in English at George Washington University, May 1997
University Fellowship, George Washington University 1994-1996
Distinguished Graduate Student Award, San Francisco State University, 1993
Selected Professional and Committee Service:
Board member, Institutional Review Board, King’s College. 2022-24
President, Elizabeth von Arnim Society, 2019-present; Vice President 2015-19. (Founded fall 2015.)
Vice President, Pennsylvania AAUP State Conference, 2024-2026 term.
Conference co-organizer, “Women Writers and Comedy” conference, Online, hosted by Misericordia University and The Open University, September 2022
Faculty Adviser, The Crown (Student Newspaper), King’s College, 2014-2024
Academic and Professional Affairs Faculty Committee Chair, King’s College, 2020-21 and 2022-2023.
Conference co-organizer, “Elizabeth von Arnim & Katherine Mansfield: Literary Connections, Friendships, and Influence” conference, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, July 2017
Editorial Board Member, Academe: Publication of the American Association of College Professors. 2008-2014.
Editor, Proto: An Undergraduate Humanities Journal. Vol. 6, 2015; Vol 7 and 8 double issue 2017.
Editor, Elizabeth von Arnim Society web site. Founded fall 2015.
King’s College Honors Program Board, 2013-16.
Pennsylvania AAUP, At-Large Representative 2015-2016, Secretary 2016-2017.
Editorial Board Member, Academe: Publication of the American Association of College Professors. 2008-2014.
President, The Graduate Student Caucus of the MLA, 2000-2001.
Delegate Assembly Member, Mid-Atlantic regional representative, the MLA, 1998-2000.
Community Service
Peace and Justice Center, Wilkes-Barre: Steering Committee Coordinator 2018-present. Board Member 2015-18. Pro-bono web redesign 2017-present. Summer Camp Volunteer Faculty 2009-present.
League of Women Voters, Board member. 2019-present
Volunteer for Girl Scouts of the Heart of Pennsylvania, as troop leader for a Junior Scout troop in Back Mountain, 2012-20.
Board member and judge, the “Poetry in Transit” project, 2013-2017. Poetry chosen is displayed on Luzerne County buses each year.
WRKC volunteer producing radio/podcast programming for student and community writers. I have also hosted a weekly music program, 2011-2024.
Local School Restructuring Team, Ross Elementary Public School, 2007-2008.
Board Member, Friends of Fillmore Arts Center, 2006-2008
Board Member and Grant Writer, Dakshina Dance Company, Washington, DC, 2006-7
Washington DC PTA Executive Committee, Ross Elementary School, 2004-2005
Grant Writer and co-chair for $70,000 grant award for Low Impact Development of the John Wiebenson Memorial Playground, DC Dept. of Health Watershed Protection Division, 2004-6
Selected Publications:
“Women Who Take to the Sofa: Family Limitation and Respectability in Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Pastor’s Wife” and “Introduction: The Unexpected Modernist.” Eds. Noreen O’Connor and Jennifer Shepherd. Elizabeth von Arnim: The Unexpected Modernist. Edinburgh: U of Edinburgh P, 2025.
“Writing Toward a New World: Awakenings in Katherine Mansfield’s ‘Bliss’ and Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Enchanted April.” Katherine Mansfield and Elizabeth von Arnim: Katherine Mansfield Studies, vol. 11. Eds. Isobel Maddison, Gerri Kimber, and Todd Martin. Edinburgh: U of Edinburgh P, 2019.
“From Alienation to Community: Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Utopian Modernism.” Communal Modernisms: Teaching Literature and Culture in the Twenty-first-Century Classroom. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
“Consumer Culture and Jazz Age Discontents: Edith Wharton in Pictorial Review.” Edith Wharton Review. 28.1 (Spring 2012): 1-12.
“Making a List, Checking It Twice: The Santa Claus Surveillance System.” Co-written with Richard Hancuff. Christmas – Philosophy for Everyone: Better Than a Lump of Coal. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
“‘Thinking Peace into Existence’: Narrating Trauma and Mourning in Freud, Woolf, and Morrison.” The Theme of Peace and War in Virginia Woolf’s Writings: Essays on Her Political Philosophy. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2010.
“Theory into Practice: An Interview with Barbara Foley.” Co-written with Richard Hancuff. Critics at Work: Interviews 1993-2003. Ed. Jeffrey Williams. New York: NYU Press, 2003.
