About
I specialize in nineteenth-century literature of the United States, transatlantic children’s literature, and the History of the Book. My current research focuses on Henry James and the wide network of women writers and artists that shaped his work. In 2021, I was named Director of Marquette University Press, which publishes peer-reviewed scholarship in philosophy, theology, and other disciplines in the humanities along with regional studies focusing on Milwaukee and Southeastern Wisconsin. Education
Ph.D., University of Minnesota
M.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
B.A. Reed College Publications
Books
Other Volumes
- Consulting Editor / Past Co-Editor, Nineteenth Century Studies. Interdisciplinary journal of the Nineteenth Century Studies Association.
- Ed. (Volume Advisor). “Kenneth Grahame.” Children’s Literature Review 211. Boston: Gale Cengage. 63-107.
- Mr. Penrose: The Journal of Penrose, Seaman. Williams, William (author), Dickason, David Howard (Editor) and Wadsworth, Sarah (Afterword). Indiana Press, 2013.
- Ed., Libraries & Culture 41.1 (Winter 2006). Special volume on the Woman’s Building Library of the World’s Columbian Exposition.
Digital Projects
- Woman’s Building Library Database. Relational database of U.S. texts in the library of the Woman’s Building, World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893. Published on ePublications@Marquette, 2011.
- “The Commercial History of a Penny Magazine” by Charles Knight. From The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Edited and annotated online edition. With Laura K. Dickinson (University of Minnesota).
Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters
- “’Through the Window of This Book’: Teaching the History of the Book through Children’s Literature.” Teaching the History of the Book. Ed. Matteo Pangallo and Emily B. Todd. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2023.
- “Nineteenth-Century Disease, Twenty-First-Century Dis-Ease.” ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture 67.1 (2021): 203-35. Special Issue: Nineteenth-Century Scholars Respond to a Twenty-First Century Pandemic, edited by LuElla D’Amico.
- “’One Crowded Hour of Glorious Life’: Growing Up and Growing Old in The Awkward Age.” Studies in American Fiction 46.2 (Fall 2019): 265-88. Special Issue on Critical Approaches to Age in American Literature. Ed. Sari Edelstein and Melanie Dawson.
- “‘New Friendship Flourished Like Grass in Spring’: Cross-Gender Friendship in Moods and Little Women.” Women’s Studies 48.4 (Spring 2019): 379-92. Special Issue on “The Newness of Little Women.” Ed. Gregory Eiselein and Anne K. Phillips. “
- “Children’s Literature.” Oxford History of Popular Print Culture. Vol. 5. US Popular Print Culture to 1860. Ed. Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2019. pp. 549-63.
- Approaching The Blithedale Romance through the History of the Book.” Nathaniel Hawthorne in the College Classroom. Ed. Christopher Diller and Sam Coale. Brooklyn, NY: AMS Press, 2017. Rpt. Edward Everett Root, 2018. Pg. 37-50.
- “Unsettling Engagements in Moods and Little Women, or Learning to Love Louisa May Alcott.” Critical Insights: Little Women. Eds. Anne K. Philips and Gregory Eiselein. Ipswich, MA: Grey House Publishing / Salem Press, 2015. 174-88.
- “The Year of the Child: Children’s Literature, Childhood Studies, and the Turn to Childism.” Essay-Review of Anna Mae Duane, The Children’s Table: Childhood Studies and the Humanities; Jodi Eichler-Levine, Suffer the Little Children: Uses of the Past in Jewish and African American Children’s Literature; Gary D. Schmidt, Making Americans: Children’s Literature from 1930 to 1960. American Literary History 27.2 (Summer 2015): 331-41.
- “‘When the Cup Has Been Drained’: Addiction and Recovery in The Wind and the Willows.” Children’s Literature: Annual of the Children’s Literature Association and the Modern Language Association Division on Children’s Literature 42 (2014): 42-70.
- “‘Lifted Moments’: Emily Dickinson, Hymn Revision, and the Revival Music Meme-Plex.” The Emily Dickinson Journal 23 (Spring 2014): 46-74.
- “Penrose in the Twenty-First Century.” Afterword to Mr. Penrose: The Journal of Penrose, Seaman by William Williams. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969; reprint, 2013. pp. 385-410.
- “Canonicity and the American Public Library: The Case of American Women Writers.” Windows on the World—Analyzing Main Street Public Library Collections. Special volume edited by Wayne A. Wiegand. Library Trends 60.3 (Spring 2012). 706-28.
- “Refusing to Write like Henry James: Women Reforming Realism in Fin de Siècle America.” European Journal of American Studies [Online] 2 (2011).
- “‘By Invitation Only’: The American Library Association and the Women’s Library of the World’s Columbian Exposition.” Co-authored (equitable) with Wayne A. Wiegand. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 35-3 (Spring 2010): 699-722.
- “Henry James Rides Again.” The Henry James Review 31.1 (Fall 2010): 218-31.
- “The Europeans.” A Critical Companion to Henry James. Ed. Eric Haralson and Kendall Johnson. New York: Facts on File-Clearmark Books (2009), 74-82.
- “What Daisy Knew: Reading Against Type in Daisy Miller: A Study.” A Companion to Henry James. Ed. Greg W. Zacharias. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008. 32-50.
- “Social Reading, Social Work, and the Social Function of Literacy in Louisa May Alcott’s ‘May Flowers.’” Short Story Criticism 98 (May 2007; rpt. Cengage Learning, 2012). Ed. Jelena Krstovic. Gale Group. [Rpt. of chapter in Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present. Ed. Janet Badia and Jennifer Phegley. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.]
- “Louisa May Alcott, William T. Adams, and the Rise of Gender-Specific Series Books.” The Lion and the Unicorn: A Critical Journal of Children’s Literature 25.1 (January 2001): 17–46.
- “Charles Knight and Sir Francis Bond Head: Two Early Victorian Perspectives on Printing and the Allied Trades.” Victorian Periodicals Review 31.4 (Winter 1998): 369–86.
- “The Making (and Remaking) of the Penny Magazine: An Electronic Edition of Charles Knight’s ‘The Commercial History of a Penny Magazine.’” Gutenberg Jahrbuch 1997(Gutenberg Institute–University of Mainz, 1997). Co-authored (equitable) with Laura K. Dickinson. 289–97.
- “Revising Lives: Bernard Shaw and His Biographer.” Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 17.4 (Fall 1994): 339–66.
Other Scholarship
- “Reading over Pandemic Time.” The Vocation of the Educator in This Moment. Eds. Jennifer Maney and Melissa Shew. Marquette University, 2021.
Memberships
MLA
Henry James Society
Louisa Alcott Society
Nineteenth Century Studies Association
