In this paper, I show how, as a philologist, William Strunk’s approach to language was a rich historical and rhetorical experience far from the prescriptivism E.B. White ascribes to him in the first edition of The Elements of Style (1959). An interesting historical parallel exists between Strunk’s tenure as a PhD student in philology at Cornell…[Read more]

This essay tackles a question that has preoccupied Francophone postcolonial studies for several decades—namely, what is believed almost unanimously to be the absence of a Francophone equivalent to the slave narrative in English. My article challenges this assumption by reconciling the legacies of slavery in both the Anglophone and Francophone “…[Read more]

This essay examines a longstanding normative assumption in the historiography of slavery in the Atlantic world: that enslaved Africans and their American-born descendants were bought and sold as “commodities,” thereby “dehumanizing” them and treating them as things rather than as persons. Such claims have, indeed, helped historians concept…[Read more]

This essay examines a longstanding normative assumption in the historiography of slavery in the Atlantic world: that enslaved Africans and their American-born descendants were bought and sold as “commodities,” thereby “dehumanizing” them and treating them as things rather than as persons. Such claims have, indeed, helped historians concept…[Read more]

Sentimental fiction and domestic novels elevated the female voice, giving authority to the womanly experience as wives, mothers, and women. Novels such as Maria Susanna Cummins’s The Lamplighter and Sara Payson Willis’s Ruth Hall adopted the ideology of feminine behavior and womanliness while, implying tones of dissatisfaction with the role and…[Read more]

This paper will be presented at the upcoming South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA) conference Nov.3-6 in Jacksonville, FL. The research is a part of my thesis project that will be completed in spring 2017.

The presentation is a Powerpoint slide show that covers the new MLA 8 documentation for classroom use. The presentation covers the nine core elements, with brief explanations and examples of how to properly use them in writing citations.

This infographic represents an in-progress attempt by the #Humetrics team at TriangleSCI to pin down values that, if encouraged and incentivized in the academy, would enrich and improve humanities scholarship. It is meant to start a conversation. What are we missing? See more about the process and thinking behind this approach at…[Read more]

Technology is transforming twenty-first century education. Central to the study of English Literature is critical thinking and writing, and with the advent of digital texts (along with the precursor – digitized writing) the space of the discipline continues to expand. One way to get at what is being done in the study of literature is to explore…[Read more]

One of a series of blog posts reflecting on #HumetricsHSS, the work of the Humane Metrics for the Humanities team at the Triangle Scholarly Communication Institute in 2016.

In a seminal essay, David Bartholomae asserts that novice writers need to “invent the university by assembling and mimicking its language.” Instructors and librarians who work with beginning academic writers confirm Bartholomae’s assertion. Our research asks how, precisely, novice writer-researchers go about inventing the university before they…[Read more]