Jonathan
Smith

Professor of English
Department of Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts
University of Michigan-Dearborn
4901 Evergreen Road
Dearborn, MI 48128
(313) 436-9187
(313) 593-1902 (fax)
e-mail: jonsmith@umich.edu
This home page is really a glorified c.v. I've presented the standard
information in the standard way, but I've also included narrative about my
research interests and my teaching, and I've constructed links to some of my
recent scholarship and teaching materials. I hope this adds a bit more vitae
to the curriculum.
Professional Experience:
- University of
Michigan-Dearborn, Professor of English Language and Literature, 2005-
- University
of Michigan-Dearborn, Associate
Dean, College
of Arts, Sciences,
and Letters, 2006-09
- University of Michigan-Dearborn,
Director, Science and Technology Studies Program, 2002-2006, 2008-
- Eastern
New Mexico University, Jack Williamson Visiting Endowed Chair
in Science and Humanities, Jan-May 2002
- University of
Michigan-Dearborn, Associate Professor of English Language and Literature,
1997-2005
- University of
Michigan-Dearborn, Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature,
1991-1997
- Rutgers University,
Visiting Part-Time Lecturer, 1987-1991
Education:
- Ph.D., English, Columbia University, 1990
Dissertation
Title: "Experimenting with Method: Science and Victorian Literature"
Director: Jonathan Arac
- M.Phil.,
English, Columbia
University, 1988
- M.A., English, Columbia University, 1985
- B.A., cum laude,
English/Chemical Engineering (double major) Rice University,
1984
Publications:
Books:
- Charles Darwin and
Victorian Visual Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Paperback
edition: 2009.
- Fact and Feeling: Baconian Science and the Nineteenth-Century Literary
Imagination. Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1994.
Journal Issue:
- "Darwin and the Evolution of Victorian
Studies." Special Issue of Victorian Studies 51.3 (Spring
2009).
Website:
- The
Automobile in American Life and Society: Website and Online Archive. Launched September 2005. I served as
project director for this site, which consists of ten scholarly essays,
illustrated with archival materials from the collections of The Henry Ford
and supplemented with extensive teaching resources and a group of
digitized oral histories of major auto industry designers. I directed a team
of scholars, archivists, curators, and librarians over a three-year
period; edited the essays; and authored all the teaching resources.
Articles:
- “Evolutionary Aesthetics and Victorian Visual
Culture.” Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science, and the
Visual Arts. Ed. Diana Donald. New Haven:
Yale UP, 2009. 236-51.
- "Domestic Hybrids:
Ruskin, Victorian Fiction, and Darwin's
Botany." SEL: Studies in
English Literature, 1500-1900
48 (2008): 861-70.
- “Gender, Royalty, and Sexuality in John Gould’s
Birds of Australia.” Victorian Literature and Culture
35 (2007): 569-87.
- "Picturing Sexual
Selection: Gender and the Evolution of Ornithological Illustration in
Charles Darwin's Descent of Man." Figuring It Out: Visual Languages
of Gender in Science. Ed. Bernard Lightman
and Ann B. Shteir.
Lebanon, NH:
UP of New England, 2006. 85-109.
- "Grant Allen,
Physiological Aesthetics, and the Dissemination of Darwin's Botany." Science
Serialized: Representations of the Sciences in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals.
Ed. Geoffrey N. Cantor and Sally Shuttleworth. Cambridge: MIT P,
2004. 285-306.
- "Une Fleur du Mal? Swinburne's 'The Sundew' and Darwin's Insectivorous
Plants." Victorian Poetry 41 (2003): 131-50.
- "Philip Gosse and
the Varieties of Natural Theology." Reinventing Christianity:
Nineteenth-Century Contexts. Ed. Linda Woodhead.
Aldershot,
Hampshire: Ashgate, 2001. 251-62.
- "Charles Darwin,
John Gould, and the Picturing of Natural Selection." The Book
Collector 50 (2001): 51-76.
- "Darwin's
Barnacles, Dickens's Little Dorrit, and
the Social Uses of Victorian Seaside
Studies." LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory
10 (2000): 327-47.
- "Is There
A Hypertext in This Class?: Teaching Victorian
Literature in the Electronic Age." Online. TLWC: Teaching
Literature With Computers. (TLWC is now
offline, but the article appears here as it did online.)
