Explore research and writing by present and past English Department Faculty.
Books and Edited Volumes
Edited and Introduction. Reading, Writing, and Research: Undergraduate Students as Scholars in Literary Studies. CUR (Council on Undergraduate Research), 2010.
Gross Anatomies: Fictions of the Physical in American Literature. Susquehanna University Press/Associated University Presses, 2008.
Edited and "Introduction." Hospital Transports: A Memoir of the Embarkation of the Sick and Wounded from the Peninsula of Virginia in the Summer of 1862. The State University of New York Press, 2005. Paperback, 2006.
The Masculine Woman in America, 1890-1935. The University of Illinois Press, 2001.
Literary Studies Articles (selected)
“’this trivial and vulgar occasion’: Three British Parodies of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness.” Forthcoming in The Journal of Modern Literature, 2024.
“The English Major. If Only.” Faculty Focus. November 20, 2023.
“Natural science in a history museum: An exercise to engage interdisciplinary, applied, and career-oriented thinking.” The Teaching Professor, April 17, 2023.
“Unsightly Evidence: 'Female Inversion' and the U.S. Woman Suffrage Movement.” In 100 Years of Women’s Suffrage: A University of Illinois Press Anthology, 2020: 91-122.
“What I Did on My Summer Vacation: Faculty-Student Collaborative Research in Literary and Cultural Studies” in Reading, Writing, and Research: Undergraduate Students as Scholars in Literary Studies. Ed. Laura L. Behling. CUR (Council on Undergraduate Research), 2010:128-142.
“’poking and prying with a purpose” in Reading, Writing, and Research: Undergraduate Students as Scholars in Literary Studies. Ed. Laura L. Behling. CUR (Council on Undergraduate Research), 2010:1-10.
“Politics and the Pandemic: HIV/AIDS, Africa, and the Discourse of Disability.” Review of Disabilities Studies, Special Issue on Parting the Waters: Disability and Deliverance in the Wake of Disaster. 2.3 (2006): 97-107.
“The Necessity of Disability in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Good Country People’ and ‘The Lame Shall Enter First.’” Flannery O’Connor Review, 4 (Spring 2006): 88-98.
“The Laboratory: A Model for Teaching the Elements of Literary Studies.” Radical Pedagogy 8.1 (Summer 2006): http://radicalpedagogy.icaap.org/content/issue8_1/behling.html.
"Replacing the Patient: The Fiction of Prosthetics in Medical Practice." Journal of Medical Humanities. vol. 26, no. 1 (March 2005): 53-66.
Higher Education Articles
“The Chief Academic Officer: Catalyzing Connections.” IIE Networker, October 5, 2023.
“Guidance for an Often Thankless Task.” InsideHigherEd.com. April 4, 2023. https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2023/04/04/effectively-reviewing-and-revising-faculty-handbook-opinion
“Formalizing curiosity: Administrative leadership in support of undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative work.” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, special volume on undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative work. Volume 22.1, January 1, 2022: 35-38.
“Can Students Choose to Take Their In-Person Course Online?” Academic Leader, June 1, 2021. https://www.academic-leader.com/topics/curriculum-planning/can-students-choose-to-take-their-in-person-course-online/
“We Must Contemporize the Liberal Arts,” InsideHigherEd.com, October 16, 2019. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/10/16/importance-enhancing-relevance-liberal-arts-students-today-opinion
“Creating a Career Preparation Course for Students in the Humanities.” May 30, 2019. The Wiley Network. https://www.wiley.com/network/instructors-students/education-trends/creating-a-career-preparation-course-for-students-in-the-humanities
“The Empathetic Syllabus Review Exercise.” January 9, 2019, Faculty Focus. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/empathetic-syllabi-review-exercise/
“Naming Rights.” Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. December 10, 2018. https://diverseeducation.com/article/133806/. Reprinted in InsideHigherEd.com December 20, 2018. https://www.higheredjobs.com/Articles/articleDisplay.cfm?ID=1791
“Helping Students Identify Connections in their College Education.” InsideHigherEd.com. January 30, 2018. https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2018/01/30/helping-students-identify-connections-their-college-educationopinion
“7 Key Ways to Make Student Mentoring Matter.” InsideHigherEd.com. October 27, 2017. Co-authors: W. Brad Johnson, U.S. Naval Academy, and Paul Miller and Maureen Vandermaas-Peeler, both of
Elon University. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2017/10/27/advice-how-most-effectively-mentor-students-essay.
