Megan Ward
Lawrence University
P.O. Box 599
Appleton, WI 54912
(920) 832-7223
1425 N. Erb Street
Appleton, WI 54911
(215) 694-5772
Education and Employment
Visiting Assistant Professor, Lawrence University, September 2008 - present
Ph.D., Literatures in English, Rutgers University, May 2008
M.A., Literatures in English, Rutgers University, 2004
M.Phil., English Literature 1830-1900, University of Oxford, 2001
Thesis: “Tactile Texts: Reading for Touch in George Eliot and Thomas Hardy”
B.A., English, Lawrence University, magna cum laude, 1997
Dissertation
“Feeling Middle Class: Sensory Perception in Victorian Literature and Culture”
Director: Kate Flint; Readers: Jonah Siegel, Carolyn Williams, Janice Carlisle (Yale)
Fellowships and Awards
International Society for the Study of Narrative Conference: Graduate Student Paper Prize 2008, Honorable Mention
Rutgers English Department Mellon Summer Fellowship and Dissertation Workshop, 2007
Rutgers Center for Cultural Analysis Fellowship, “Intellectual Property,” 2005-2006
Rutgers English Department Mellon Summer Research Grant, 2005,
University of Delaware Special Collections
Qualls Fellowship for Victorian and Gender Studies, 2004-2005
Blum Teaching Fellowship, appointment as Barry Qualls’ TA, 2003-2004
Rutgers Symposium Paper Award, 2002
Rutgers English Department Coursework Fellowship, 2001-2002
Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellowship, 1997-1998
Lawrence University Sesquicentennial Scholarship, 1993-1997
Publications
“‘A Charm in Those Fingers’: Patterns, Taste, and the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine,” Victorian Periodicals Review (Fall 2008).
“William Morris’s Conditional Moment,” an invited submission for a special issue, “Memory and Materiality,” RaVon: Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, a peer-reviewed online journal (Forthcoming).
“The Woodlanders and the Cultivation of Realism,” Studies in English Literature. Revise and Resubmit (revision sent July 2008).
Conferences:
Presentations
“‘As if it were so’: The Defence of Guenevere puts the Moment on Trial,” Modern Language Association Conference. San Francisco, CA, 2008.
“Cultivating a Narrative of Outward Mobility: The Woodlanders,” International Society for the Study of Narrative Conference. University of Texas – Austin, 2008.
“Making Fidelity Sound Material,” North American Victorian Studies Association. University of Victoria, Canada, 2007.
“Inventing Fidelity: The Truth of Troth in The Eustace Diamonds.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference. University of Missouri – Kansas City, 2007.
“Head, Heart and Hands: Fancy-work Patterns and the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine.” Northeast Modern Language Association, Temple University, 2006.
“Truth, Fidelity, and Technologies of Sensory Reproduction in The Eustace Diamonds” Dickens Project Winter Conference. University of California – Los Angeles, 2006.
“Reading Patterns in the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine,” Princeton University Center for Material Texts Graduate Student Conference. Princeton University, 2005.
“Taste and Comfort: Sensing the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Domestic Interior,” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association. Pepperdine University, 2005.
“The Labyrinth and the High Tower: Sensory Perception in Victorian Literature and Culture,” Dickens Universe. University of California – Santa Cruz, 2005.
“Expert Evidence: Sensory Perception and the Construction of Professional Expertise in The Moonstone,” College English Association. Indianapolis, IN, 2005.
“Feminine, Powerful, Maternal”?: Women and Marriage in Middlemarch,” Victorian Marriage Colloquium. Leeds University, England, 2000.
“The Collaborative Friendship of Winifred Holtby and Vera Britain,” Women Writing Between the Wars. Oxford University, England, 1998.
Other Conference Activities
Panel Organizer and Chair, “Victorian Failure.” North American Victorian Studies Association Conference. Yale University, 2008.
Panel Chair, “Reading the Social in the Nineteenth-Century Novel.” International Society for the Study of Narrative Conference. Georgetown University, 2007.
Conference Co-creator and Organizer, Exposing the Nineteenth Century: Interiors, Interiority, and Introspection, a national interdisciplinary graduate student conference. Rutgers University, 2004.
Conference Organizer, Rutgers University English Department Symposium. Rutgers University, 2003.
Teaching Experience
Lawrence: The Victorian Age (Winter 2009)
Romanticism
Major British Writers II, a survey of British literature from 1789 – present
Literary Analysis (Winter 2009)
Rutgers: Nineteenth-Century British Fiction (Rutgers and Rutgers-Camden)
Nineteenth-Century British Fiction with Barry Qualls; lectured throughout the term to 100-person class
Principles of Literary Study: Fictions of Autobiography
Principles of Literary Study: Colonialism and Post-Colonialism
Expository Writing
Montgomery County Community College: Basic Writing
Teaching Interests
Victorian literature and culture; Victorian poetry; Romanticism; the history of the novel; literature of the fin-de-siècle; material culture; literature, science, and technology; Victorian visual culture; detective fiction; critical theory; gender and sexuality
Academic Service
2006 Editorial Assistant for The Broadview Anthology of British Literature – Volume 5: The Victorian Era
2005-8 MLA Graduate Student Liaison
2004 Editorial Assistant to Jonah Siegel
2002-3 Organizer, Rutgers Nineteenth-Century Studies Group
2002 Organizer, Rutgers English Department Open House
2000 Research Assistant to Kate Flint
References
Janice Carlisle, Department of English, Yale University (janice.carlisle@
Marianne DeKoven, Department of English, Rutgers University (mdekoven@aol.com)
Shanyn Fiske, Department of English, Rutgers-Camden (fiske@camden.rutgers.edu)
Kate Flint, Department of English, Rutgers University (kate.flint@rutgers.edu)
Barry V. Qualls, Vice President for Undergraduate Education, Rutgers University (qualls@oldqueens.rutgers.edu)
Jonah Siegel, Department of English, Rutgers University (jsiegel@rci.rutgers.edu)
Carolyn Williams, Department of English, Rutgers University (carolyn.williams@rutgers.edu)