- "A Grammar of
Dissent: Flatland, Newman, and the Theology of Probability." Victorian
Studies 39 (1996-97): 129-50. (Co-authored with Gerald Baker and
Lawrence Berkove, but I am listed first as the
primary author.)
- "'Fill Up All the Gaps': Narrative and Illegitimacy in The
Woman in White." Journal of Narrative Technique 26 (1996):
274-91. (Co-authored with Gwendolyn MacDonagh,
one of my undergraduate students.)
- "What's All this
Hype About Hypertext?: Teaching Literature with
George P. Landow's The Dickens Web."
Computers and the Humanities 30 (1996): 121-29.
- "'The Cock of
Lordly Plume': Sexual Selection and The
Egoist." Nineteenth-Century Literature 50 (1995-96):
51-77.
- "Heat and Modern
Thought: The Forces of Nature in Our Mutual Friend." Victorian
Literature and Culture 23 (1995): 37-69.
- "Art and Science:
The Method of Ruskin's Modern Painters." Scientific
Methods: Conceptual and Historical Problems. Ed. Peter Achinstein and Laura J. Snyder. Melbourne, FL:
Krieger, 1994. 119-36.
- "De Quincey's Revisions to 'The System of the
Heavens.'" Victorian Periodicals Review 26 (1993): 203-12.
- "The 'Wonderful
Geological Story': Uniformitarianism and The Mill on the Floss." Papers on
Language and Literature 27 (1991): 430-52.
Reviews and Short Articles:
- Review of Darwin’s Camera: Art and
Photography in the Theory of Evolution, by Phillip Prodger.
Isis
(forthcoming).
- Review of The
Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856,
by Ralph O’Connor, and Victorian Popularizers
of Science: Designing Nature for New Audiences, by Bernard Lightman. American Historical Review 113
(2008): 1241-42.
- Review of The Evolutionary Imagination in
Late-Victorian Novels: An Entangled Bank, by John Glendening.
Victorian Studies 50 (2008): 487-89.
- Review of The
Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online, ed. John van Wyhe. Journal of Victorian Culture 13.1 (2008):
114-19.
- “Darwin and the
Aesthetes.” Review
of Darwin,
Literature, and Victorian Respectability, by Gowan Dawson. Nineteenth-Century
Gender Studies 4.1 (2008). <http://www.ncgsjournal.com/issue41/smith.htm>.
- Review of Literary
Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature, by Joseph Carroll.
Victorian Studies 48 (2006): 573-74.
- “Elizabeth
Gould,” for Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists,
ed. Bernard Lightman (Bristol:
Thoemmes, 2004).
- Review of Victorian
Relativity: Radical Thought and Scientific Discovery, by Christopher
Herbert. Clio 32 (2003): 222-27.
- Review of Charles
Darwin: The Life of a Revolutionary Thinker, by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent. Quarterly Review of Biology 77
(2002): 175-76.
- Review of Frankenstein's
Children: Electricity, Exhibition, and Experiment in
Early-Nineteenth-Century London, by Iwan Rhys Morus, and Mesmerized:
Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain, by Alison Winter.
Nineteenth-Century Prose 28 (2001): 111-13.
- Review of Erasmus
Darwin: A Life of Unequalled Achievement, by Desmond King-Hele. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 25.1
(2000): 69-71.
- Review of Darwinian
Myths, by Edward Caudill, and Paul Ekman's
edition of Charles Darwin's Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals. Nineteenth-Century Prose 27 (2000): 101-04.
- "The Cuckoo's
Contested History," Trends in Ecology and Evolution 14
(1999): 415.
- Review of Seeing New
Worlds: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Natural Science, by
Laura Dassow Walls. Annals of Science 55
(1998): 434-35.
- Review of Meredith
and the Novel, by Neil Roberts. Studies in the Novel 30 (1998):
601-03.
- Review of G.H.
Lewes: A Life, by Rosemary Ashton. Configurations 2 (1994):
365-67.
- Review of Thomas
Henry Huxley: Communicating for Science, by J. Vernon Jensen. Victorian Studies
36 (1992-1993): 248-49.