“Undergraduate Research Mentoring: Obstacles and Opportunities.” Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning. 24.3: 2015. Co-editors: W. Brad Johnson, U.S. Naval Academy, and Paul Miller and Maureen Vandermaas-Peeler, both of Elon University. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13611267.2015.1126167.
Articles
"Each One Teach One: The Legacy of Evangelism in Adult Literacy Education." Written Communication, January 2009.
"Three Models of Mentorship: Feminist Leadership and the Graduate Student WPA." With Rebecca Schoenike Nowacek, Mary Lou Odom, and Bonnie Smith. Feminism and Administration in Rhetoric and Composition Studies. Eds. Krista Ratcliffe and Rebecca Rickley. Forthcoming Hampton Press, 2008.
"Reconceiving Ethos in Relation to the Personal: Strategies of Placement in Pioneer Women's Writing," College English 64 (2002): 660-79.
"Taking Risks, Negotiating Relationships: One Teacher's Transition toward a Dialogic Classroom." With Martin Nystrand. Research in the Teaching of English 36 (2001): 249-86.
Works in Progress
Professor Christoph is writing a book titled Arguing with One's Life: Strategies of Placement in Narrative and Academic Writing, which explores how authors use references to their personal experiences in writing narrative, undergraduate essays, and scholarly writing.
Articles
"British Romantic Period Theatre and the French Revolution." Blackwell Encyclopedia of Romanticism. Ed. Frederick Burwick. London: Blackwell, 2010.
"Coleridge as Playwright: A Handbook of Coleridge Studies."The Oxford Handbooks of Literature. Ed. Frederick Burwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
"The Politics of Matter: Newtonian Science and Priestleyan Metaphysics in Coleridge's 'Preternatural Agency.'" European Romantic Review, Volume 19.2, April 2008.
"Mimetic Desire and the Problem of Subjectivity: Rene Girard and the Legacy of Alexandre Kojeve." Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, Volume 10, Fall 2003.
"The Breakdown of Moral Order in Coleridge's Osorio." The Coleridge Bulletin, New Series 16 (NS), Winter 2001.
Works in Progress
Professor Erving is writing a book entitled Coleridge and the Culture of Dissent, which reassesses the work of the eminent British Romantic poet, philosopher, and literary critic, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) in light of his early political radicalism and religious heterodoxy during the tumultuous decade of the 1790s.
Select Conference Papers
"Mimetic Desire, Envy, and Violent Rivalry in Blake's The Four Zoas." North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR) Annual Conference, University of Toronto, August 2008.
Peer-Reviewed Publications
“Paper Tiger: The Ghostly Life of Nana Sahib in British Newspapers” for Intimate Transactions: Life Writing and the Nineteenth-Century Market, ed. Sean Grass (Edinburgh UP, 2024).
“For Illustrative Purposes: Nana Sahib, Jotee Prasad, and Representation in British and Anglo-Indian Newspapers” in The Edinburgh Companion to British Colonial Periodicals, eds. Caroline Davis, David Finkelstein, and David Johnson, 2023.
“To Swell a Scene: Reviewing Books and History in Mookerjee’s Magazine” in Victorian Periodicals Review (special issue on “The Review”), 2022; 55(2); 257-273.
“Grist for the Mill: History and the Essay in India, 1870-1920” in The Cambridge History of the British Essay, eds. Jason Childs & Denise Gigante, 2022.
Empire News: The Anglo-Indian Press Writes India (SUNY Press, 2021; History of Books, Publishing, and the Books Trade series)
Ø Winner of the Colby prize from Research Society of Victorian Periodicals
Ø Shortlisted for the DeLong prize from Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Printing
“Manifold Wakings: Introduction to Middlemarch 150th Anniversary Symposium” (with Charles LaPorte) in George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies. 2021; 73(2); 71-77.