Selected Conference Papers and Presentations:
“Inexpressible Mourning in Katherine Mansfield’s The Aloe.” “Reconsidering the Great War in Light of Women’s Voices and Experiences” Panel. Northeastern Modern Language Association Conference, Boston, March 7, 2024
“‘It really is everybody’s duty to know at least something of what’s being done in the world’: Transnational Networks and Speaking up for Birth Control.” The American Interwar Magazine Market Panel. Modern Language Association Conference. Philadelphia, Jan 4, 2024.
“‘I, Too, Am America’: Desegregating the Modernist Manifesto.” Modernist Forms: Langston Hughes and his Contemporaries. Modern Language Association Conference. San Francisco, Jan 5-8, 2023.
“‘Pa, I have runned off with the boarder’: Early film and the feminist comedy of women who run away.” No Laughing Matter? Comedy and Feminist Politics Panel. Women Writers and Comedy, 1890-1950 International Conference. Online 17-18 September 2022.
“Reading Vera at 100” discussion panel with Isobel Maddison, Jennifer Shepherd, and Juliane Roemhild. Online Webinar sponsored by The Elizabeth von Arnim Society, 18 November 2021.
Zora Neale Hurston: Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick” Invited keynote speaker. 7 August 2021. Literature Cambridge, “Women Writers Season.”
“A Pedagogical Guide to Writers’ Homes and Archives in the Northeast.” Northeastern Modern Language Association Conference, Boston, March 5-8, 2020.
“‘In the Quarter of the Negro’: Performing Harlem’s Presence in Langston Hughes’s ‘Ask Your Mama.’” Public, Performance, and Politics: Langston Hughes and His Contemporaries Panel. Modern Language Society Conference. Seattle, January 9-12, 2020.
“Women Who Take to the Sofa: Family Limitation and Respectability in Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Pastor’s Wife.” Elizabeth von Arnim: Identities Conference. Toulon, France. July 2-4, 2019.
“Spectres of Paris: Conjuring and Countering Nostalgic Modernism in Hemingway’s City.” Hemingway in Paris: XVIII International Hemingway Conference. American University of Paris, July 2018.
“Rivers, Mountains, and Gardens: Traumatic Narratives and Mourning in Hemingway, Mansfield, and von Arnim.” Hemingway and War Panel. Modern Language Association Conference, New York City, New York, January 2018
“‘Warner Bros. Studio and the Critique of Anti-Semitism in Mr. Skeffington.” Elizabeth von Arnim & Katherine Mansfield: Literary Connections, Friendships, and Influence conference, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, July 2017.
“Love and the Modern Woman: Elizabeth von Arnim and Mature Female Desire in Good Housekeeping.” Modernism in Mass Market Magazines panel, 48th Annual Northeastern Modern Language Association Conventionconference, Baltimore, Maryland, April 2017.
“Decentered Transnational Dialogues in Edith Wharton’s The Book of the Homeless.” “Fighting the Great War in Print: Poetics, Propaganda, and Position” panel, Modern Language Association conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 2017.
“Film Criticism from Little Magazines to Small Media.” The Afterlives of the Modernist Little Magazines panel. 18thInternational Modernist Studies Association conference, Pasadena, California, November 2016.
“London as a Modernist City of Exiles: The Creole Native and Jean Rhys’s Voyage in the Dark.” Literary London Society conference, Institute for Advanced English Studies, London University, London, July, 2016.
“Serializing Africa: Hemingway and Wharton in American Magazines.” Wharton in Washington: Edith Wharton Society Biennial Conference. June 2016.
“Shattering the Marriage Plot: Elizabeth von Arnim’s Vera and “Jane.” Re-Evaluating Elizabeth von Arnim: The Inaugural Conference of the Elizabeth von Arnim Society. Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, England. September 2015.
“Multiple Crossings: Transatlantic and Transhistorical Voices in the Pogues’ If I Should Fall from Grace with God.” Transatlantic Ireland Panel. 129th Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association. Chicago, January 2014.
“Teaching Communal Modernism: Sylvia Townsend Warner as an Antidote to Modernist Alienation.” Communal Modernisms: Teaching Women’s Literature in the 21st-Century Classroom Panel. 44th Annual Northeastern Modern Language Association Convention. Boston, March 2013.
“Female Friendship and Modernist Community: Elizabeth von Arnim and Katherine Mansfield.” Patronage, Women Writers and Artists, and the Making of Modernism Panel. 13th Annual Modernist Studies Association Conference. Buffalo, October 2011.