- Review of Flatland,
by Edwin A. Abbott, ed. Thomas Banchoff. Victorian
Studies 36 (1992-1993): 94-95.
Works in Progress:
- “The Novel and Science.” Oxford Handbook to the Victorian Novel (Oxford: Oxford
UP). Ed. Lisa Rodensky. Under contract;
9000-word essay submitted.
- Negotiating
Boundaries. Vol. 1 of Victorian Science and Literature.
General Editors Gowan Dawson and Bernard Lightman. A collection of annotated primary sources on
the relationship between science and literature in Victorian Britain, co-edited
with Piers Hale. In production with Pickering and Chatto.
- “The Luckiest Man: A Brief History of Time
and The Pride of the Yankees.”
Honors and Awards:
- Distinguished Faculty
Research Award. University of Michigan-Dearborn, 2008.
- Jack Williamson
Visiting Endowed Chair in Science and Humanities, Eastern New Mexico University, 2002.
- Nominee, Modern
Language Association Prize for a First Book, 1995. For Fact and Feeling.
- NEH Summer Seminar.
"Methodological Debates in 19th-Century Physics," The Johns Hopkins University,
1992. Director: Peter Achinstein.
- Schachterle
Prize, The Society for Literature and Science,
Best Essay in Literature and Science by an Untenured Scholar, 1992.
Awarded for "The 'Wonderful Geological Story': Uniformitarianism
and The Mill on the Floss."
Grants and Fellowships:
- Faculty
Research Initiation and Seed Grant. “Evolution and Ornithology: John
Gould and Alfred Newton.” Office of Research and Sponsored Programs,
University
of Michigna-Dearborn.
$6,000 for archival research in Great Britain. 2010.
- Michigan
Humanities Council. “Motor City
Voices: Race, Labor, and De-Industrialization.” $15,000 for a museum
exhibit on the Revolutionary Union Movement among African-American
autoworkers in the 1960s and ‘70s, to be displayed at the University of Michigan-Dearborn’s
Berkowitz Gallery, The Henry Ford’s Ford Rouge
Factory
Tour
Visitor
Center,
and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History. (With Bruce Pietrykowski.) 2006.
- Publication
Subvention Award. “Charles Darwin and Victorian Visual
Culture.” Office of the Vice President for Research, University of Michigan.
$2700 to pay for illustrations in book of the same title. 2004.
- NEH Education
Demonstration and Development Grant. "The Automobile in American Life
and Society: A Web Site and Online Archive." $220,000 ($210,000
outright; $10,000 matching) for the creation of a web site and oral
history archive of auto industry engineers and designers to accompany
UM-Dearborn's Program in Science and Technology Studies of the Automobile.
A collaboration with The Henry
Ford. 2002. $10,000 in matching funds for this project secured from
DaimlerChrysler Corporation Fund.
- NEH Humanities Focus
Grant. "Science and Technology Studies of the Automobile."
$24,370 for a faculty reading group, external consultants, and course
development stipends to initiate a program at UM-Dearborn in Science and
Technology Studies with special attention on the automobile's impact on
American life, labor, and culture. (With Greg Field and Bruce Pietrykowski.) 2000.
- Rackham Faculty Grant.
"Seeing Things: Darwin
and Victorian Visual Culture." Horace
H. Rackham
School of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. $7000 to
support travel for archival research in Great Britain. 1999.
- NEH Fellowship.
"Seeing Things: Image, Text, and Victorian Culture in the Darwinian Debates."
$24,000 for salary support in 2000. 1998.
- Visiting Fellowship, Robert Penn
Warren Center
for the Humanities, Vanderbilt
University.
Year-long residential fellowship on the Center's 1999-2000 theme, "Constructions, Destructions, and
Deconstructions of Nature." 1999. (Alternate)
- ACLS Fellowship.
"Seeing Things: The Visual and Textual Languages of Victorian
Science." $20,00 for sabbatical-year salary
support in 1997-98. 1997. (Alternate)
- Chancellor's Technology
Iniatives Award. University of Michigan-Dearborn.
$625 for purchase of network upgrade of Storyspace
hypertext software for use in Victorian literature classes. 1997.
- Faculty Research Grant.
"The Almighty Designer: The Victorian Search for God in the
Architecture of Man and Nature." University of Michigan-Dearborn.
