Academic Research
What Do I Study?
I research women writers who lived during the nineteenth and
early-twentieth centuries. My work explores how New Women, in particular, use positive portrayals of sensation (touch, sight, smell, and hearing/speaking) as a means of contesting power hierarchies and promoting more fluid forms of identity-making. I’m also interested in fashion studies, and many of my projects engage with popular women’s magazines from the turn into the 20th century.
Some of writers who I focus on include Amy Levy, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Sui Sin Far, Kate Chopin, Willa Cather, and Jessie Fauset.
I also have a passion for studying Appalachian literature and folklore. One of my latest projects, a collection of Appalachian fairy tales, was recently published by UT Press.
Where can you find my work?
The Journal of Gender Studies
The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies
Consumption and the Literary Cookbook
What have I published?
The Little Princess of the Forest and Other Stories: Fairy Tales of Appalachia. The University of Tennessee Press | 2023
“Velvet, Silk, and Other Ecstasies: Affective Encounters with Clothes in Early Issues of Vogue.” The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies 11.2 (December 2020). Special issue edited by Ilya Parkins and Lise Shapiro Sanders
“‘Roots and Seeds’: Reclaiming Regional Identity through Food in Ronni Lundy’s Victuals: An Appalachian Journey, with Recipes” (October 2020). In Consumption and the Literary Cookbook, edited by Roxanne Harde and Janet Wesselius
‘“An invention…that bottled up a memory, like scent’: Phantom Fragrances in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.” The Journal of Gender Studies (available online March 2020, print issue TBA)
“But it is impossible, I find, to tidy books without ending by sitting on the floor in the middle of a great untidiness and reading.” ― Elizabeth von Arnim, In the Mountains