Department of English

About

I specialize in Victorian studies, in particular theater and drama. In my dissertation,Marriage and New Drama in Late-Victorian London, I examine the debates surrounding marriage laws and theatrical reform in the late nineteenth century, pointing to the ways in which these two debates were shown as informing one another in the plays of George Bernard Shaw, Arthur Wing Pinero, Oscar Wilde, and other self-described advocates of the “New Drama” movement. I argue that preoccupation with marriage scrutinized by “the eyes of the world” in plays such as The Second Mrs. Tanqueray and Lady Windermere’s Fan both reflected and intensified late-Victorian ambivalence toward the relationship between performance and authenticity. My teaching, like my research, is deeply invested in the intersections between theater and social performance.