$1000 to support archival research in Great Britain. 1996.
- Rackham Faculty
Fellowship. "John Gould's Bird Books and the Visual Response to
Darwinism." Horace H. Rackham
School of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. $7000 in summer
salary support. 1995.
- Rackham Faculty Grant.
"John Gould's Bird Books and the Visual Response to Darwinism." Horace H.
Rackham School
of Graduate Studies, University
of Michigan-Ann Arbor.
$2,800 to support travel for archival research in the U.S. 1995.
- NEH Summer Stipend.
"Scientific Image and Literary Text in Victorian Representations of
Nature." $4000. 1994.
- NEH Younger Scholars
Award. "Alchemy, Romanticism, and Frankenstein." $2500 to
support a student research project. (With Jennifer O'Meara.) 1994.
- Faculty Research Grant.
"John Gould's Bird Books and the Visual Response to Darwinism."
University of Michigan-Dearborn. $800 to support archival research in the United States.
1994.
- Faculty Research Grant.
"Scientific Image and Literary Text in Victorian Representations of
Nature." University of Michigan-Dearborn. $1500 to support archival
research in Great
Britain. 1994.
- Preliminary/Small Scale
Project Grant. "The Eye's Mind: Scientific Image and Literary Text in
Victorian Britain."
Office of the Vice President for Research, University of Michigan. $5000 to support archival
research in Great
Britain. 1993.
- Research Assistance
Award. "Architecture and Induction: Whewell
and Ruskin on Gothic." University of Michigan-Dearborn. $535 to hire
a student research assistant. 1993.
- Educational Enhancement
Grant. "Science and Literature." University of
Michigan-Dearborn. $883 for materials to support a new course in science
and literature. 1992.
- Educational Enhancement
Grant. "Literature on Video." University of Michigan-Dearborn.
$451 for purchase of educational videos to support the teaching of
Restoration drama and Romantic poetry. 1992.
- Elliot Dobbie Dissertation Grant. Columbia University.
$250 to support preparation of dissertations solicited for publication.
1991.
Conference Papers and
Invited Talks:
- “Charles Darwin,
Evolutionary Aesthetics, and Victorian Visual Culture.” University
of Michigan-Dearborn Graduate Liberal Studies Conference, May, 2010, Dearborn, MI.
- “Charles
Darwin, Evolutionary Aesthetics, and Victorian Visual Culture.” Monmouth College
Darwinpalooza, February, 2010, Monmouth, IL.
- “Charles Darwin, Evolutionary Aesthetics,
and Victorian Visual Culture.” Wayne
State University,
November 2009, Detroit,
MI.
- “Charles Darwin, John Gould, and Australian
Birds.” Gould Centennial Lecture. University of Melbourne (AUS). In conjunction with the exhibition Reframing Darwin:
Evolution and the Arts in Australia,
Ian Potter Museum of Art, October, 2009.
- “Audubon and John Gould.” Picturing John James Audubon: NEH Summer Institute. July,
2009, Bloomington, IN.
- “Darwin,
Photography, and The Expression of the Emotions.”
The Art of Evolution: Charles Darwin and Visual Cultures. Courtauld Institute of Art, July, 2009, London.
- “Charles Darwin, Evolutionary Aesthetics,
and Victorian Visual Culture.” Chelsea
Physic Garden,
July, 2009, London.
- “1859: A Tipping Point for
Evolution?” Jane Stedman Lecture, Midwest Victorian Studies
Association, April, 2009, Richmond,
IN.
- “Darwin,
Evolutionary Aesthetics, and Victorian Visual Culture.” Yale
Center
for British Art. Lecture in conjunction with the exhibition, Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural
Science, and the Visual Arts. February, 2009, New Haven,
CT.
- “Darwin,
Evolutionary Aesthetics, and Victorian Visual Culture.” Evolution:
The Experience, Melbourne,
Australia,
February, 2009.
- Respondent, “The
Uglies of Nature: Observation and Aesthetics in
the Oceans.” History of Science Society, November, 2008, Pittsburgh,
PA.
- “Evolutionary
Aesthetics.” Darwin
and Design, Block
Museum
of Art, Northwestern University, May, 2008, Evanston,
IL.
