I grew up in Winter Park, Florida, became a biology major at Duke University, and went on to get an M.A. in English at Syracuse University. I taught physical science, biology and English for three years at a high school in Chesapeake, Virginia, before going on to pursue my Ph.D. in English at the University of Pennsylvania. Highlights of my educational background include my high-school Latin class staging of Rome’s founding (I played Romulus and Remus’ mother), a semester at Duke’s marine lab in Beaufort, North Carolina (where I investigated shore bird behavior), and a graduate-school year at the British Library (where I combed through 18th-century newspaper archives).
Before coming to FSU, I was the Senior Scholar for the Digital Arts and Humanities at the University of Iowa. I hope my indirect path to being an English professor serves as encouragement to students who don’t know exactly which career path they should pursue.
When did you first become interested in your areas of expertise (18th- and 19th-century British literature and culture, collecting history and theory, theater and performance studies, digital humanities, voice recording history and theory)?
As a graduate student, I carried out research on the Romantic-era writer Mary Robinson, who first became famous as an actress and who went on to publish poetry that was in conversation with that of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. A large cabinet full of stuffed hummingbirds, which I encountered in the London Natural History museum, led me to the subject of my second book, an exploration of Romantic-era collectors who sought to preserve objects ranging from locks of hair to Napoleonic relics.
Running through most of my research is an interest in how Romantic-era writers grappled with loss and ephemerality. My third book was an attempt to hear the lost voice of a performer who dazzled audiences just before the advent of recording technology. I sought out theater-goers’ efforts to capture the voice of Sarah Siddons, the most admired actor of the period, and wrote about how our listening habits are being transformed by new media forms.
What are your current research interests, and what makes you passionate about them?
My most recent project had its origin in my year as a Fulbright lecturer in Japan, where Emily Brontë’s classic novel “Wuthering Heights” is wildly popular, inspiring theatrical productions, manga versions, and ever-proliferating translations. My book “On the Bullet Train with Emily Brontë: ‘Wuthering Heights’ in Japan” explores why Japanese novelists and artists have been inspired by Brontë’s novel, and how the many versions of “Arashi ga oka” (as “Wuthering Heights” is called in Japanese) enrich our understanding of adaptation and translation. The book also chronicles my history as an adult learner of Japanese, a humbling experience that gave me new empathy for students.
What do you want the public to know about your research? Why is your topic important?
Romantic-era writers worried about how new technologies were transforming the pace of transportation and communication, and about what it means to be human in a world of rapid change. Their concerns, worked out in astonishingly artful poetry, still resonate.
Who are your role models? Who has influenced you most in your life?
An important early influence was the young woman in my mostly male freshman physics class who dared to raise her hand and ask the professor to explain something she didn’t understand.
An ongoing influence is my dissertation adviser, Stuart Curran, a virtuoso scholar who played a crucial role in broadening the canon of Romantic-era literary works to include works by women. He is also an inspiring human being who taught my classes as an overload when I was put on bed rest three months before my first child was born.
My role models include W.G. Sebald, D.A. Miller, Roz Chast, Michelle Obama and Marie Kondo.
What brought you to Florida State University? Why do you enjoy working at FSU?
I came to FSU in order to become the George Mills Harper Professor of English. Harper was a renowned scholar of William Blake and W.B. Yeats; he was also a beloved teacher. It’s an honor to be the beneficiary of his family’s generous gift to the university. The presence of a faculty union here also served as a strong incentive to come to FSU.
I enjoy working with my brilliant colleagues in the Department of English and in Strozier Library, and I am grateful for the spirit of shared commitment among administrators and faculty. In my first year here, I especially enjoyed participating in the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program, which gives undergraduates an opportunity to work with faculty researchers. Along with Matthew Hunter, the Digital Scholarship technologist in Strozier Library, I collaborated with three bright undergraduate women who deployed the Zotero citation management tool as a means of tracking the spread of Brontë translations and adaptations in Japan.
What is your favorite part of your job?
I love research and writing, and helping students conceptualize and carry out research projects. Wearing my placement committee member hat, I also enjoy helping graduate students prepare themselves for the job market.
If your students only learned one thing from you (of course hopefully they learn much more than that), what would you hope it to be?
I hope that my students come to understand that critical writing contains a series of formal and rhetorical choices over which they can exert control, and from which they can gain power.