“Scissors-and-Paste: Ephemerality and Memorialization in the Archive of Indian Newspapers” Amodern 7, 2017
“Heads Up: Anglo-Indian Newspaper Mastheads” Victorian Review, 2017; 43.2.
“Miles Apart: The India Display at the Great Exhibition” Museum History Journal, 2016; 9 (2); 136-152.
“Audience Participation: Advertisements, Readers, and Anglo-Indian Newspapers” Victorian Periodicals Review, 2016; 49(2); 249-277.
“Orientalism” and “Wilkie Collins” in Blackwell Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature, eds. Dino Franco Felluga, Pamela Gilbert, and Linda Hughes, 2015.
“1857; or, Can the Indian ‘Mutiny’ Be Fixed?” in BRANCH: Britain, Representation, and Nineteenth-Century History. Ed. Dino Franco Felluga, 2013.
“An Old Dog Enters the Fray; or, Reading Hard Times as an Industrial Novel,” Dickens Studies Annual, 2013; 44; 221-241.
“The Other Great Exhibition: Mayhew’s Catalog of the Industrious.” Literature Compass, 2012; 9/1; 95-105.
“The Victorians and Race” and “The Middle Classes.” Dickens in Context. Eds. Sally Ledger and Holly Furneaux. Cambridge UP, 2011; 292-300 and 260-267.
“Introduction.” The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy by Frances Trollope. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009. ix-xxiii.
“Masculinity and Gossip in Anne Brontë’s Tenant.” SEL Studies in English Literature, 2009; 49(4); 907-924.
“Mutiny Echoes: India, Britons, and A Tale of Two Cities.” Nineteenth-Century Literature, 2007; 62(1); 48-87. [Rpt in Global Dickens, eds. John O. Jordan and Nirshan Perara (Ashgate, 2012)].
“Edwin Chadwick's Self-Fashioning: Professionalism, Masculinity, and the Victorian Poor.” Victorian Literature and Culture, 2004; 32(2); 353-370.
“Michael Armstrong: Re-reading the Industrial Plot.” Frances Trollope and the Novel of Social Change. Ed. Brenda Ayers. Greenwood Press, 2002; 35-51.
Book Reviews
Review of Circulation and Control: Artistic Culture and Intellectual Property in the Nineteenth Century, eds. Marie-Stéphanie Delamarie and Will Slauter in Information & Culture 58:2; 209-11. (2022)
Review of Will Slauter’s Who Owns the News?: A History of Copyright in Victorian Studies 62(2); 326-328. (2020)
Review of Michael Mann’s Wiring the Nation: Telecommunication, Newspaper-Reportage, and Nation Building in British India, 1850-1930 in Victorian Studies 60(4); 653-5. (2018)
Review of Sukeshi Kamra’s The Indian Periodical Press and the Production of Nationalist Rhetoric in Victorian Periodicals Review 46(4): 581-3. (2013)
Rev of Malik Salahuddin’s 1857: War of Independence or Clash of Civilizations? British Public Reactions in Journal of British Studies 48 (4); 1023-4 (2009)
Review of Christopher Herbert’s War of No Pity: The Indian Mutiny and Victorian Trauma in RaVoN: Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net 53 http://www.erudit.org/revue/ravon/2009/v/n53/029909ar.html?lang=en (2009)
Essays on Pedagogy
“Revamping Hobson-Jobson” in SHARP in the Classroom, 2023
“Technology in the Victorian Studies Classroom,” in Teaching Nineteenth-century Fiction, eds. Andrew Maunder and Jennifer Phegley (London: Palgrave) (2010)
“Brontë’s Jane Eyre.” The Victorian Literature Handbook. Eds. Alexandra Warwick and Martin Willis. London: Continuum. 90-94. (2008)
“Revision as Rethinking: Assignments, Sequences, and Class Plans.” A Guide to Teaching with Literacies. Ed. Terence Brunk et al. NY: W. W. Norton. 273-81. (2000)
Recent Conference Presentations
“Picture This: Images and Circulation in late-19th c Indian Periodicals” at annual Association of Asian Studies conference, Seattle, Mar 16, 2024
