INTRODUCTION
Fall 2025 Office Hours: Mon/Wed 1:00PM-2:00PM (Office/Online: Zoom/Teams); Fri 2:00PM-3:00PM (Office/Online: Zoom/Teams); and by appointment.
My teaching and research interests include writing and research, Nineteenth-Century/Victorian Studies, and the English Novel; I have published on literary and historical topics relating to Charles Dickens, the Brontës, Black literary history in the 1800s, and digital humanities.
In undergraduate composition classes like ENG 1001G and ENG 1002G I work with students to improve their writing skills, focusing on essay structure and citation style. Special attention is paid to finding and evaluating sources online, including opinion pieces, journalism, public records, and peer-reviewed articles; we also discuss the history and development of academic writing. We practice internet and database search techniques, which are useful for all EIU students in any major, including arts and humanities, tech, STEM, and other fields, and learn the basics of using digital collections and library resources, especially at EIU’s Booth Library.
In Fall 2025, I will be teaching a graduate course on 1800s travel writing created by a diverse range of authors from around the world who chronicled impressions of the countries they toured. Students will access and study these writings, using databases and published scholarship to research and evaluate them to understand the cultural meaning and themes they may contain.
Besides teaching and collaborating with students, I also do a lot of researching and writing. A recent scholarly edition, The Verse of Charles Dickens (Edinburgh University Press, 2025), unites and annotates all of Dickens’s known poetic output from global libraries and digital archives (some of the worst verse I’ve ever read!) and corrects the record on fake attributions. Additionally, I have published chapters in Critical Insights: Wuthering Heights (Salem Press, 2025), The Theological Dickens (2021), Dickens and Women Reobserved (2020), and Critical Insights: Joseph Conrad (2016), and articles in Brontë Studies, Dickens Quarterly, Dickens Studies Annual, The Dickensian, Victorian Popular Fictions Journal, Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature, and Text & Presentation.
Another regular part of my writing schedule involves reviewing submissions and academic books for various peer-reviewed journals, which is a great way not only to share knowledge and insight but also to learn about new discoveries. As a scholar I am constantly learning from and collaborating with others through academic processes, personal interactions, and quite a bit of annual reading!
Though I am hard at work on a few book projects, I also have some “forthcoming” publications. As the culmination of a six-year project, a chapter on the life of Chicago novelist Sarah E. Farro will appear in the Routledge Companion to Global Victorian Literature and Culture edited by Fariha Shaikh and Sukanya Banerjee (Routledge, 2025). Other chapters and articles are forthcoming in the Dickensian, Digital Dickens (White Rose Press, 2025) and Handbook of Corpus Linguistics (Bloomsbury, 2025).
Professional Affiliations
The Dickens Society, The Dickens Fellowship, The Brontë Society, NAVSA
Academic Positions
Associate Editor of The Dickensian; Associate Editor of The Charles Dickens Letters Project
Education & Training
- Loyola University Chicago, PhD in English (2021)
- Loyola University Chicago, MA in English (2016)
- University of Georgia, BA in English and History (2011)
Publications
ORCID and Google Scholar
"Milk-blooded Cowards and Brute Beasts: A Georgian Crisis of Manhood Resolved in Wuthering Heights." In Critical Insights: Wuthering Heights. Edited by Bob Evans. Salem Press, 2025, pp. 162-81.
The Verse of Charles Dickens. Co-edited by Lydia Craig and Emily Middleton. Edinburgh University Press, 2025.
“‘Of Spirits so Lost and Fallen’: The Violent Byronic Hero in Miserrimus and Wuthering Heights.” Brontë Studies, vol. 43, no. 1, February 2023, pp. 1-13. https:/doi.org/10.1080/14748932.2022.2148838.
“‘Keep[ing] the Outward Figure Away from the Fact’: Reading Harold Skimpole as a Person of Color in Bleak House.” Dickens Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 3, September 2022, pp. 310-335. (Honorable Mention – The Paroissien Prize, 2023). DOI: 10.1353/dqt.2022.0026.
“Drafting Jane Eyre: Charlotte Brontë at the Circulating Library.” Victorian Popular Fictions Journal, vol. 4, iss. 1, July 2022, pp. 78-93. DOI: 10.46911/SHAI3722.
“An Overview of Digital Resources for the Study of Victorian Fiction.” Dickens Studies Annual, vol. 53, no. 1, March 2022, pp. 70-87. DOI: 10.5325/dickstudannu.53.1,00070.
“‘Gazing at all the church and chapel going’: Social Views of Religious Nonconformity in Dickens’s Fiction.” In The Theological Dickens. Edited by Brenda A. Ayres and Sarah E. Maier. Routledge, 2021, pp. 110-127.
“What Charles Dickens Never Said: Verifying Internet ‘Quotes’ and Accessing the Works with Online Resources.” Dickens Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 3, September 2020, pp. 249-263. DOI: 10.1353/dqt.2020.0033.
“‘A Horrid Female Waterman’: The Contentious Legacy of Grace Darling in Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend.” Dickens and Women Re-observed. Edited by Edward Guiliano. Edward Everett Root Publishers Co. Ltd, 2020, pp. 267-287.
"The Devastating Impact of Lord Wharton’s Bible Charity in Wuthering Heights.” Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature, no. 134, December 2018, pp. 234-249. DOI: 10.1353/vct.2018.0021.
“Tweeting Tippins: Using Digital Media to Recreate Our Mutual Friend’s Serialization.” Dickens Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 2, 2018, pp. 149-158. DOI: 10.1353/dqt.2018.0014.
“The Juvenile and Erudite: A Study of the Marginalia in Newberry Case Y 12.T219.” JMMLA, vol. 50, no. 2, Fall 2017, pp. 11-29. DOI: 10.1353/mml.2017.0013.
“Misogyny or Artistry?: Revisions to Two Conrad Heroines from Serial to First Edition.” Conrad: Critical Insights. Edited by Jeremiah Garsha. Salem Press, 2016, pp. 69-83. ISBN: 978-1-68217-114-1.
“Politic Silence: Female Choruses in Lochhead’s Medea and Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nightingale.” Edited by Graley Herren. Text & Presentation. McFarland, 2015, pp. 42-56. ISBN: 9781476624730.
Frequently Taught Courses
- ENG 1001G (College Composition I: Critical Reading & Source-Based Writing)
- ENG 1002G (College Composition II: Argument & Critical Inquiry)