Whether you’re assigning Guilty Pleasures or one of the stories in 12 Stories, I can engage your students on the topics of how we select the media we consume, what our media consumption tells us about ourselves and others, how literature canons get formed, and the history of US women writers and book publishing. I can also lead undergraduate and graduate seminars on translating academic writing for public audiences.

I offer lectures on a range of topics for academic and general audiences including the relationship between literature and politics, writing for the public humanities, nineteenth-century women writers, and popular culture.

Here’s a description of a talk I’ve been giving on my most recent research:

Manifesting in the 19th Century

New Thought was a secular spiritual practice that emerged in the late nineteenth century, offering women across the country financial independence, sexual liberation, and a pathway to the realization of their desires. The most basic principle of New Thought is that the mind has the power to change outcomes in the physical world; they called this “the law of attraction,” a term still used today to refer to the “science” behind the practice of “manifestation." When we set an intention in a yoga practice, when we make a vision board, “energize” a crystal, or tell everyone we know that we’re going to lose twenty pounds to speak it into reality, we’re buying into the belief system New Thought pioneered.

I’ll work with your faculty, teaching and learning center, or graduate students to talk about how to diversify syllabi so that they speak to a broader range of students.