- “Picturing
Natural Selection: Charles Darwin and Victorian Visual Culture.” Oakland
University,
Department of Biological Sciences Seminar Series, April, 2008. Rochester
Hills, MI.
- “Darwin and the
Sensation Novelists.” Indiana
University,
Departments of English and History, January, 2008.
- “Darwin and the
Victorian (Domesticated) Animal,” The Victorian Animal, CUNY Graduate
Center,
May, 2007, New
York, NY.
- “Domestic
Hybrids: Sensation Fiction, Sexuality, and Darwin’s
Different Forms of Flowers,” Modern Language Association,
December, 2004, Philadelphia,
PA.
- Invited Keynote
Speaker, Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs, October, 2004, Charlotte,
NC.
- “John Ruskin,
Charles Darwin, and the Threat of a Naturalized Aesthetics,” North
American Victorian Studies Association, October, 2003, Bloomington,
IN.
- "Royal Figures:
Gender, Sexuality, and Domesticity in John Gould's The
Birds of Australia,"
The Figural Vocabularies of Gender in Nineteenth-Century Science, May,
2002, Toronto, ON.
- Grant Allen,
Physiological Aesthetics, and the Dissemination of Darwin's
Botany," Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical, April, 2001, Boston, MA.
- Respondent,
"Sexual Selection and Victorian Narrative," Modern Language
Association, December, 1999, Chicago,
IL.
- "Classification
and Culture: Darwin's Barnacles and
Dickens's Little Dorrit," Modern
Language Association, December, 1999, Chicago, IL.
- "Darwin's
Barnacles and Dickens's Little Dorrit,"
History of Science Society, November, 1999, Pittsburgh,
PA, and Society for Literature and
Science, October, 1999, Norman,
OK
- "The New Uses of
Texts," Midwest Meeting of the American Association of University
Presses, "Text and Technology," September, 1999, Ann Arbor, MI.
- "Image and Text:
John Gould, Charles Darwin, and the Picturing of Natural Selection,"
Society for the History of Natural History, "Drawing From Nature:
Illustration in the Natural History Sciences," April, 1999, Natural History Museum,
London.
- "Queer Plants:
Sexuality, Sensation Fiction, and Darwin's
Botany," Society for Literature and Science, November, 1998, Gainesville, FL.
- "Picturing
Natural Selection: Illustration in Darwin's
Botanical Works and John Ruskin's Proserpina," Society for
Literature and Science, November, 1998, Gainesville, FL.
- "Science,
Culture, and History: P.H. Gosse and Darwin's
Barnacles," Society for Literature and Science, October, 1997, Pittsburgh, PA.
- "Eden
Under Water: The Visual Natural Theology of P.H. Gosse's Aquarium
Books," Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Society, July, 1997, Lancaster, England.
- "The Birds of
Darwin and John Gould: Sexual Selection and Victorian Culture,"
Society for Literature and Science, October, 1996, Atlanta, GA.
- "The Engineer as
Humanist," Alpha Pi Mu (University
of Michigan-Dearborn Chapter)
Induction Ceremony, May, 1996, Dearborn,
MI.
- "Is Science
Social?: John Gould's Bird Books and the Visual
Response to Darwin," University of
Michigan-Dearborn Natural Science Colloquium, October, 1995, Dearborn, MI.
- "The Implications
for Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century British Debates on the Methods of
Science and Literature," International Association for the Study of
Emile Zola and Naturalism, September, 1995, Las Vegas, NV.
- "Birds of a
Feather?: John Gould's Bird Books and the Visual
Response to Darwinism," Northeast Victorian Studies Association,
April, 1995, Boston, MA.
- "Alchemy,
Romanticism, and Frankenstein," Society for Literature and
Science, November, 1994, New
Orleans, LA.
(With Jennifer O'Meara.)
- "Hypertext and
the Victorian Serial," Society for Literature and Science, November,
1994, New Orleans, LA.
- "Architecture and
Induction: Whewell and Ruskin on Gothic,"
British Society for the History of Science, "Science and British
Culture in the 1830s," July, 1994, Trinity
College, Cambridge.
- "Using
Independent Study and the NEH Younger Scholars Program to Facilitate
Faculty-Student Research Collaboration in the Humanities," University of Michigan-Dearborn/University
of Michigan-Flint Annual Conference on Faculty-Student
Research Collaboration, May, 1994, Dearborn,
MI.