“Gendered Imaginaries in Illustrated Indian Periodicals” at annual North American Victorian Studies Association conference, Bloomington, IN, Nov 9, 2023
“Elementary Forms: From Portraiture to Periodical Illustrations” at annual Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States conference, Seattle, Oct 20 2023
“ImagiNATION: Victoria and Hind in Illustrated Indian Periodicals” at annual RSVP conference, Caen, France, Jul 7 2023
“Traveling Pictures: Remediations and Labor in Illustrations of Nana Sahib” at MLA, San Francisco (on RSVP-sponsored panel “Workers and Working Conditions in the Nineteenth-Century Press”), Jan 5, 2023
“A Feather in the Cap: Ornamental Flourishes in Newspaper Images of Nana Sahib” at annual Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (virtual), Sep 17, 2022
“Centering the Margins”; Colby prize keynote at annual RSVP (virtual), Sep 16, 2022
“Image, Copies, Copyright: Illustrations of Nana Sahib, the ‘Butcher of Cawnpore’” at Nineteenth-Century Centre, University of Birmingham (virtual), Apr 27, 2022
“Unsettling Archives” at North American Victorian Studies Association (virtual), Mar 3, 2022
"Producing Empire: Circulation and Crisis" at Library of Congress/ Washington Area Group for Print Culture Studies (virtual), Oct 8, 2021
“Disanglicizing and Indigenizing Calcutta’s Review Journals” at annual Research Society for Victorian Periodicals conference (virtual), Sep 8, 2021
“Combatting Monolingualism: Archives, Digitization, and Language” on “Decolonizing Periodical Studies” roundtable, Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (virtual), Jan 22, 2021
Moderator and organizer of “Anti-racism and British 19th century Studies,” virtual roundtable for NAVSA, Aug 12, 2020
Urban Grace Poet Laureate of Tacoma, 2008
Poetry
"Osier." The Fourth River 5 (2008)
"On Giving First-Year Students a Quiz on Allen Ginsberg's Howl." Cimarron Review 136 (Spring 2008)
"Keeper." Sea Stories. Hibernal issue. www.seastories.com
"A Curse upon Leafblowers and the Men who Love Them," "Audience." NEBO (Fall 2007).
"Slug," "Mole Plants," "Foraging." Green Letters 6 (2005): 62-67.
"Stinkflower," "Marginalia," "Raw Materials," "Three Olives." Cimarron Review 144 (2003): 21-25.
"Chestnut." Cumberland Poetry Review 22.2 (2003): 29.
"The Chemistry Set." Scripsit (Fall 1994): 8.
Poetry Readings
Opening act for Billy Collins reading. Pantages Theater, Broadway Center for the Performing Arts. Tacoma, WA. April 4, 2008; "As Is." Creative Writers' Panel titled "Soundings." Western Literature Association Conference. Tacoma, WA. October 17-20, 2007; "Shard" poetry series; joint reading with Hans Ostrom. Center on Contemporary Art. Seattle, WA. March 4, 2006; "Songs of Extinction II." Creative Writers' Panel at the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Conference. Eugene, OR. June 21-25, 2005; "Songs of Extinction." Creative Writers' panel at the Western Literature Conference. Big Sky, Montana. September 29-October 2, 2004; Poets Against the War. Bohemian Cafe. Stillwater, OK. February 2, 2003; Regional Poets Panel. South Central Modern Language Association Convention. Austin, TX. October 31-November 2, 2002; New Modernisms IV Conference. Madison, WI. October 31-November 3, 2002; Loft Poetry Night. [Reading with featured poet Alfred Corn]. Loft Coffee House. Tulsa, OK. March 19, 2002; "Poems." Creative Writers' Panel at the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Conference. Flagstaff, AZ. June 19-23, 2001.
Articles
"H. G. Wells's Taxonomy of Waste." The World Turned Inside Out: Essays on Waste in History and Culture. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. Eds. John F.M. Clark and John Scanlan.