“For Whom the Bell Tolls and Hemingway’s Anti-Fascist Battles with Hollywood.” Hemingway and Hollywood Panel. 126th Modern Language Association Annual Convention. Los Angeles, January 2011.
“Consumer Culture and Jazz Age Discontents: Edith Wharton’s Twilight Sleep, The Children and the Pictorial Review.” Edith Wharton on Rodeo Drive Panel. 126th Modern Language Association Annual Convention. Los Angeles, January 2011.
“Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Utopian Modernism.” Communal Modernisms Panel. 41st Annual Northeastern Modern Language Association Convention. Montreal, April 2010.
Teaching Experience—courses designed and taught:
King’s College:
Sickness and Health: Introduction to Medical Narratives (Core 164)
Globalization, Social Justice, and Human Rights (Inst 492/Soc 492/Eng 325)
Peace and Justice: What are the Alternatives to Violence? (Core 100)
Societies in Conflict: Short-term Study Abroad, India 2015-16 (Inst 300)
Globalization and Its Discontents: Short-term Study Abroad, India 2012 (Inst 300)
Modernist Literature (English 356)
American Realism (English 363)
Literary Nonfiction (English 325)
Writing for New Media (English 323)
Writing for the Arts (English 327)
Honors Modern and Contemporary Literature (Honors 204)
Honors Medieval to Renaissance Literature (Honors 203)
Editing (English 329)
Advanced Writing (English 241)
Introduction to Professional Writing (English 222)
Introduction to Film Studies (Core 179)
British Literature: Romantics, Victorians, Moderns (Core 164)
Literary Monsters (Core 164)
Comedy (Core 164)
Detective Fictions (Core 164)
Writers and the Golden Age of Hollywood (Core 164)
Effective Writing (Core 110)
Georgetown University:
Transnational Modernism (English 260)
Women Novelists and Modernism (English 264)
The Twentieth Century Novel: History, Identity and Narrative (English 258)
The Nineteenth Century Novel: Transatlantic Connections (English 190)
Writing in an Interdisciplinary Environment (Liberal Studies 120)
Texts and Contexts (English 022)
Critical Reading and Writing (English 011)
The George Washington University:
Introduction to British Literature, Medieval to 18th Century (English 51)
Introduction to British Literature, 19th and 20th Century (English 52)
Comedy (English 62)
Medieval Roots of Western Culture (Honors 16)
Ideas in Western Society and Culture (Honors 72)
Composition: The Research Paper (English 11)
Composition: Language in the Arts and Sciences (English 10)
Technology TA, African American Literature Web Site Project (English 73)
Mount Vernon College:
Women and Power: Women in Historical Perspectives (English 15)
Composition: Researching Women in the 1920s (English 11)
Johns Hopkins University: Instructor, Center for Talented Youth, Summer 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999
Introduction to the Middle Ages (gifted 5th-6th graders)
World Folklore and Mythology (gifted 2nd-3rd graders)
The Catholic University of America:
Introduction to Literature and Composition (English 102)
San Francisco State University:
Junior English Composition (English 116)
Freshman Basic Skills Writing Workshop (English 50)
Other Relevant Work:
Blackdiamondcomedies.org, Editor, 2012-present. Editing, research, and writing for the blog dedicated to engaging the college and community together to recover history and stories related to the first Paramount comedies, Black Diamond Comedies, which were filmed in the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania area.
Association of American Colleges and Universities, Director of Web Communications, 2001-2008. Responsible for the association’s Web communications strategy, and Web site development, and training staff in content writing and technology.
- AAC&U Web Site, (editor) 2001-2008, www.aacu.org
- On Campus with Women, (assistant editor) 2002-2008, aacu.org/ocww
- DiversityWeb (developer), 2002-2008, www.diversityweb.org
- AAC&U News Online Newsletter, 2001-2008, aacu.org/aacu_news
- Greater Expectations, 2002-2004, www.greaterexpectations.org
The Library of Congress “American Treasures” and “American Memory” Web Sites, 1999-2000. Worked with the Library of Congress on “American Treasures of the Library of Congress” permanent exhibition, including sections of the Thomas Jefferson exhibit, www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson. Implemented designs for exhibitions including “Life of the People: Prints and Drawings from the Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Collection,” loc.gov/exhibits/goldstein and “Bob Hope and American Variety,” loc.gov/exhibits/bobhope.