Academia
About
I earned my PhD in the English department at the Ohio State University, where I studied folklore, literature, and the places where they intersect. My areas of interest include fairy tales and their adaptations, 19th-century literature, folk narrative, disability studies, speculative fiction, supernatural folklore, and queer theory.
I also hold a BA in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania, where I graduated Magna Cum Laude, and an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies: Folklore from George Mason University. I have studied abroad at Oxford University: Mansfield College, where I was fully matriculated in the tutorial system for a year, and the National University of Ireland, Galway.
Publications
Articles
2018 – Marvels & Tales – Special Issue 33.1 – “Teaching with Stories: Empathy, ‘Relatability,’ and the Fairy Tale” (co authored with Brittany Warman)
2016 – Humanities – Special Issue “Fairy Tale and its Uses in Contemporary New Media and Popular Culture” – “Becoming the Labyrinth: Negotiating Magical Space and Identity in Puella Magi Madoka Magica” (co-authored with Erin Kathleen Bahl)
2015 – Louise Pound: A Folklore and Literature Miscellany – Issue 1 – “Beasts and Bluebeards: Reader Reception, the Fairy Tale, and Jane Eyre” (co-authored with Brittany Warman)
2013 – Supernatural Studies – Issue 1.1 – “‘The Darkness Has Too Much to Offer’: Revising the Gothic Vampire”
Academic Reviews
2017 – Marvels and Tales – Review of The Classic Fairy Tales, 2nd Edition edited by Maria Tatar
2017 – Marvels & Tales – Review of The Princess and the Goblin and Other Fairy Tales by George MacDonald
2016 – Gramarye – Review of Seven Miles of Steel Thistles: Reflections on Fairy Tales by Katherine Langrish
2016 – Journal of American Folklore – Review of Unsettling Assumptions: Tradition, Gender, Drag ed. Pauline Greenhill and Diane Tye
2015 – Marvels and Tales – Review of George MacDonald: Divine Carelessness and Fairytale Levity by Daniel Gabelman
2015 – Marvels and Tales – Review of Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales by Ann Schmiesing
2014 – Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts – Review of The Irish Fairy Tale: A Narrative Tradition from the Middle Ages to Yeats and Stephens by Vito Carrassi
2014 – Journal of Folklore Research – Review of Queer Enchantments: Gender, Sexuality, and Class in the Fairy-Tale Cinema of Jacques Demy by Anne Duggan
2012 – Folklore Forum – Review of “Red Riding Hood for All Ages: A Fairy Tale Icon in Cross-Cultural Contexts” by Sandra L. Beckett
Conference Papers
2018 – The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts
Orlando, FL
Presented Paper: “Spooky Action at a Distance”: Fairylore’s Intrusion on Vampiric Tradition in Only Lovers Left Alive
2017 – The American Folklore Society 2017 Annual Meeting
Minneapolis, MN
Presented Paper: “Come, give me a true history”: Storytelling and the Creation of a Legend in Brontë’s Wuthering Heights
2017 – Thinking With Stories: A Fairy-Tale Studies Conference
Detroit, MI
Presented Paper: “Teaching with Stories: Pedagogy, Empathy, and the Fairy Tale”
2017 – The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts
Orlando, FL
Roundtable Participant: Fantasizing Disability
2017 – Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference – Philadelphia, PA
Presented Paper: “She had a wolf in her mind”: Disability, Madness, and Epistemology in George MacDonald’s Fairy Tales”
2016 – The American Folklore Society 2016 Annual Meeting
Miami, FL
Presented Paper: “Nothing, My Lord”: A Creative Response to Untellability and Gender in Cinderella (ATU 510B) and King Lear Scholarship
2016 – Reflected Shadows: Folklore and the Gothic
Kingston, UK
Presented Paper: “His wild beast’s fondness or his madman’s rage”: Disability, Folklore, and the Gothic in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights
2016 – The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts
Orlando, FL
Presented Paper: “She Had a Wolf in Her Mind”: Disability, Madness and Epistemology inGeorge MacDonald’s Fairy Tales
2015 – The American Folklore Society 2015 Annual Meeting
Long Beach, CA
Presented Paper: “Lamps and Levity: the Dis/abled, Embodied Experience in George MacDonald’s Fairy Tales”
2015 – Babel Working Group Conference
Toronto, Canada
Presented Paper: “Your Deformity Scare Appears: Negotiating Disability and Disfigurement in Beauty and the Beast Tales”
2015 – Society for Disability Studies Annual Meeting
Atlanta, GA
Presented Paper: “Hybrid Bodies, Unruly Minds: Constructing Disability in the Fantastic Literature of Catherynne M. Valente”
2015 – The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts
Orlando, FL
Presented Paper: “Porphyro is Dead: Exploring Narrative Ambiguity and Folkloric Intertexts in Keats’ ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’”
2014 – The American Folklore Society 2014 Annual Meeting
Santa Fe, NM
Presented Paper: “Love and Be Silent: Fairy Tale Conventions in Shakespeare’s King Lear”
2014 – The International Conference on Romanticism
Minneapolis, MN
Presented Paper: “Wordsworth, the Folk, and Folklore: Strategies of Appropriation and Adaptation”
2014 – International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts
Orlando, FL
Presented Paper: “Dreaming a Liminal Empire: The Body and the City in Catherynne M. Valente’s Palimpsest”
2014 – The Ohio State University/ Indiana University Student Conference
Columbus, OH
Presented Paper: “Dreaming a Liminal Empire: The Body and the City in Catherynne M. Valente’s Palimpsest”
2014 – International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts
Orlando, FL
Presented Paper: “Dreaming a Liminal Empire: The Body and the City in Catherynne M. Valente’s Palimpsest”
2013 – American Folklore Society 2013 Annual Meeting
Providence, RI
Presented Paper: “Wordsworth, the Folk, and Folklore: Strategies of Appropriation and Adaptation”
2013 – John Douglas Taylor Conference: You Can’t Be Serious
Ontario, Canada
Presented Paper: “Riffing the Canon: Creative Criticism for Popular Culture,” co-written with Kerry Kaleba
2013 – International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts
Orlando, FL
Presented Paper : “’The Darkness Has Too Much To Offer’: Revising the Gothic Vampire
2013 – Gothic: Culture, Subculture, Counterculture Conference
Strawberry Hill, UK
Presented Paper: “’I live in you; and you would die for me’: Transgressive Love and the Gothic Vampire”
2012 – American Folklore Society 2012 Annual Meeting
New Orleans, LA
Presented Paper: “Beauty and the Beast Within: New Visions of Monstrosity in an Old Tale”
2012 – International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts
Orlando, FL
Presented Paper: “Beauty and the Beast Within”
2011 – American Folklore Society 2011 Annual Meeting
Bloomington, IN
Presented Paper: “Facing the Other: An Exploration of War and its Aftermath in Robin McKinley’s Sunshine”
2011 – Conference on Holidays, Ritual, Festival, Celebration, and Public Display
Paris, France
Presented Paper: “Gobble It Up: A Thanksgiving Extravaganza”