"The Indian Subject of Colonial Hygiene." Filth: Dirt, Disgust, and Modern Life. Eds. Ryan Johnson and William Cohen. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 250-276.
"Wasted Value: The Serial Logic of H. G. Wells's Tono-Bungay." Reprinted In Modern Critical Views: H. G. Wells. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2005.
Reviews
Review Essay on Tracey Teets Schwarze's Joyce and the Victorians, Jean Kimball's Joyce and the Early Freudians, and David Spur's Joyce and the Scene of Modernity for the Irish Studies Review 12.3 (2004): 364-367.
Review of Nicholas Brown's Utopian Generations for the James Joyce Quarterly 44.3 (2007) 613-19.
Review of Margaret McBride's Ulysses and the Metamorphosis of Stephen Dedalus for the James Joyce Quarterly 38.3/4 (2001): 551-54.
Research and Writing
“‘Make a picture of yourself”: Indigenous Portrayals in the Reservation Diaries of Abby Williams Hill.” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers. Vol. 39, no. 1 (2022).
“The Wild Work of Gender Play in the Journals of Abby Williams Hill.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature. Vol. 37, no. 2 (Fall 2018).
“Cont(r)acting Whiteness: The Language of Contagion in the Autobiographical Essays of Zitkála-Šá” Arizona Quarterly. 68:3 (Autumn 2012).
Recent Presentations
“Finding Ourselves in Abby Williams Hill.” Celebration of International Women’s Day and the Collins Library Exhibit The World through Abby’s Eyes (March 8, 2024).
Works in Progress
The creative nonfiction essay “Stranger” has been selected for inclusion in an anthology on estrangement, edited by Jenny Bartoy.
Along with a co-author, Prof. MacBain has written the manuscript of a mystery novel.
Prof. MacBain is in the preliminary stages of writing a book about Abby Williams Hill that is part-memoir, part-biography, part-textual analysis.
Articles
"'Why do we always have to talk about race?' Teaching American Literature in the Post-Affirmative Action Liberal Arts Environment," with Tamiko Nimura. Teaching Race in the Twenty-First Century: College Professors Talk About Their Fears, Risks, and Rewards, Ed. Lisa Guerrero. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
"Uncanny Afflictions: Spectral Evidence and the Puritan Crisis of Subjectivity." Spectral America: Phantoms and the American Imagination. Ed. Jeffrey A. Weinstock. (University of Wisconsin Press; 2004).
Reviews
"The Coercive Sphere and the Failure of Public Discourse." Review of Voices in the Wilderness: Public Discourse and the Paradox of Puritan Rhetoric, by Patricia Roberts-Miller (University of Alabama Press, 1999). The Review of Communication. Vol 3: 1 (2003).
Articles
“Quintilian’s Forensic Grief and The Spanish Tragedy.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 60.2 (Spring 2020): 209-28.
“Original Gesture: Hand Eloquence on the Early Modern Stage.” Shakespeare Bulletin 35 (Spring 2017): 65-96.
“Rhetorical Delivery for Renaissance English: Voice, Gesture, Emotion, and the Sixteenth-Century Vernacular Turn.” Renaissance Quarterly 68 (Winter 2015): 1265-96.
“Mulcaster’s Tyrant Sound.” Sound Effects: The Oral/Aural Dimensions of Literature in English. Ed. Chris Jones and Neil Rhodes. Special Issue, Oral Tradition 24.2 (2009): 337-58.
“Spenser’s Wrenock and an Anglo-Welsh Latimer.” Notes & Queries 56 (December 2009): 527-30.
“Acting and Action in the Sermons of Lancelot Andrewes.” Renaissance Studies 23 (November 2009): 678-93.
“The Well-Schooled Wrestler: Athletics and Rhetoric in The Faerie Queene, Book II.” Review of English Studies 60 (March 2009): 34-60.
Works in Progress
John is currently working on the first-ever critical edition of Richard Mulcaster’s Elementarie (1582), an orthographical treatise that is an important primary source for historical studies of education, linguistics, and rhetoric.