- "The Master of
the Proceedings: A Brief History of Hawking," Society for Literature
and Science, November, 1993, Boston,
MA.
- Facilitator,
"Meaningful Writing Assignments in Chemistry," Michigan College
Chemistry Teachers Association, November, 1993, Dearborn, MI.
- "Heat and Modern
Thought: The Forces of Nature in Household Words, All the Year
Round, and Our Mutual Friend," Research Society for
Victorian Periodicals, October, 1993, Ann Arbor, MI.
- "Eyes on the
Skies: John Herschel, Thomas De Quincey, and the
Great Nebula in Orion," University of Michigan-Dearborn, Department
of Humanities, Humanitas Lecture, February,
1993.
- "'The
Abysses of the Heavenly Wilderness': Thomas De Quincey,
John Herschel, and J.P. Nichol Confront the Great Nebula in Orion,"
Midwest Modern Language Association, November, 1992, St. Louis, MO.
- "Intruding in the
Garden of Eden: The Rhetorical Transformation of Nature in Gosse's Father
and Son," Society for Literature and Science, October, 1992, Atlanta, GA.
- "Interdisciplinarity and the English Curriculum," Michigan College
English Association, October, 1992, Benton
Harbor, MI.
- "'The Abysses of
the Heavenly Wilderness': Thomas De Quincey,
J.P. Nichol, and the Earl of Rosse Confront the
Great Nebula in Orion," Northeast Victorian Studies Association,
April, 1992, New Brunswick,
NJ.
- "'Euclid Honourably Shelved':
Edwin Abbott's Flatland and the Popularization of Non-Euclidean
Geometry," Society for Literature and Science, October, 1991, Montreal, Canada.
- "'Seeing Through
Lyell's Eyes': The Uniformitarian Imagination and The
Voyage of the Beagle," Society for Literature and Science,
October, 1990, Portland,
OR.
Teaching:
My normal teaching load is three
courses per semester. I'm responsible for all courses in nineteenth-century
British literature, so I teach one upper-level course in the Romantics or the
Victorians each semester. As the list below indicates, I've taught a wide
variety of nineteenth-century courses, topics courses as well as standard
period/genre surveys. My other two courses generally consist of some
combination of an introductory literature course (the second half of the
English literature survey or Introduction to Drama), a course for one of our
interdisciplinary programs (such as our new undergraduate Science and
Technology Studies Program or our master's program in Liberal Studies), a
topics course in literature (such as Classical Literature in Translation).
My research interests in Literature and Science
and Science and Technology Studies have led not only to the creation and
teaching of new courses in these areas but to program development. I taught an
undergraduate course on Literature and Science in 1993 that I subsquently re-vamped as a graduate seminar on
"Literature, Science, and Science Studies" for our master's program
in Liberal Studies. In 1991 and 2000 I taught a course I developed on Darwin
and Victorian Culture. In 2000 I spearheaded the effort to create a Science and Technology Studies
Program at UMD with a special focus on the automobile and automobile
industry. With funding from the NEH, we brought together an interdisciplinary
group of faculty for reading, discussion, and program design. The STS Program
and Minor were approved in early 2002 and launched in the Fall
of that year. I designed and taught the inaugural offering of the introductory
course for the Program on "The Automobile in American Life and
Society." I am currently serving as the Director both of the STS Program
and of a second NEH-funded project to create a web site that will accompany the
Program but will also be available to teachers and students elsewhere. Working
with The Henry Ford, we are constructing a site that includes overview essays
and case studies by five distinguished scholars on the automobile and labor,
gender, design, the environment, and race. In addition, the site will include a
collection of oral histories taken from auto industry designers.
My teaching style in the literature classroom
blends Socratic questioning and discussion with individual and small-group
activities. I lecture when I feel I need to, but I try to keep it to a minimum.
I treat writing assignments as I do in my composition classes: students are
required to write rough drafts and to critique the drafts of other students in
their peer group.
