I teach nineteenth-century literature at Baylor University. My primary focus areas are the novel and the Victorian period, but I also enjoy teaching and researching topics from the eighteenth century. My current book project examines how marginalized forms of expression in Victorian Realist novels complicate the rhetoric of sympathy. I received my M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina Greensboro and my B.A. from St. Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg, NC. I am currently teaching two British surveys, one that covers all of British Literature and one that focuses on the nineteenth-century forward, to include Romantics, Victorians, and Modernists. I will be teaching an eighteenth-century novel course in the fall of 2012.

In addition to reading, researching, and teaching literature I also enjoy any variety of outdoor activity, whether it is kayaking, running, throwing a football, or fishing. I usually enjoy these activities with my husband, Justin, and the more sedentary activities, like reading and sleeping, I enjoy with my cat Emma (yes, named after Jane Austen’s character).