Writing

In the past several years I have written in a wide variety of genres: SEO copy for blogs and websites; blog posts about pedagogy; academic writing in the form of my doctoral dissertation; and an essay that melded popular culture and 19th-century literature. You can find links to these pieces below, as well as a description of my dissertation.

“Custom of the Orange County: Edith Wharton and The Real Housewives“ in Majuscule, a literary magazine. (July 2021).

“Zooming Out: What Teaching Online Taught Me About Classroom Community” in Pedagogy and American Literary Studies. (April 2021).

“The Agentive Classroom” in Pedagogy and American Literary Studies. (September 2019).

My dissertation, The Ambition Revolution: Gender and the Pursuit of Success in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction, studies the concurrent rise of individualist ambition and capitalism in women’s fiction; primary materials like conduct manuals, advertisements, and periodicals; and critical histories. My dissertation is organized thematically, exploring ambition’s presence in art, marriage, work, and girlhood for women in nineteenth-century American literature and culture.

As I have in the classroom, my dissertation draws parallels between the nineteenth century and our present moment in conversations about economic inequality; social regulation of women’s ambition; and consumerism.