For over a decade I have incorporated technology
into my literature classes fairly extensively, employing email and bulletin
boards for out-of-class discussion, utilizing Web sites in paper assignments
and homework exercises, and, in some cases, requiring students to conduct a
research project that is conceived hypertextually and
becomes part of a class-constructed web on a particular work, with links among
the various individual projects. When the Web was in its infancy, I used Storyspace hypertext software and George Landow's Storyspace webs on Great
Expectations and In Memoriam. Now these classes build webs directly
on the WWW. In 1997, my class on the Victorian Novel launched a web on Bronte's
Jane Eyre entitled "Charlotte's
Web" and in 1999 the same class used that web as both a resource and a
model for their own web, called "Pip's World,"
on Great Expectations. Classes in 2001, 2003, and 2005 have added to
those original webs. For the one in 2007 I moved to a wiki on Charles
Kingsley's The Water Babies; that project, however, is not available on
the web.
My use of Storyspace is
related to another of my pedagogical interests: undergraduate research. I've
been actively involved in the annual "Meeting of Minds" conference on
undergraduate research held with students from our campus, the University of
Michigan-Flint, and Oakland University; I've worked closely with our librarians
and Writing Program on ways to enhance research across the curriculum; and I
try to work with talented individual students on independent research projects
whose goal is national conference presentations and publications. I've directed
an NEH-funded student project on alchemy and Frankenstein and presented
a paper with the student at the Society for Literature and Science conference,
co-authored a journal article on The Woman in White with another, had a
third publish an article in ISLE, and have directed roughly a dozen
independent study projects. At the graduate level, I directed the Master's
Thesis of Carolyn Reese on "Anne Bronte and Universal Salvation,"
while another student's independent study project resulted in an article on
Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe in Public Understanding of
Science.
I've been creating web sites for all my courses
since 1998. In some cases, particularly when creating an online coursepack, I utilize our library's Electronic Reserves
system; these course spaces are password-protected and thus not accessible.
- Literature,
Science, and Science Studies (Graduate) (This course is
password-protected, so the link is to the syllabus only.)
- Science and Literature
(an undergraduate topics course taught both at UM-Dearborn and Eastern New Mexico University)
- Introduction to
Science and Technology Studies: The Automobile in American Life and
Society (This course is password protected, so the materials are not
accessible.) (Taught in both traditional and online versions.)
- Car Culture (a seminar
for first-year students; this course is password protected, so the
materials are not accessible)
- What Are You Going To
Do With That? The Liberal Arts and the Professions (a seminar for
first-year students, linked with a career-planning course)
- Hypertext and the
Victorian Novel (My first use of Storyspace
software, offered before the WWW existed.)
- Women and the English
Novel, 1792-1869
- The
Pre-Raphaelites (Part of this course is password-protected, but the
bulk of the course materials is accessible.)
- The Radical Romantics:
The Godwins, The Shelleys,
and Byron
- Darwin in Victorian Literature and
Culture (This course is password protected, so the materials are not
accessible.)
- Nineteenth-Century
English Novel
- Survey of
Victorian Literature
- Survey of English
Literature in the Romantic Era
- English
Literature 1660 to Present
- Classical
Literature in Translation
- Introduction to
English Studies (gateway course for English majors)
- Introduction to
Literature: Drama
- Composition I and II
(Computer Aided)
- Honors Composition
(linked with both Western Culture II: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance
and Western Culture I: The Ancient World)
- Basic Composition,
Expository Writing, and Advanced Composition (Rutgers University)
Thesis Advising:
- Jennifer De Long, “Alchemists, Epics,
and Heroes.” Ph.D. in English, University
of Illinois.
Completed November 2007. Committee Member.
- Carolyn Bacon, “Anne Bronte and
Universal Salvation.” Master’s of Liberal
Studies. Completed December 2005.
- Jennifer Gerstel, "Sexual Selection and Mate Choice in Darwin,
Eliot, Gaskell, and Hardy." Ph.D. in English, University of Toronto.
Completed 2002. External Examiner for oral defense.
Service to the
Profession:
- Foreign Corresponding
Editor, Journal of Victorian Culture (2001- ).
- Evaluator for
MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Program, 2010.
- Panelist, NEH Grants
for Teaching and Learning Resources and Curriculum Development, 2006.
- Manuscript Reviewer
for PMLA, Cambridge University Press, Victorian Studies,
Isis, Ohio State University Press, Journal of Victorian Culture,
Journal of Narrative Theory, SEL: Studies in English Literature,
1500-1900, McGraw-Hill.
- Proposal reviewer for
Cambridge University Press, NEH Collaborative Projects, Broadview
Press, The Library of America,
Bucknell University Press.
- Promotion Reviewer for
Haverford College
and Bucknell
University.
- Editorial Board, TLWC:
Teaching Literature With Computers. 1997-98.
University Service:
English Discipline:
- Member, Curriculum
Review Committee, 2002-05 (Chair 2003-05). Led a complete overhaul of the
English major.
- Coordinator, English
Discipline Self-Study, 1995-96
- Coordinator, English
Discipline Assessment Plan, 1994-95
- English Discipline
Library Liaison, 1992-97
- English Discipline
Faculty Advisor, 1993-95
- English Discipline
Assistant Library Liaison, 1991-92
- Member, Composition
Advisory Committee, 1991-92, 1995-96
Humanities
Department/Department of Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts:
- Chair,
Early Modern/Renaissance Literature and Culture Search Committee, 2004-05
- Chair, American
Literature and Culture Search Committee, 2003-04
- Chair, 18th-Century
Studies Search Committee, 2002-03
- Member, Medievalist
Search Committee, 2001
- Associate Chair,
1998-99
- Member, Promotion and
Tenure Committee, 1997-
- Ex-Officio Member,
Department Executive Committee, 1998-99
- At-Large Member,
Department Executive Committee, 1995-96, 1997
- Member, Composition
Search Committee, 1992-93, 1996-97
College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters:
- Associate Dean,
2006-09. Primary responsibility for interdisciplinary programs,
undergraduate research and learning opportunities, distance learning,
technology support and web site.
- Director, Science and
Technology Studies, 2002-06
- Chair, Distance
Learning Advisory Committee, 2006-09
- Chair,
Bachelor of General Studies/Liberal Studies Advisory Committee, 2006-09
- Member, Reconstituted
Promotion & Tenure Committee (for promotions to full professor), 2005
- Member, Full Professor
Review Committee, 2003
- Member and Coordinator,
Pilot First-Year Seminars Committee, 2003-04
- Member, CASL Executive
Committee, 1998-2000 (voting), 2006-09 (ex officio)
- Member, CASL
Administrative Council, 2006-09
- Member, "Meeting
of Minds" Steering Committee, 1994-97, 1998-2000
- Attendee, Council on
Undergraduate Research Institute, "How to Institutionalize
Undergraduate Research," Asheville,
NC, March, 1997
- Member, Academic
Standards Committee, 1993-95
- Faculty Marshall,
Commencements of Fall 1991, Winter 1995, and Winter 2007
University of Michigan-Dearborn
Campus:
- Chair, CASL Dean Search Committee, 2009-10
- Member, Web Strategy Team,
2009-10
- Member, William E. Stirton
Professor Selection Committee, 2007
- Coordinator, Technology &
Culture Forum, 2005
- Member,
Provost’s Ad Hoc Advisory Committee for a Faculty Lounge, 2002-03
- Member, Graduate
Board, 1998-2000
- Member, Research
Support Committee, 1996-99
- Member, Values Team,
FUTURES Strategic Planning Initiative, 1998-99
- Member, Search
Committee for Information Services Librarian, 1998
- Member, Committee on
PREMIER Research Education Initiative, 1996-97
- Member, Ad Hoc
Committee on UM-Dearborn Agenda for Women, 1996
- Member, Library and
Information Technology Advisory Committee, 1994-97
- Member, Library
Advisory Committee, 1992-94
- Panelist, New Faculty
Orientation, 1994, 1995, 1997
- Member, Ad Hoc Library
Committee on Serials, 1993-94
University of Michigan System:
- Member, Selection Committee, Jackie Lawson Memorial Faculty
Governance Award, 2003-05
- Member, Rackham
Divisional Board (Humanities and the Arts), 1997-99
Memberships:
- Modern Language
Association
- North American
Victorian Studies Association
- Northeast Victorian
Studies Association
- Midwest
Victorian Studies Association
- Interdisciplinary
Nineteenth Century Society
- Society for
Literature, Science, and the Arts
- History of Science
Society
- British Society for
the History of Science
- Society for the
History of Technology